Israel’s newspapers focus on Wednesday’s car bombing in which 17 Israelis, 13 of them soldiers, were killed. Both Yediot Ahronot and Maariv produce special editions, telling the individual stories of the dead and wounded, and describing how the car blew up close to the back of the bus near Megiddo, setting the fuel tank alight and engulfing the bus in flames. Maariv calls it “The inferno;” Yediot Ahronot says: “They remained 20-year-olds.”
Both Tel Aviv mass-circulation dailies came out before the Israeli Army operation in Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat’s Mukataa headquarters in Ramallah, but they say the “Israeli Army is preparing to operate in West Bank cities.”
Maariv quotes the police as saying that the car carrying the bomb crossed the “seam line” between the West Bank city of Jenin and Megiddo shortly before it blew up. It says Islamic Jihad took responsibility, declaring that the bombing was intended to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1967 war.
Yediot Ahronot says Israel will target the heads of the PA and of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Both newspapers highlight the warning CIA Director George Tenet reportedly gave Arafat ­ that if the suicide bombings continue, Washington will give Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a free hand to act against the Palestinian leader.
“If there are more bombings,” Tenet is quoted as saying, “you will be on your own against Sharon.”
Maariv, which has long been pushing the idea of a West Bank security fence, does not even mention the idea in its editorial on the latest terrorist attack. Instead, it comes out in favor of expelling Arafat, declaring: “The outrage at Megiddo can only bring us closer to a decision to rid this region of Arafat’s presence. There is no benefit to be derived on the diplomatic path as long as he is the person with whom negotiations have to be conducted. No Israeli statesman can feel that there is anything to talk about with him or his Authority, and the public has lost any vestige of confidence in their goodwill. Even on the left, Arafat is the object of disgust and aversion and only a small and negligible core of inveterate idiots still believe any good can come of him. The Palestinians too have had enough of him and understand that he cannot redeem them.”
As to the consequences of expulsion, Maariv asserts: “We have long been warned that his absence would create a dangerous anarchy in the territories, with Israel as the prime loser. But what’s happening there now, under his leadership? On the one hand, he claims to be in control, and on the other he asserts that he cannot stop the terror attacks. The truth is that he encourages the attacks and uses them as a means of pressuring us. We must not panic at the idea of expelling Arafat. The sky won’t fall on us, and it will teach the Palestinians, the world, and ourselves, that an arch-terrorist like him cannot be let off the hook.”
In a front-page commentary in Yediot Ahronot, Sever Plotzker agrees that “terrorism is what keeps Arafat politically alive,” and asserts that a security fence along the “seam” between Israelis and Palestinians could prevent attacks like the one at Megiddo.
“A fence could stop 90 percent of the suicide bombings, and the other 10 percent could be handled more effectively by the Shin Bet, the army and the police,” Plotzker writes.
“The Palestinians may acquire the means of attacking us over the fence, but they can learn from the situation on the Lebanese border: Hizbullah knows that if it disturbs the peace, Israel is capable of delivering a lethal military blow. It is precisely because the fence is there that such a blow becomes feasible. Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is aware of this, and this is why he prefers to make speeches about dispatching suicide bombers. Damascus is also aware that if Israel is forced to defend its northern border, Syria will soon find itself back in the Stone Age.”
In a news analysis in Yediot Ahronot, military commentator Ron Leshem says: “A desperate search is under way in the defense establishment for new operational ideas for appropriate military responses to terror attacks. The dynamic is the same dangerous one that has always driven us in the confrontation with the Palestinians: The ideas which today seem wild and preposterous are the measures the Israeli Army will take tomorrow.”
Leshem suggests that, with the public baying for immediate action, drastic measures are inevitable.
“In the absence of creative ideas, the approaching escalation will gradually force Israel into two moves that most experts warn against: digging in in the Palestinian areas, and harming or expelling Arafat.”
Neither of these measures would be wise, Leshem warns. “Establishing a permanent presence in West Bank population centers will make Israeli troops easy, static targets and exact a high price in lives, as well as in economic terms, as many more reservists will have to be mobilized. And it will leave the hard core of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza untouched. It will also have ruinous long-term effects on the army’s training programs. As for the expulsion of Arafat, intelligence sources warn that it would only enhance his status, without restricting his ability to direct terror operations.”
Maariv political analyst Emmanuel Rosen makes the paradoxical assertion that “‘Operation Rampart’ failed, even though it succeeded,” and goes on to say that “it destroyed, hit and captured ­ the Israeli Army did everything asked of it. Perhaps it deserves a medal, the army, that is, not the government, which conceived the construction of the wall and didn’t devote one iota of thought to the day after the battle. Behind the wall, the terror is growing more daring and more dangerous. Arafat is alive and well and continues to make fun of the world (‘You want reforms? You can have them’); and as for US President George W. Bush, perhaps he is very fond of Sharon, but behind his back he is working on political plans that are the embodiment of the prime minister’s worst nightmares.”
Rosen claims that in his last meeting with Bush, Sharon got what he wanted ­ “a presidential declaration on the need for reforms in the PA and what Sharon mistakenly took to be a green light to end the Arafat era. Since then, the reforms have become an international joke and in our narrow neck-of the woods, 40 more Israelis have been murdered.”
In next Monday’s meeting with the president, Sharon may be able to squeeze small consolation prizes from Bush, Rosen remarks. “But he won’t be able to change the reality in which the political agenda is set by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah and not by Israel and its leader. And, unfortunately, he won’t be able to prevent the next terrorist bombing.”
Maariv defense analyst Yoav Limor quotes senior security sources as saying that the fact that Islamic Jihad was able to assemble a car bomb is “very worrying and reminiscent of the dark days of car bombings in Lebanon.”
Limor says that in the security establishment, there are fears that, as in Lebanon, “the next stage will be attempts to use car bombs to bring down tall buildings. Another worrying fact is that two months after it was supposedly destroyed in Operation Rampart, the Islamic Jihad terrorist infrastructure in Jenin is still active.”

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