Sharon’s Missteps, U.S. Opposition Undermine Israeli Plans

A week ago, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon launched Israel’s biggest military operation in the West Bank since 1967, he envisioned an open-ended assault on Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers--one that might run as long as America’s post-Sept. 11 campaign.

Now the retired general’s plan has been undermined--in part by his own miscalculations, in part by opposition from President Bush, an ally whose anti-terrorist crusade he identifies with his own.

Bush’s call Thursday for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank and his decision to dispatch Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the region next week has put Sharon under pressure to bring the operation to a halt.

Israeli officials acknowledge that Sharon has little choice but to abandon, for now, his strategy of isolating Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and trying to crush Arafat’s militant supporters. But suspending an offensive that has broad support among Israelis will be politically risky.

After Bush’s speech, which set no deadline for withdrawal, Sharon’s office issued a terse announcement that the assault would continue. On Friday, Israeli troops moved into another West Bank town, Tubas, and apparently killed the alleged mastermind of the Passover suicide bombing that left 26 Israelis dead and triggered the offensive.

But Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a member of the army general staff, acknowledged that “we might have to stop this operation a little sooner” than planned because of Powell’s peace mission. Other Israeli officials said they expected a partial withdrawal to be underway by the time Powell arrived.

“The slow-sinking sands in the hourglass of Operation Defensive Shield have been replaced by a clicking stopwatch,” military analyst Hemi Shalev wrote Friday in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. “Instead of an orderly, planned military operation, the [army] will have to hurry to do what it can.”

Previous incursions into the West Bank lasted a few days and failed to stem a wave of suicide bombings. Sharon’s impatience with half-measures was shared by most Israelis. A poll, taken as the latest offensive got underway and published Friday in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, gave him a 62% approval rating.

Over the last week, Israel has called up 33,000 reservists and sent armored vehicles into nearly every major West Bank city. Israeli troops have killed more than 70 Palestinian militants and seized piles of weapons, including 50 antitank grenades, nine bombs and nearly 2,000 guns. More than 1,200 Palestinians are being detained.

Measured against Sharon’s professed aim to destroy the Palestinians’ “terrorist infrastructure,” these gains are modest. Israeli newspapers say no more than 110 of the detainees can be linked to terrorist acts, only about a dozen are prominent militants, and hundreds more remain at large.

“We are reaching into the infrastructure and disrupting it,” said Danny Ayalon, Sharon’s senior foreign policy advisor. “But if we stop halfway, the terrorists will bounce back at us as soon as we pull out. This will be detrimental to any kind of peace effort. If we don’t uproot the terror, we’ll have no chance for a real cease-fire.”

Bush has voiced sympathy for Israel’s efforts to go after terrorists. But he intervened Thursday, U.S. officials said, because the conflict was threatening to spill beyond Israel’s borders, undermine friendly governments in Egypt and Jordan, and thwart Washington’s effort to build consensus for a military attack on Iraq.

‘Sharon Can Blame Only Himself’

The American leader faulted both sides for contributing to the growing violence.

Israeli critics say Sharon brought the pressure on himself by inciting angry protests throughout the Arab world and Europe, prompting America’s allies to lean on Bush.

The images of Israeli tanks rolling through Palestinian cities and of soldiers keeping ordinary people locked inside for days were bad enough. But Sharon might have weathered the storm, his critics say, had he not made two blunders. He sent tanks to Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, revered by Christians as Jesus’ birthplace, after Palestinian gunmen took refuge inside. And his troops seized Arafat’s headquarters, confined the Palestinian leader to a few rooms and cut him off from visitors. Sharon then threatened to send his nemesis away with “a one-way ticket.”

“Sharon can blame only himself for shortening the [army’s] window of time,” columnist Nahum Barnea wrote Friday in Yediot Aharonot. “He tried to humiliate and disgrace Arafat and ended up turning him into a world martyr. He ended up portraying Israel as a desecrator of holy sites. These two issues show how large the gap is between being right and being smart.”

Sharon ended Arafat’s isolation Friday, at least temporarily, by letting U.S. special envoy Anthony C. Zinni into the Palestinian leader’s compound for a 90-minute meeting.

Powell’s mission next week is to boost efforts begun by Zinni to win approval for a cease-fire plan developed in June by CIA Director George J. Tenet and then broaden it to include political steps. The Tenet plan would restore cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security services, leading to an Israeli pullback of its forces and the arrest of terrorist suspects.

Many Israeli officials and commentators said such an agreement no longer sounded workable.

“On the one hand, Bush says that Arafat has failed; on the other hand, he says Israeli troops should leave the West Bank,” said Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. “But how can we pull out until we have a responsible partner on the West Bank? How do we ensure that 12 hours later there’s not another suicide bombing? That might mean the end of Sharon’s government.”

Powell Visit Will Put Pressure on Arafat

Powell’s visit will also put Arafat on the spot. Moderate advisors have been urging him to call off the violence and force the Israeli leader to confront such Palestinian political demands as a rollback of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

At the same time, Sharon has been courting the National Religious Party, a right-wing bloc representing Jewish settlers. The party has said it will join Sharon’s government and has named a new leader, former Brig. Gen. Effi Eitam, who wants a purely Jewish state and says he wouldn’t mind seeing Arafat hanged.

The new alliance could stiffen Sharon’s opposition to a U.S. peace plan.

But many Israeli officials and commentators doubt it will get that far. They say Arafat has neither the will nor the ability to rein in the militants.

Even if he were to turn against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two extremist groups opposed to any peace deal, Arafat might have trouble enforcing a cease-fire. His Palestinian Authority, set up in 1994 under the Oslo peace accords, is in a shambles. Government and police offices have been bombed to rubble, prisons torn down, courthouses flattened.

And yet Bush has prodded Sharon into giving his enemy one more chance.

“It’s deja vu all over again,” said Mark Heller, a senior research fellow at Israel’s Jaffee Center. “Arafat always gets one more chance. And no matter what happens, he always will.”