Middle ground: a no man's land in Mideast

Following two months of less-than-total efforts to stop killing each other, the Israelis and the Palestinians are back where they were this spring: Militants have the momentum, and the pacifists are on the defensive.

In recent days, the Israelis have been assassinating Palestinian activists in unprecedented numbers. The Palestinians' vows of retaliation have been punctuated by the placement of bombs in a park, a supermarket, and a garage in the Jerusalem area.

Given the failure of the cease-fire, US and European officials have resumed hand-wringing as their main response to the conflict. "It's very clear that no one wants to get into this mess," says Avishai Margalit, a Hebrew University philosopher who argues that only an outside power such as the US can get the two sides to halt their feud.

In the absence of such intervention and with no prospects of the Israelis and the Palestinians returning to the peace table of their own accord, people on both sides are bracing themselves for the next atrocity.

On Tuesday, in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli forces used helicopter-borne missiles to attack a public-relations office of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, a party whose military wing has killed scores of Israelis since late last year. The missiles killed eight people, among them two of the party's senior political leaders and two young boys.

Surveying the blood-stained office, a young Hamas activist called the Israelis who carried out the attack "the most vile of villains." What would be the Palestinian response? "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," he said.

"Hamas will be forced to act," concurs Ephraim Kam, a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces who now works in a think tank in Tel Aviv. "It won't take too many days, I would think."

People on both sides seem resigned to a resurgence of hostilities, mostly because there seems to be no way out of their predicament. Israelis and Palestinians alike say they are convinced that the other side will respond only to violence.

"The Palestinians are fed up and want the [Palestinian Authority] to move towards a more radical position," says Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. "They want tit for tat, they think [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon understands only force, and if you hit him hard, then he'll start re-thinking his policies. This is the radical position nowadays, and most people support it."

Since late last year, Israel has targeted and killed Palestinians it accuses of planning attacks on Israelis. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and other officials prefer to call these strikes "interception operations," arguing that the only way to protect Israelis from attack is to kill the attacker first. In recent weeks, however, Israel has demonstrated a new enthusiasm for this tactic. On July 1, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants in Jenin, and on July 17, four Palestinians died in an Israeli helicopter attack in Bethlehem.

On July 30, near Nablus, six members of the main Palestinian political faction, Fatah, were killed in a nocturnal explosion in a car-parts store.

Israeli officials denied any role in that event, suggesting that the men suffered from the premature detonation of a bomb they were working on, but Palestinian leaders insisted Israel was responsible.

Despite international criticism, which has grown more pointed since the Tuesday Nablus attack, Israelis are generally comfortable with the strikes. "The government has to do something," says Mr. Kam, who works at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. "This might be the best option."

Israeli analysts and officials concede that assassinations will never stop attacks on Israel. Even so, they argue that the killings do disrupt some operations and force militants to spend time and energy worrying about protecting themselves and identifying possible traitors in their midst.

The Nablus attack, says Meir Litvak, an expert on Hamas at Tel Aviv University, was "designed to sow fear and suspicion among activists."

Assassination is also a politically workable option for the Israelis. Mr. Sharon's government of "national unity" includes hard-liners who say he is not doing enough to combat the Palestinians, as well as more dovish politicians who would like to see a return to negotiations.

The leader of the doves, Mr. Peres, has been defending the assassination policy, even if he finds the term distasteful. In a Wednesday evening television appearance, he left it to the very end of his comments to speak up in favor of peace talks, saying, "I don't believe you can overcome terrorism with military means."

A short time later, another Cabinet member, Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau, expressed a more hard-line view: "It must be understood that the [assassination] operations are only just beginning ... [the Palestinians] must know that as long as there is terror in our streets, they won't be able to hide."

Speculation continues that Israel is planning a massive invasion of Palestinian-controlled areas and that the assassinations are its precursor, but many Israeli analysts remain skeptical, especially about what the exit strategy might be. "You can start such an invasion," says Kam, "but it's clear you'll never be able to complete it."

Palestinians on the whole are more worried about the possibility of a large-scale Israeli military operation and suspect the Israelis are preparing to remove from power Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his government.

Professor Jarbawi says Arafat's administration "is in the most difficult position it has been in during the last 10 months," when the intifada began. Mr. Arafat and his ministers are "bracing for the big blow" from Israel, Jarbawi says, and at the same time find themselves unable to speak credibly about a return to negotiations.

The main thing that the PA can do now is to appeal for international intervention, but the Americans, the Europeans, and even Arab leaders are reluctant to do more than they have already done. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak this week rebuffed Arafat's most recent appeal for another Arab summit.

"No benefit will arise from a summit that convenes now," Mr. Mubarak said.

The Israeli assassinations do nothing to make the Palestinians more willing to listen to talk of peacemaking - quite the contrary. Polls indicate that support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group, is rising, at the expense of backing for Arafat's Fatah faction.

"The assassinations are definitely weakening the Authority and boosting Hamas, inciting Palestinians against a political solution and therefore supporting the militants and extremists," says Ziad Abu Zayyad, a Palestinian Cabinet member.

If one of the Israelis' goals is to use the assassinations to spur internal suspicions on the Palestinian side, they have achieved some success. Palestinian courts this week sentenced four people to death for collaborating with Israel, and security officials have arrested others on similar charges.

Says Musa Zaabout, a pro-Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council: "We are very worried about [collaborators], and we hope the PA will punish these people by even hanging them in the streets."