Israel was hit by a suicide bomber this week but it is another bomb that is causing most concern, writes Graham Usher Following a month of heady introspection Israel was brought to earth this week -- courtesy of two events. The first was the return of the Palestinian suicide bomber to Israeli cities. The second was the realisation that Israel's decades-long monopoly of nuclear weapons in the region may be coming to an end. "We will have to reconcile ourselves to Iran's nuclear capability," head of army intelligence, Major-General Aharon Zeevi, told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on 30 November. The bombing occurred on 5 December in Netanya, six weeks after the last one, in neighbouring Hadera. Like Hadera, it was outside a mall, left five Israeli civilians dead and was executed by Islamic Jihad -- the executioner this time being Lufti Abu Saada, a 21-year-old Palestinian from the northern West Bank village of Ilar. Israel's response was even more knee-jerk than usual. It sealed off the West Bank, suspended all negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on opening the safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank (due, theoretically, by the end of December) and vowed to go after Jihad head and branch, especially in the northern West Bank. It is a policy tried and failed. Since the Hadera attack on 26 October, the army has killed 10 Jihad men (including "a senior military leader"), wounded 28 and arrested 72. None of these measures prevented the Netanya attack. According to the "martyrdom" video made by Saada, they were its cause. But Israelis have become inured to suicide bombings, now running at an average of one every three months. Netanya alone is unlikely to make any great shakes on the political landscape. It is rather Iran's potential possession of the bomb that is overshadowing Israel's election campaign. Israeli fears have been fuelled by a flurry of statements, including from Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. He told Britain's Independent newspaper that Iran was trying to "acquire a full fuel (enrichment) cycle and that acquiring the full cycle means that a country is six months away from nuclear weapons". And Israel has been outraged by the news that Russia had sold to Iran $700 million worth of mobile air defence systems, a breach of American driven campaign to isolate Tehran. "I believe that the political means used by Europe and the US to convince the Iranians to stop their (nuclear) project will not succeed," snorted Israel's army chief of staff, Dan Halutz. There is nothing especially new about this. Hyped-up Israeli fears of the "Iranian threat" tend to come with elections. What are new are the differing responses of the three likely contenders to be Israel's next prime minister: Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu (who has yet to be crowned Sharon's heir), Kadima's Ariel Sharon and Labour's Amir Peretz. Netanyahu's preferred response is pre-emption. "It must be understood that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear threat against Israel," he told Israel Radio on 4 December. Instead, "I will pursue the legacy of (former Israeli Prime Minister) Menachem Begin, who through a bold and courageous move did not allow a neighbour of Iran, Iraq, to develop such a threat." In other words, Israel should take out Iran's nuclear capability the way Begin took out Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osiraq in 1981. Netanyahu's warning is more rhetorical than real. Whatever nuclear production facilities Iran may have, they are not concentrated in one site but dispersed over several -- precisely to avert an Osiraq- like hit. Sharon's reaction was less go-it-alone, consistent with his new-found wisdom to coordinate all pre- emptive steps with the region's dominant power -- which is not Israel but the United States. "It is clear we cannot have a situation where Iran will become a nuclear power," he told his cabinet on 4 December. But, he added, "Israel is not spearheading this process. It is (rather) a partner to countries concerned by this dangerous development". Above all, the US -- and for now the US is counselling precaution rather than pre-emption. But it is likely to be only a temporary restraint, Cabinet Minister Tzahi Hanegbi, told the same meeting. He should know. He has just returned from "strategic discussions" in Washington. "Israel received the unequivocal impression that the US is determined to raise the Iranian (nuclear) issue for submission to the UN Security Council (UNSC) and has no intention of being drawn after Iranian delaying tactics," he said. The expectation is if and when Iran's nuclear programme is put before the UNSC the US will lobby hard for sanctions. The most awaited response was from Peretz, the new "revolutionary" leader of Israel's Labour Party. Would he -- consistent with his past peace positions -- declare to the Israeli electorate that the sporadic violence in their cities is the result of the permanent violence of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and that only a meaningful peace process would end it? And would he -- consistent with his "social agenda" -- insist that the only way to avert the threat of a regional arms race (and the billions of dollars it would cost) were moves to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, in which both Israel and Iran disarm? The answer to both questions was no. Asked about Iran, he said, "I hope the Israeli government will do all it has to, without foreign considerations," an answer that reads like a page from a Netanyahu cue-card. Following the Netanya bombing he sounded like a pale version of Sharon. "The PA bears full responsibility to prevent terror attacks emanating from its territory (sic)", he said. This is depressing news to the Palestinians, and everyone else who hoped Peretz would at least bring a new Israeli vision to the conflict. But it is also self-defeating for the Labour leader. If on security Peretz can only muster ersatz versions of Kadima and Likud, then why for him -- the real things are already on the field.
