Sharon's war plans

Israel's offensive in the West Bank is the most extensive in 34 years of occupation. But what are its aims? Graham Usher in Jerusalem finds a campaign drenched in ambiguity
Last Friday the Israeli army called up 20,000 reserve combat officers, the largest mobilisation in Israel since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Ten thousand more reservists may be called in the coming days.
Together with the army's invasions of Ramallah, Qalqilya and other West Bank cities, the call-up confirmed "Operation Defensive Wall" as Israel's most extensive offensive in the occupied territories in 34 years of occupation.
The plan has been honed ever since Ariel Sharon was elected Israel's Prime Minister. But it was brought to the table after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 22 Israeli civilians and wounded more than 100 in the Israeli town of Netanya on 27 March. It was approved following an eight-hour session of the Israeli cabinet the next night.
The debate was long because it reflected the divide that has rent Israel's political and military establishment over how best to crush the 18-month-old Palestinian uprising.
Right-wing ministers demanded the destruction of the Palestinian Authority and the banishment or worse of Yasser Arafat. In other words -- though few dared to say so -- Israel's reconquest of the West Bank and Gaza.
Labour party ministers balked at all three, aware that reoccupation and the Palestinian leader's death or exile would risk turning the Intifada from an anti- colonial revolt into a regional fire.
Instead, they argued that maximum "pressure" must be exerted on Arafat. For Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, this meant neutralising Arafat in his compound to "break the chain of terror" allegedly linking him to the Palestinian militias beyond it.
For Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, it meant turning the screw so tight that Arafat would be forced to "accept and implement immediately" the "bridging proposals" for a cease-fire submitted to him last week by US special envoy Anthony Zinni.
Sharon staked a middle ground between the two. During the cabinet meeting he was fully behind the right's call for Arafat's expulsion. But he was non- committal over destroying the PA other than limiting its military arms. His summing up of his government's present policy reflected the ambiguity.
"Arafat, who established a coalition of terror against Israel, is an enemy and at this stage will be isolated," he said on Friday.
But what does isolation mean? Writing in Israel's premier Yediot Aharonot newspaper on 29 March, military correspondent Alex Fishman said Operation Defensive Wall was a military campaign with a political goal.
There would be consecutive invasions of each PA area to "eliminate the terrorist infrastructure," with the army "taking over buildings, house-to-house searches, confiscating arms and [mass] arrests."
But the goal remained a political solution on Israel's terms: "The aspiration is to raise the confrontation to such a level of harshness that the PA will have no choice but to search for an agreement at the negotiations' table," wrote Fishman.
This appears to be the army's view. "The objective [of the campaign] is to change the security reality vis-à- vis the Palestinians so as to allow diplomatic negotiations," the chief of staff told the cabinet meeting on Friday.
Sharon turned on him, saying: "What are you talking about? There aren't going to be any diplomatic negotiations."
He also made it clear there would be no agreement with a PA led by Arafat. "He is the enemy of Israel and the entire free world, an obstacle to peace in the Middle East and a threat to stability of the entire region," Sharon said in a televised address on Sunday.
But the Israeli leader has yet to publicly embrace the call to bring down Arafat's "deadly, destructive and dark dictatorship," advocated by his rival and possible nemesis Binyamin Netanyahu.
Does this mean Sharon -- following the crushing military blow he wants delivered by "Defensive Wall" -- still seeks a Palestinian leadership docile and quisling enough to accept his plans for a "long-term interim agreement"?
"Yes," says Labour Party parliamentarian Haim Ramon. "Sharon wants Arafat to disappear and for a moderate Palestinian to replace him. He will negotiate and try to convince it [the new Palestinian leadership] to accept a Palestinian state in 50 per cent of the West Bank. Then he will resign and wait for the future. He won't give up more than that.
It's an illusion. It will never happen. What will happen is what we are seeing now: the de facto destruction of the PA and Israel's full or almost full reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza."
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