Israel: Caught in the crossfire

The assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in Jerusalem yesterday has grave implications for the immediate stability of the tense Middle East.

As I wrote several weeks ago, Israeli security officials were warning that major terrorist attacks could be on the horizon, launched by groups supported by Syria and Iran. Since the Damascus-based PFLP, a PLO splinter group, has taken responsibility for the horrendous political killing, a direct link to Syria is probable. Israeli officials believe that the PFLP would not carry out such an important terrorist attack without high-level Syrian approval.

Some might argue that a deadly assault on one person, whatever his position, is not a “major” terrorist strike. But radical Palestinian groups like the secularist PFLP and the militant Muslim Hamas and Islamic Jahad groups realize that an attack on a senior Israeli government leader cannot go unanswered. Therefore it carries equal weight, if not more, than a terrorist assault that kills scores of Israeli civilians.

Some officials fear that the aim of the Ze’evi assassination is to set off a significant Israeli military response – possibly against PFLP headquarters in the Syrian capital – that would be used to ignite a greater conflict. That, in turn, would divert Arab and world attention away from Osama bin Laden’s hideous crimes in America and focus Muslim wrath on the Jewish State.

Even though they fully comprehend what the bad guys are up to, Israeli leaders will feel duty bound to forcefully respond to the cold-blooded murder of one of their Cabinet colleagues – even if this further weakens shaky Arab support for Washington’s anti-terror campaign. They will not be deterred by the PFLP claim that the assassination was justified revenge for the August Israeli military killing of a senior PFLP leader in Ramallah, Mustafa Zibri, since he had taken open “credit” for launching earlier terror assaults on Israeli civilians.

Nor will Yasser Arafat’s order to arrest the assassins help very much, since he has refused until now to detain over 100 known Palestinian terrorist activists wanted by Israel. Officials in Jerusalem say Arafat’s inaction has given a virtual green light for the type of assault that took place outside Ze’evi’s hotel room early Wednesday morning.

Western pressure tills the soil

If they are trying to set off a new regional war designed to wreck the Western coalition, as well as do severe damage to Israel, the PFLP terrorists and their allies and backers could not have picked a better Cabinet target, apart from Ariel Sharon, who would be far more difficult to assassinate. The tourism minister was violently hated by most Arabs for his past statements advocating the expulsion of rebellious Palestinians across the river into Jordan.

The former general refreshed these sentiments in July by referring to Palestinians illegally working in Israel as “cancerous lice” that were likely to carry out more terrorist atrocities against Jewish civilians. This helps explain why thousands of Palestinians danced joyfully in the streets when news came of Ze’evi’s death, although the assassination of any Israeli leader would have been celebrated by most of them.

As I have stated before, the soil for major Palestinian terrorist attacks has been freshly plowed by Western demands that Arafat and Sharon quickly resolve their people’s long and bitter conflict so that George Bush and Tony Blair can get on with their anti-terror war. This pressure has only increased the ability of anti-peace groups and their regional state sponsors to ignite a major new conflict by carrying out spectacular terrorist assaults.

The Oslo peace process collapsed precisely because such rejectionist groups – especially Islamic militant ones – were not prepared to countenance any Jewish state in their midst, however big or small it might be. They certainly will not be persuaded to calm down now just because the U.S. and UK want a quiet Middle East so they can go after the Taliban and bin Laden. Indeed, Western leaders are acting in precisely the wrong way if they want to truly pacify the region, to the peril of all of us living here.