Palestinian rockets catch Israel off guard

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Notwithstanding Israel's claim that its armed forces were ready for this week's acute upturn in Palestinian violence, their deployment has been slow and unwieldy in the face of the new threat, reports DEBKA-Net-Weekly.

Sunday, Feb. 10, Palestinian rockets were fired from Gaza at the small south Israeli town of Sderot and the West Negev Kibbutz Saad – and maybe other villages in the remote, sparsely populated Negev Gate Local Council district. Israel responded with three massive bombing raids of Gaza – a tactic without the slightest chance of stemming the rocket attacks.

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Sunday night and Monday, Feb. 11, Israeli units raided the Balata refugee camp of the West Bank town of Nablus, following an intelligence tip that a quantity of rockets and launchers had been made ready for firing at north West Bank settlements. They would have been the first to be launched from the West Bank. However, the Israeli force failed to locate the rocket site and, 12 hours after it was gone, the Palestinians brought out the rockets and turned them against a target more strategic than any settlement – the Horon Camp command base of the IDF's Samariah Regiment.

By chance, the rocket – or rockets – exploded upon launch, most likely killing the crew.

Palestinian spokesmen hurried to deny the report to stave off the harsh reprisals Israeli government leaders threatened in the wake of rocket firings from the West Bank.

However, the fact that the Palestinians were preparing to assault a major Israeli military installation, less than two days after suicide gunmen went on a shooting rampage outside the IDF's southern command in Beersheba, signals an expansion of the Palestinian war. Today, they are capable of simultaneously terrorizing civilians and hitting key military targets from a distance.

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In essence, the new Palestinian tactic nullifies a reported Israeli plan for withstanding rocket warfare. This plan hinges on the reoccupation of a security zone inside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, deep enough to place Israel's population centers outside the range of the Qasem rockets. By targeting an IDF command center, the Palestinians have proved they have a weapon mobile enough to render any projected security zone ineffective.

The escalation of Palestinian attacks this week signifies:

A. Intensified Palestinian combativeness, meaning Israel's armed forces have yet to come up with an adequate disincentive and a convincing response to the upsurge in terrorism; and

B. Palestinian ability, with a small number of suicide terrorists and a couple of rockets, to hold the town of Beersheba to siege. The task of breaking their spirit and sense of victory is up to the Sharon government.

An alternative to these options was put forward by the dovish Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres in the form of a new plan he hammered out with the Palestinian legislature's speaker, Ahmed Qureia, known better as Abu Ala.

That plan has proved a non-starter on both sides of the conflict.

DEBKAfile's Palestinian sources state firmly that Yasser Arafat refuses to hear of the Peres-Abu Ala Plan, or its authors. The blueprint was also turned down by Peres's Labor party colleagues and would be thrown out by the government if it were presented.

Israel's doves and European diplomats are nonetheless working hard to exculpate Arafat from responsibility for the spiraling terror offensive. In their latest maneuver, they are spreading word that Arafat's authority has broken down and Palestinian extremists are running the new offensive on their own. This assessment is claimed to come from "senior Israeli defense sources."

Nothing is further from the truth, according to all the security sources DEBKAfile canvassed today. Without explicit orders from the Palestinian leader, heavy weaponry such as the Qasam rockets, could not have been withdrawn from clandestine armories he has been steadily stockpiling ever since he signed the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, in blatant violation of all his pledges under those accords.

Arafat gave charge of those smuggled arms stores to Muhamed Dahlan, head of the Palestinian preventive security service in the Gaza Strip, who would have handed the rockets out to the Hamas only on instructions from his boss, including the time and place for launching.

Sensing the violent currents swirling around Ramallah, the Palestinian moderate, Sari Nusseibeh, is reported by DEBKAfile to have tendered his resignation this morning as minister for Jerusalem affairs in the Palestinian Authority. He landed this bombshell, according to his close confidants, under the pressure of threats from the "Palestinian street" for his willingness to negotiate terms for ending the conflict with Israel, leaving aside the 1948 refugees issue.

While Arafat is going through the motions of refusing to accept Nusseibeh's resignation, the Europeans who pinned high hopes on the Jerusalem professor are smarting. Nusseibeh may eventually be persuaded to stay at his post, but Arafat is busy making sure that he, Abu Ala and any other moderate Palestinian leader willing to lay down arms and talk terms with Israel, are left out in the cold. He will brook no impediments to his long-laid plan for fighting Israel to the finish.