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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher - June 26, 2006

Q. What challenges and dilemmas does the Palestinian attack at Kerem Shalom present for Israeli decision-makers? Q. ...how does Israel's policy for detaining suspected terrorists compare to the U.S.?

Q. What challenges and dilemmas does Sunday's Palestinian attack at Kerem Shalom present for Israeli decision-makers?

A. At this relatively early juncture (early Monday afternoon, June 26, Israel time), when it is not clear how Israel will react, all we can really talk about are the challenges and dilemmas, not the outcome. And there are many challenges and dilemmas.

First, this was not a terrorist attack; it was a skilful and resourceful military operation directed against soldiers, not civilians. This complicates Israel's public relations effort in discussing the attack and its ramifications. On the other hand, the Kerem Shalom attack took place on Israeli sovereign soil, not in the territories. This complicates the Palestinian presentation of the attack, particularly at a time when Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Ismail Haniyeh were near agreement on the prisoners' document, which specifies that attacks will concentrate on the occupied territories (meaning the West Bank, unless Israel reoccupies parts of Gaza).

Apropos Abbas and Haniyeh and their negotiations, the attack appears to reflect an attempt by the external, Damascus-based Hamas leadership under Khaled Meshaal, its militant allies inside Gaza and its Syrian and Iranian backers to thwart efforts to agree on the prisoners' document and reinstitute a modified ceasefire after weeks of Qassam attacks and bloody Israeli responses in and around Gaza. It also reflects the growing splintering of the Palestinian militant scene, with no fewer than three fragments of groups collaborating in this attack. In this regard, the aftermath of the attack could conceivably generate a "moment of truth" within the conflicted Hamas leadership. It could also either drive home the Israeli claim that Abbas is irrelevant to the real issues at stake, or (if Abbas succeeds in returning the Israeli soldier and preventing escalation) enable him to strengthen his leadership image and reinforce the demand that the Olmert government negotiate with him seriously.

Israel's first concern is to retrieve its abducted soldier, and its biggest trump card in pressuring for the soldier to be returned is the threat to invade all or part of Gaza. If the soldier is not returned within another day or two, such an invasion will become increasingly likely. Here the Olmert government's goals would presumably be to inflict the maximum damage possible on Hamas, its infrastructure and its leadership, and to restore a measure of Israeli deterrence. There is a strong faction in the Israeli security establishment that advocates exploiting an early opportunity like this one to destroy Hamas before it establishes its authority and begins building an army in Gaza.

A subsidiary goal would be to "save" Olmert's disengagement plan: he has to prove that the withdrawal from Gaza last August was not a mistake, that Israel has not lost security options as a result, and that the fence "works", even though in recent weeks Palestinian militants/terrorists have succeeded in going over it (Qassam rockets) and under it (the tunnel at Kerem Shalom). Certainly Sunday's attack poses the possibility that Olmert will have to postpone realignment, or conform it differently, in order to mollify critical public opinion. On the other hand, an IDF invasion and reoccupation of part of the Gaza Strip will have to be short-lived in order for Olmert to continue to justify last August's disengagement from the Strip.

How Abu Mazen's leadership image would survive a major Israeli incursion into Gaza is another question. Recently he had been warning Hamas shrilly to stop the violence; now he could claim to be justified. If the Hamas infrastructure were seriously hurt by Israel and its leaders assassinated or jailed, the field would ostensibly be clear for Abu Mazen and Fateh to regain and consolidate power. On the other hand, if they too don't fight against an Israeli incursion they are liable to be labeled collaborators in some Palestinian quarters.

Apropos military aspects, the Kerem Shalom attack represents a serious IDF intelligence and operational failure. Here the heat will be on Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and Minister of Defense Amir Peretz to show they have derived and applied the appropriate lessons. The failures also fuel the claims of critics of the government who argue that the Olmert-Peretz-Livni team lacks the requisite security experience to run the country. Here again, an IDF invasion of Gaza, if successful (meaning few Israelis losses) could offer the added advantage of compensating in the public eye for the Kerem Shalom setback.

Returning to the political efforts to return the abducted soldier and generate a genuine ceasefire, the key third party role is undoubtedly being played by the Egyptians, who have a liaison presence of several score officers in Gaza and can talk to Haniyeh, Meshaal (in Damascus) and Abu Mazen. On the other hand, if Israel invades Gaza it will have the difficult task of smoothing this development with Cairo.

And with Washington. The US needs relative quiet and stability on the Palestinian front, not war. On the other hand, if the IDF invades, it will be hard for President Bush and the Pentagon not to provide support, at least in the short term.

Q. The current controversy over the American detention facility at Guantanamo inevitably brings up the question: how does Israel's policy for detaining suspected terrorists compare to that of the United States?

A. Israel has never had the equivalent of Guantanamo--an off-shore detention facility where all national and international legal norms are suspended. Nor has it experienced a scandal the likes of Abu Ghraib, though individual cases of terrorist prisoner abuse have been documented and punished.

Israel has now logged several decades of experience with incarcerating and interrogating terrorists, in the course of which it has had to deal with the same dilemma encountered by the United States since 9/11: neither common criminal law nor prisoner of war statutes derived from the Geneva Conventions provide adequate guidelines for interrogating "ticking bomb" terrorists who may have knowledge of impending additional attacks.

The US has bypassed this dilemma by exporting or "rendering" its terrorist suspects to places where the normal rules either don't apply or can be safely ignored. In so doing, it has also sought to deter terrorism by exploiting what Lebanese commentator Rami Khouri calls the "blunt projection of American power globally". Its methods of incarcerating terrorists have been paralleled to some extent by rather clumsy infringements of the civil rights of some Americans at home.

Now this approach appears to have come back to haunt Washington, with the US Supreme Court set to pronounce on the legality of Guantanamo and Europeans and others increasingly concerned that their territory and jails have been abused by the CIA as a means of bypassing the American system. Indeed, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the "renderings" have contributed heavily to the well-documented decline in American prestige worldwide. Even President Bush recognized this recently when he stated "No question, Guantanamo sends a signal to some of our friends. . . to say the United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to".

Israel began to come to terms with the ramifications of its interrogation techniques--in effect, torture--in the late 1980s, when a very senior commission of inquiry recommended a set of rules for the use of force in interrogation. At a time when cases of horrible British abuse of IRA prisoners were being aired, this was in fact a very unique and courageous attempt to call a spade a spade, recognize there are cases when force must be applied in order to save lives, and try to regularize and control the practice. Then, in the `90s, the High Court of Justice threw out this approach and insisted that torture be banned entirely.

Undoubtedly there are still cases when physical and psychological pressures are applied. But since the High Court ruling, perhaps surprisingly, there have been far fewer charges of physical abuse of terrorist prisoners, while the security services have not complained that they are unable to defuse "ticking bombs" and the issue has not grabbed the headlines. Of course, the constant barrage of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks over the past six years have guaranteed the Israeli security services a sympathetic hearing and narrowed tolerance for suspects complaining of abuse, both in court and in the media.
Indeed, the same High Court that banned torture has also completely justified Israeli racial profiling for security purposes, and has approved measures that restrict the rights of Israeli Arab citizens--all in the name of the battle against terrorism.

One good reason to close Guantanamo is to deny Islamists an ideal cause upon which to base efforts to recruit new terrorists. Incarceration in Israeli jails, too, has over the decades served to boost recruitment of Palestinian terrorists. But unlike jails where America is interrogating terrorists, in Israel large numbers of Palestinian prisoners are held together over a period of years and are allowed relatively liberal conditions: university studies, study sessions among members of the same organization, etc.

This reflects Israel's understanding that it is not only fighting against terrorism, but is also combating a Palestinian war of national liberation that can only be concluded through political compromise. (Note, for example, the freedom provided Marwan Barghouti and other jailed terrorist leaders to formulate their "prisoners' document" behind bars--the manifesto now at the heart of the campaign by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to hold a referendum.) Hence the results are more nuanced: some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians incarcerated over the years have emerged from this jail experience more accomplished terrorists; others, as political leaders and even well-read academics.