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. According to polls taken
after the assassination last Monday of Hamas terrorist leader Sheik
Ahmed Yassin, a majority of Israelis agree that the attack has made us
more vulnerable to terrorism. Yet that same majority -- which, presumably,
will pay the price in the form of revenge attacks by Hamas -- believes
that the assassination was not only justified, but inevitable.
That's because most Israelis, including me, understand that the Yassin
killing was no mere act of vengeance or the frustrated tantrum of a
government unable to stop terrorism after more than three years of war.
Instead, the assassination was a carefully conceived gamble, prompted by
immediate security needs and long-term psychological calculations.
Though the world didn't seem to notice, Hamas crossed a red line on March
14, when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the port of Ashdod, a
city south of Tel Aviv. What stunned Israelis about that attack wasn't the
casualty rate: Ten dead and dozens wounded is now considered a
middle-level atrocity, no longer warranting banner headlines. Instead, the
shock this time was that the bombers had penetrated a strategic site and
blown themselves up near storage tanks containing toxic chemicals. Only
their ineptitude prevented a mega-attack that could have claimed hundreds,
if not thousands, of lives.
The next day, the government announced it was renewing its policy of
targeted assassinations against all of Hamas's leaders, including those in
the supposedly "political" wing -- in practice the commanders of the
terrorist wing. The policy is meant to force Hamas into a defensive mode,
so that rather than planning attacks it is protecting its operation. True,
in the coming weeks, the opposite may well occur, as Hamas and its Fatah
allies rage against Israeli society. The gamble, though, is that an
ongoing Israeli assault on Hamas in Gaza will gradually reduce its
operational capacity -- which has, in fact, happened in the West Bank. In
the past two years, the almost daily suicide bombings and attempted
bombings emanating from the West Bank have dropped to barely one deadly
attack a month -- the Israeli equivalent of good news.
Israelis understand that the war on terror isn't a "cycle of violence" but
an existential struggle that defines our ability to survive in the Middle
East. As anxious as I am about the new wave of terrorism likely to be
released by the Yassin killing, I'd be more afraid of living in an Israel
that wouldn't attack those who try to destroy us.
Beyond military considerations, there's a crucial psychological
justification for targeting Hamas leaders. That is especially urgent as
Israel prepares to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. While a majority of
the public supports Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intention to leave
within 18 months, many worry that the move will only further encourage
terrorists. "Uprooting Settlements Is a Victory for Terrorism," warn
right-wing banners at traffic intersections around the country.
Even Israelis like myself who support a unilateral departure -- as the
only realistic alternative to our inability to occupy the Palestinians or
to make peace with them -- nevertheless worry about a repeat of the
disastrous consequences of our pullout from Lebanon four years ago, under
pressure from the Lebanese fundamentalist Hezbollah. As a result of
Israel's seemingly panicked retreat, Palestinian leaders concluded that
the "Hezbollah option" could work for them as well. For if Hezbollah could
demoralize the Israeli public by inflicting two dozen casualties a year on
the Israeli army, then surely a terrorist war aimed at Israel's heartland
would force the public to surrender the territories, without any
reciprocal Palestinian concessions.
In fact, the opposite has happened. Israelis have defiantly maintained
their daily routine, even returning to quickly renovated bombed cafes. The
refusal to concede our public space to terrorism has provoked a debate in
the Palestinian media during the past year over the effectiveness of the
terrorist strategy, especially in the post-Sept. 11 world. Tragically,
that debate has not focused on the disastrous moral consequences for
Palestinian society of turning suicide bombers into religious martyrs and
educational role models for Palestinian children -- and, even more
monstrous, the new terrorist tactic of recruiting children as suicide
bombers. Still, Israeli resilience has produced signs of Palestinian
fatigue, both within the leadership and the public.
In recent weeks, though, Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza has
prompted yet another shift in Palestinian discourse. Palestinian
newspapers have published cartoons mocking Sharon as a vanquished coward;
just before his death, Yassin gloated that Hamas had won. In the Middle
East, weakness invites attack. Indeed, the terrorist assault on Ashdod was
intended, in part, to emphasize Hamas's message that Israel is fleeing
from Gaza under fire.
By assassinating Yassin, the Israeli government hopes to prove to the
Palestinians that our disillusionment with the occupation isn't the same
as defeatism. That message of resolve is also tacitly aimed at Sharon's
right-wing critics. "If withdrawal isn't done out of weakness but
strength, then I'll go along," one veteran Likud supporter said to me
after the Yassin assassination. That response is widespread on the
pragmatic, non-settler right, whose support Sharon will need to implement
the Gaza withdrawal.
The effort to destroy the Hamas leadership is also an attempt to preempt a
Hamas takeover of Gaza after Israel pulls out. While for now Yassin's
assassination has increased Hamas's popularity among Palestinians, the
long-term goal of the targeted killings is to deprive that organization of
its ability to govern and to ensure the continued control of the
Palestinian Authority over Gaza.
Few Israelis take seriously the argument that eliminating Hamas's
"political" leadership will only further radicalize the group. Debates
within Hamas, after all, are merely tactical; no one contests the goal of
destroying Israel. The Hamas Covenant, the group's statement of purpose,
invokes the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and its notion of a Jewish
conspiracy for world domination. Suicide bombings, supported by both
"pragmatists" and "extremists," are projections of its genocidal
fantasies.
As for Yassin -- whom some Western commentators have called a "spiritual
leader" and a "moderate" who has exercised restraint on extremists -- he
personally approved atrocities, like the recent suicide bombing of a
Jerusalem bus crowded with children on their way to school, killing 19 and
injuring dozens more. With that kind of "restraint," many Israelis reason,
we'll take our chances with Yassin's successor.
Meanwhile, we try to maintain the pretense of daily life and ignore
Hamas's latest threat to bring death to the doorstep of every Israeli
home. For residents of my Jerusalem neighborhood, at least, that threat
has already been realized.
Ten days ago, a jogger across the street from my apartment was killed in a
drive-by terrorist shooting. The victim turned out to be a young Arab man
who routinely came here to jog, perhaps because jogging isn't part of the
culture in his Arab neighborhood. Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades had claimed
credit for the murder, but then apologized when the victim's identity
became known. Fatah meant: Sorry, we thought he was a Jew. Yasser Arafat,
who officially controls the Al Aqsa Brigades, phoned the young man's
family to offer condolences. And in the final ludicrous twist, Al Aqsa
declared its victim a "shaheed" -- a martyr of Palestine.
The murder happened just after sunset, as we were setting the Sabbath
table. The terrorists' message to Jews was clear: You can hide from us by
avoiding crowded places, but in the end we'll find you, even in your quiet
neighborhoods.
But there was another, unintended message: When we gun you down outside
your homes, you no longer have anything to lose. Which is why we Israelis
have responded to the terrorists with a reciprocal declaration of total
war.
(Yossi Klein Halevi is an associate fellow of the Shalem Center, a
think tank in Jerusalem, and a contributing editor of the New Republic)
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