Israel takes conflict to Arafat turf

He wondered whether to try to kill them.

In the early hours of Friday morning, a Palestinian intelligence officer named Mahmoud Sabra looked out of a window in his home. Five Israeli soldiers in combat gear, faces darkened with camouflage paint, were at the top of his street. They seemed to be on a reconnaissance mission.

Mr. Sabra figured an Israeli force was about to invade his town and grabbed his M-16 assault rifle. He left his wife and two children and headed out into the moonless darkness.

A few hours later, the Israeli raid was over. Sabra escaped. But six Palestinian police and security officers were dead, as many as eight people were wounded, and at least four were under arrest. When the Israelis rolled out of Salfit, some of the soldiers made the victory sign.

The raids were conducted in three other parts of the West Bank Friday in what one Israeli general said was the biggest sweep in 15 months. These raids may come to typify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Following Israel's declaration Thursday that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat had become "irrelevant," Israeli forces are increasingly seeking to arrest Palestinians suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks. Israeli officials say that Mr. Arafat is unwilling to curb the terrorists in his midst, so Israel must. Its forces have repeatedly entered areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), seized suspects, and withdrawn. Dozens of Palestinians have been arrested.

In a televised speech yesterday, Arafat called for an end to all violent acts, especially suicide bombings. It remains unclear what effect Arafat's call may have. Following the speech, Israeli officials immediately stressed the need for Arafat to arrest militants.

The Salfit incursion has been the bloodiest in recent days, but it also puts on display some of the anomalies and contradictions of this conflict. The Israelis either sought to arrest, arrested, or killed Palestinian officers who had spent the week rounding up the local members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. The organization has been responsible for most of the terrorist attacks on Israelis over the past 15 months and Israel has long demanded that the PA imprison Hamas's militant members.

Although Hamas and Islamic Jihad members populate most of Israel's wanted lists, Palestinians in Salfit say that none of the 12 men the Israelis were apparently seeking in the town belonged to either organization. Salfit is a stronghold of Arafat's Fatah faction.

The Israelis counter that it should come as no surprise that members of Fatah or PA security forces moonlight as terrorists, but the arrests feed Palestinian speculation that Israel's true ambition is to undermine Arafat.

And while Israel claims that it is on the side of civilization and that the Palestinians embrace terrorism, Salfit residents say that at one point Israeli soldiers lined them up as a civilian shield to dissuade Palestinian gunmen from firing.

At about 3 a.m., the Israelis cut off Salfit's electrical power supply. According to yesterday's edition of Israel's Haaretz newspaper, an elite Israeli naval commando unit participated in the raid, buttressing assertions that Israeli special forces led the assault.

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