Behind Mideast escalation

Even by the grim, repetitive standards of this intractable dispute, the events of the past few days constitute a precipitous shift toward a deeper, bloodier level of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Yesterday, hours after Israeli attacks killed more than a dozen Palestinians, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said his inner cabinet had approved a "different course of action" to guide Israel's approach to the conflict. But aides and analysts say Mr. Sharon will intensify his hard-nosed, militant tactics without fundamentally shifting strategy.

Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat said he and his supporters remain undaunted and unafraid, despite an Israeli missile strike inside his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. As with the Israelis, Mr. Arafat's attitude may mean more of the same. Over the past week, Palestinian gunmen have shown themselves capable of daring attacks against the Israeli military that have stunned many Israelis.

Political realities help explain this situation. Despite increasing criticism of a strategy that seems to lack a plan, Mr. Sharon nonetheless is holding firm, in part because the makeup of his own cabinet limits his freedom of maneuver. While Foreign Minister Shimon Peres pursues efforts to restart peace talks, rightist politicians, many of them also in Sharon's "unity government," are demanding that he wage open war against the Palestinians.

Arafat, faced with an enemy that has done little to bolster his attempts to institute a cease-fire, appears to have little choice but to allow militants to persist in their attacks. The US, where involvement in the Middle East seems to offer more political risk than reward, seems inclined to remain outwardly worried but essentially aloof.

And while Israeli and Palestinian leaders profess to believe that the conflict cannot be resolved through military means, there is reason to believe otherwise.

On the Palestinian side, two recent attacks indicate a determination to raise the stakes for the Israeli military. On Feb. 14, Palestinians set off at least 100 pounds of buried explosives under an Israeli battle tank, killing three soldiers inside. Even the Iranian-backed Hizbullah militia, which fought Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanan for years, failed in its many attempts to destroy a tank in this manner.

On Tuesday night, Palestinian gunmen surprised six Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank, killing six of them. A militia that is part of Fatah, the Palestinian political movement founded by Arafat, claimed responsibility for both attacks, although it said the tank blast was conducted in concert with the Islamic group Hamas.

Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader in the West Bank, told The Associated Press yesterday that attacks such as the killing of the Israeli soldiers on Tuesday are "the only way for the Israelis to understand that they should put an end to their occupation."

These tactics lend credence to the idea that some Palestinians believe that unremitting violence will gradually weaken Israeli resolve and force a withdrawal from Palestinian territories. Here again, Hizbullah is the inspiration. Most Palestinians think - and few Israelis would deny - that the militia's relentless attacks resulted in the Israeli pull-out from Lebanon in 2000.

There is no doubt that Israeli soldiers are increasingly vulnerable. Of the 17 Israelis who were killed in conflict in the past week, 13 have been soldiers.

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