This last week the security establishment has been bombarded with an unprecedented number of intelligence warnings.

Even the most veteran GSS and IDF officers, those who have seen everything, can’t remember so many concentrated intelligence warnings of all types and from every direction: Suicide bombing attacks, shooting attacks, roadside bombs, car bombs, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Tanzim and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They are all in this together, in a concentrated terrorist effort, while the Palestinian Authority stands on the sidelines and looks on as if at a movie, as if this was none of its affair.

The GSS, which has found itself to be in the last number of days like the Dutch child with his finger in the dike, has been stretched taut. Its field commanders don’t go home on leave and the desk sergeants are caving under the sheer workload.

For two days straight, between Wednesday and Friday, Deputy GSS Chief Y did not sleep a wink. In his capacity as Avi Dichter’s temporary substitute, Y directed a number of rolling operations concurrently in an attempt to apprehend terrorists who are in search of any crack or fissure in the closure and blockade so as to infiltrate and strike.

Anyone who is informed of the array of warnings cannot remain indifferent. Hebron is under blockade because of an intention to launch a terror cell to perpetrate a shooting attack in Beer Sheva. Nablus is under blockade in light of plans to provide terror cells with bombs. In Tulkarm the IDF is operating in Area A in light of Hamas plans to dispatch terrorists to the Sharon and Tel Aviv area. In Jenin — the capital of suicide bombers — the IDF re-occupied Palestinian territory in a desperate attempt to prevent the departure of terrorists to the cities in northern Israel. In those [Palestinian] cities, as in others, the IDF is in the midst of a record number of operations in pursuit of wanted men, all of whom are “ticking bombs.

A senior security official said last night that the terror organizations have set themselves the target of destroying everything, and doing so immediately. From their perspective, the entire country is a front and every Israeli is a target. Officials in the security establishment believe that Arafat has to decide now which side he is on and behave accordingly. The time for playing games is over, and he has to decide whether he is going to fight terror or whether Israel is going to fight him.

This article ran in Maariv on, December 2, 2001

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR