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Jews, by their nature and their heritage, cannot bring themselves to say that they have “only” suffered a few hundred losses during a time of war. Jewish tradition has it that murdering even one Jew is rendered as if an entire world has been destroyed.
The 349 Jewish men, women and children who have been murdered in cold blood over the past two years represent 332 worlds that have been decimated, while more than 3,000 Jews continue to suffer from the effects of injuries that they have suffered during this short amount of time.
In an Israeli Jewish community that numbers little more than 5 million people, everyone knows someone who has been hit by a cowardly Arab act of violence.
Yet the price could have been much worse.
Two years ago, our news agency facilitated three public forums with three military analysts – Col (res.) Yoash Tzidon, one of Israel’s foremost military strategists, MK Dr. Yuval Steinitz, who wrote the seminal piece, “When the Palestinian Army Invades the Heart of Israel” (Commentary Magazine, December, 1999) and Col. Gal Luft, now doing his PHD on the subject of the Palestinian Authority security forces, who authored “The Palestinian Security Services: Between Police and Army” for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in November 1998.
Tzidon, Steinitz and Luft, who each relied on totally different sources, described the logistical strength of the Palestinian Liberation Army security services in terms of a well oiled army of with more than 50,000 troops, divided into 14 units, and trained by the top security personnel from the US, Canada, Norway and the EU.
Meanwhile, the head of Israeli Research intelligence, provided briefings in August 1999, March 2000 and August 2000 in which he warned that Arafat’s PLA security services were indeed preparing for full scale war in September, 2000. Israeli intelligence sources stated clearly and on the record that the PLA’s ambitions stretched far beyond the areas taken by Israel in 1967 The war would be fought under the motto of the “right of return”, with the aim being to recoup the areas taken by the fledgling state of Israel in 1948. Hundreds of well trained PLA units conducting simultaneous military operations inside Israel was something that Tzidon, Steinitz and Luft agreed on that Israel was simply not ready or capable of coping with.
Needless to say, the prognosis did not look good. The Palestinian Arab rebellion that indeed broke out in the Fall of 2000 indeed galvanized Arabs to fight for the “right of return” – this time, with 50,000 troops ready to continue the 1948 war with Israel.
Yet what most people in Israel do not perceive is that Arik Sharon, as prime minister of Israel for little more than a year, has succeeded in destabilizing and defeating the Palestinian Liberation Army, with a well planned strategic effort that has prevented the PLA from carrying out any massive attacks against the state and people of Israel. Sharon has dispatched intelligence units to infiltrate and to disarm major units of the PLA, while causing havoc inside the PLA infrastructure by systematically destroying their bases of operation.
While some people have criticized Sharon’s attacks on military structures rather than killing hundreds of Palestinian Arabs who scream for Israel’s destruction, the result has been that the PLA has been stultified and rendered helpless in their attempts to organize attacks throughout Israel.
Most of what Sharon has been doing to defeat the PLA cannot yet be written, because of IDF censorship.
Therefore, the “best” that the PLA can do is to organize indiscriminate drive by shootings, roadside bombs, and suicide bombers…A threat to Jewish lives, yet not to the state or people of Israel.
