'A Classic Military-Political Dilemma'

The Israeli government has seen great success in reducing suicide bombings over the last year. The drop off in bombings allows the Israeli leadership the necessary domestic political breathing room to engage in serious diplomatic talks with Palestinian leadership. However, the Israeli government finds itself in a military- political pickle.

The New York Times' Isabel Kershner illustrates the diplomatic catch-22 facing Israeli leadership:

It is a classic military-political dilemma. The progress in stopping suicide bombers, the vast majority of whom cross into Israel from the West Bank, has brought enough quiet for Israel to resume peace talks with the Palestinian leadership there.

But the current calm is fragile, and to maintain it Israeli security officials say they must continue their nightly arrests and sometimes deadly raids in the heart of the West Bank — tactics at odds with a peace effort that envisions a separate Palestinian state, an eventual Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank and, in the meantime, a gradual transfer of authority to the Palestinian police.

“The price of staying out” of the West Bank, said one senior Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of military restrictions, “might be one that we don’t want to pay.”

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Israel also started building the West Bank separation barrier in 2002, describing it as an answer to the suicide bombers. Made up mostly of fences and some sections of wall, the barrier is now about two-thirds complete. Security officials say it has proved effective, but they do not rely on it alone.

Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has managed to straddle the seeming contradictions between the peace process and the military’s continued campaign in the West Bank largely by putting off the matter until a later date.

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In theory, Palestinian security forces would assume the responsibility of preventing such attacks, and a test of that approach will come this summer when a 600-member battalion of the Palestinian National Security Force completes an American-financed training program in Jordan. The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, has stated that the recruits will be deployed in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, once considered the capital of the suicide bombers. Additional Palestinian forces are already due to start deploying in the city in order to prepare the ground.

But leading Israeli security figures, past and present, seriously doubt that the Palestinian police will have the capacity or the will to fight terrorism in the foreseeable future.

While it is unlikely that Palestinian security forces will provide Israeli officials with enough comfort to bring raids in the West Bank to a halt, there are signs that the Palestinian security forces are taking the necessary first steps:

A 500-strong force made up of Palestinian national security forces and presidential guards has begun deploying in the West Bank city of Jenin for a law-and-order campaign.

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The deployment is meant to show the government is laying the ground for statehood. Another 150 men already in Jenin will also take part in a campaign.