Yossi Klein Halevi: The Shape of Violence to Come?
March 28, 2004


The Shape of Violence to Come?
We May Be More Vulnerable Now, But Killing Yassin Was Necessary

By Yossi Klein Halevi

Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page B01

JERUSALEM

According to polls taken after the assassination last Monday of Hamas terrorist leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a majority of Israelis agree that the attack has made us more vulnerable to terrorism. Yet that same majority -- which, presumably, will pay the price in the form of revenge attacks by Hamas -- believes that the assassination was not only justified, but inevitable.

That's because most Israelis, including me, understand that the Yassin killing was no mere act of vengeance or the frustrated tantrum of a government unable to stop terrorism after more than three years of war. Instead, the assassination was a carefully conceived gamble, prompted by immediate security needs and long-term psychological calculations.

Though the world didn't seem to notice, Hamas crossed a red line on March 14, when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the port of Ashdod, a city south of Tel Aviv. What stunned Israelis about that attack wasn't the casualty rate: Ten dead and dozens wounded is now considered a middle-level atrocity, no longer warranting banner headlines. Instead, the shock this time was that the bombers had penetrated a strategic site and blown themselves up near storage tanks containing toxic chemicals. Only their ineptitude prevented a mega-attack that could have claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

The next day, the government announced it was renewing its policy of targeted assassinations against all of Hamas's leaders, including those in the supposedly "political" wing -- in practice the commanders of the terrorist wing. The policy is meant to force Hamas into a defensive mode, so that rather than planning attacks it is protecting its operation. True, in the coming weeks, the opposite may well occur, as Hamas and its Fatah allies rage against Israeli society. The gamble, though, is that an ongoing Israeli assault on Hamas in Gaza will gradually reduce its operational capacity -- which has, in fact, happened in the West Bank. In the past two years, the almost daily suicide bombings and attempted bombings emanating from the West Bank have dropped to barely one deadly attack a month -- the Israeli equivalent of good news.

Israelis understand that the war on terror isn't a "cycle of violence" but an existential struggle that defines our ability to survive in the Middle East. As anxious as I am about the new wave of terrorism likely to be released by the Yassin killing, I'd be more afraid of living in an Israel that wouldn't attack those who try to destroy us.

Beyond military considerations, there's a crucial psychological justification for targeting Hamas leaders. That is especially urgent as Israel prepares to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. While a majority of the public supports Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intention to leave within 18 months, many worry that the move will only further encourage terrorists. "Uprooting Settlements Is a Victory for Terrorism," warn right-wing banners at traffic intersections around the country.

Even Israelis like myself who support a unilaterial departure -- as the only realistic alternative to our inability to occupy the Palestinians or to make peace with them -- nevertheless worry about a repeat of the disastrous consequences of our pullout from Lebanon four years ago, under pressure from the Lebanese fundamentalist Hezbollah. As a result of Israel's seemingly panicked retreat, Palestinian leaders concluded that the "Hezbollah option" could work for them as well. For if Hezbollah could demoralize the Israeli public by inflicting two dozen casualties a year on the Israeli army, then surely a terrorist war aimed at Israel's heartland would force the public to surrender the territories, without any reciprocal Palestinian concessions.

In fact, the opposite has happened. Israelis have defiantly maintained their daily routine, even returning to quickly renovated bombed cafes. The refusal to concede our public space to terrorism has provoked a debate in the Palestinian media during the past year over the effectiveness of the terrorist strategy, especially in the post-Sept. 11 world. Tragically, that debate has not focused on the disastrous moral consequences for Palestinian society of turning suicide bombers into religious martyrs and educational role models for Palestinian children -- and, even more monstrous, the new terrorist tactic of recruiting children as suicide bombers. Still, Israeli resilience has produced signs of Palestinian fatigue, both within the leadership and the public.

In recent weeks, though, Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza has prompted yet another shift in Palestinian discourse. Palestinian newspapers have published cartoons mocking Sharon as a vanquished coward; just before his death, Yassin gloated that Hamas had won. In the Middle East, weakness invites attack. Indeed, the terrorist assault on Ashdod was intended, in part, to emphasize Hamas's message that Israel is fleeing from Gaza under fire.

By assassinating Yassin, the Israeli government hopes to prove to the Palestinians that our disillusionment with the occupation isn't the same as defeatism. That message of resolve is also tacitly aimed at Sharon's right-wing critics. "If withdrawal isn't done out of weakness but strength, then I'll go along," one veteran Likud supporter said to me after the Yassin assassination. That response is widespread on the pragmatic, non-settler right, whose support Sharon will need to implement the Gaza withdrawal.

The effort to destroy the Hamas leadership is also an attempt to preempt a Hamas takeover of Gaza after Israel pulls out. While for now Yassin's assassination has increased Hamas's popularity among Palestinians, the long-term goal of the targeted killings is to deprive that organization of its ability to govern and to ensure the continued control of the Palestinian Authority over Gaza.

Few Israelis take seriously the argument that eliminating Hamas's "political" leadership will only further radicalize the group. Debates within Hamas, after all, are merely tactical; no one contests the goal of destroying Israel. The Hamas Covenant, the group's statement of purpose, invokes the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and its notion of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. Suicide bombings, supported by both "pragmatists" and "extremists," are projections of its genocidal fantasies.

As for Yassin -- whom some Western commentators have called a "spiritual leader" and a "moderate" who has exercised restraint on extremists -- he personally approved atrocities, like the recent suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus crowded with children on their way to school, killing 19 and injuring dozens more. With that kind of "restraint," many Israelis reason, we'll take our chances with Yassin's successor.

Meanwhile, we try to maintain the pretense of daily life and ignore Hamas's latest threat to bring death to the doorstep of every Israeli home. For residents of my Jerusalem neighborhood, at least, that threat has already been realized.

Ten days ago, a jogger across the street from my apartment was killed in a drive-by terrorist shooting. The victim turned out to be a young Arab man who routinely came here to jog, perhaps because jogging isn't part of the culture in his Arab neighborhood. Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades had claimed credit for the murder, but then apologized when the victim's identity became known. Fatah meant: Sorry, we thought he was a Jew. Yasser Arafat, who officially controls the Al Aqsa Brigades, phoned the young man's family to offer condolences. And in the final ludicrous twist, Al Aqsa declared its victim a "shaheed" -- a martyr of Palestine.

The murder happened just after sunset, as we were setting the Sabbath table. The terrorists' message to Jews was clear: You can hide from us by avoiding crowded places, but in the end we'll find you, even in your quiet neighborhoods.

But there was another, unintended message: When we gun you down outside your homes, you no longer have anything to lose. Which is why we Israelis have responded to the terrorists with a reciprocal declaration of total war.

Yossi Klein Halevi is an associate fellow of the Shalem Center, a think tank in Jerusalem, and a contributing editor of the New Republic.