NEWS ANALYSIS
In New Conflict, Narrowing Ratio of Dead Pressures Sharon
By JAMES BENNET
JERUSALEM, March 11 - During the first 17 months of the first intifada, or uprising against Israel, almost 15 years ago, roughly one Israeli died for every 25 Palestinians killed.
During the first 17 months of this current conflict, with many more dead on both sides, the overall ratio has steadily narrowed to about one to three.
Since the beginning of last month, 31 Israeli soldiers - fighters in one of the best-trained, toughest armies in the world - have died in the conflict, more than were killed during an average year of Israel's military occupation of southern Lebanon....
..."It's much better than the past," said Dr. Nizar Rayan, a leader in the Gaza Strip of the Islamic group Hamas, when asked what he made of the state of the conflict. "Now, if one Israeli is killed, it equals only three Palestinians." Early in this conflict, he said, the ratio was more like 1 to 12.
The death toll, on both sides, is putting tremendous pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel. Put simply, Israelis are demoralized, their faith in their prime minister eroded.
Mr. Sharon has undertaken a major military campaign to scour Palestinian refugee camps, rounding up hundreds of suspects in attacks against Israelis and unearthing some weapons laboratories in what since March 1 has become the largest Israeli military operation against the Palestinians since the Oslo agreements of 1993.
But with dozens of Palestinians having died in the raids - at least 17 more were killed by late tonight - and attacks on Israelis multiplying, he has also had to make conciliatory gestures, under pressure from the Bush administration. Today, Mr. Sharon freed Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, from confinement in Ramallah, but forbade him to travel outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel, a nuclear power, retains the overwhelming force of arms, including American-made warplanes and helicopter gunships that it no longer hesitates to use even against packed refugee camps. It has fenced off the Gaza Strip, and it has set up armed checkpoints throughout the West Bank to choke off Palestinian-controlled areas.
But its enemy is broad and shows growing military capacity. In a fight combining a terror campaign with a guerrilla war, some Palestinian groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are out to destroy the state of Israel. Others, notably the fighters associated with Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction, say they are fighting to drive Israeli soldiers and settlers out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
But the present struggle has made these differences in goals moot, and now even the groups' tactics are becoming indistinguishable.
Rather than attacking just soldiers and settlers - the stated policy of their political leaders - Fatah fighters, known as Tanzim, are blowing themselves up among civilians within the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel, just like fighters from Hamas.
Recent high-profile assaults - some militants refer to them as "quality attacks" - have increased the confidence of Palestinian attackers. Even Israel's raids on the refugee camps do not appear to have caused disquiet among militant leaders, who say their fighters have been able to withdraw and regroup.
For some Fatah militants, eluding Israeli forces to strike inside Israel sends a particularly potent message. "This is the meaning of such attacks: to prove to the Israelis that the Palestinian resistance fighter can go through checkpoints with his rifle and reach his target," said Naser Badawi, a member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades. "These are quality attacks."
Israelis believe that their security forces stop many more attacks than actually take place, but they are nonetheless disheartened. In a sign of the rising fear of suicide bombings, a popular pair of cafes here switched this week to offering only carry-out service.
"Never before has the country sustained so many casualties from terror attacks as it has during the days of Mr. Security," read a news analysis today in the newspaper Haaretz, referring to Mr. Sharon's campaign promise of peace and security.
That kind of criticism explains why Mr. Sharon is moving so fast right now in opposite directions: toward the left on symbols, like loosening Mr. Arafat's bonds, and toward the right on substance, like storming the refugee camps.
Yuval Steinitz, a member of the Israeli Parliament from Mr. Sharon's Likud Party but a frequent critic of the prime minister from the right, said that, in yielding on symbolic matters, Mr. Sharon was gaining latitude for the Israeli Defense Forces.
"It is quite tricky," he said. "On the one hand, it seems like softening his position, but on the other, it gives the I.D.F. more freedom of action."
Although rage at Israel is widespread in the territories, this uprising is not the same kind of mass movement as the first intifada, which began in late 1987. Then, in huge demonstrations, boys threw stones at soldiers who did not rely as often as they do now on live fire as a means of crowd control. In the first 17 months of the conflict, 17 Israelis died, and 424 Palestinians. In the first 17 months of this new conflict, more than 340 Israelis have died, and more than 1,000 Palestinians....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/12/international/middleeast/12ISRA.html> -- Yoshie
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