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News Analysis: Israeli Bombings A Dangerous Move
The faltering Middle East peace process, which was undermined by a two-week-long violence in the Palestinian territories, was dealt another heavy blow when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered air raids on Palestinian targets in Gaza and the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday afternoon.
Israel Air Force (IAF) combat helicopters carried out two rounds of airstrikes on Palestinian security and administrative buildings in Ramallah and Gaza City in retaliation for the killing of three Israeli soldiers in a lynching by angry Palestinian youths earlier in the day.
Following the incident, Barak called an urgent meeting of Israeli military and intelligence officers to discuss the worsening situation.
Eyewitnesses said that during the second round of air raids, the helicopters, besides striking more Palestinian police stations, fired missiles and rockets at Palestinian television and radio stations, which were accused by Israel of inciting anti-Israeli sentiment.
They also said that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office in Ramallah has been badly damaged in the attack, while helicopter gunships fired at least five missiles just west of Arafat's office in Gaza.
The bombings, claimed as "limited action" in a statement issued by the Israeli military, were aimed at giving a warning to the Palestinians that Israel can not tolerate any killing of its servicemen, said the statement.
The Israeli military also ordered tanks to take up positions around Ramallah to back up the helicopter gunships, and imposed a total closure on all the cities and towns controlled by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and nobody was allowed to move freely.
Analysts here said the beating to death of three Israeli soldiers was surely a sad event, but the bombings against Palestinian targets were a more dangerous move in view of the current complicated situation in the Middle East.
First of all, the airstrikes could add fuel to the unsettled two-week-long bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict which has claimed about 100 lives and injured 2,000 others so far.
The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian clashes, the worst between the two sides in four years, have drawn tremendous concerns from the international community.
Due to the efforts made by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and leaders of other countries, Israel and the PNA at last agreed to send their security officials to discuss the conflict settlement with the participation of U.S. representatives. Now the bombing has put such meetings into question.
Secondly, the bombings have dampened the hope for early resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Since the July Camp David summit, there have been no high-level negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians except low-level contacts. Arafat and Barak met for the first time since the failed Camp David summit on September 25, which aroused more hope for the resumption of the peace talks.
The bombings not only suffocated such a hope, but also stirred more hatred between the Israelis and Palestinians. They also inflicted more damage to the mutual trust between the leaders of the two sides, and brushed aside all the international diplomatic efforts which aimed at ending the conflict and bringing the two sides back to the negotiating table.
Angered by the air raids, Arafat stated in Gaza that the Israeli bombings are "a declaration of war against the Palestinians,"urging the international community to press Israel to end the killing of the Palestinian people.
No mater what Palestinian reactions to the bombings should be, Barak's order for his air force to strike the Palestinian targets will surely have grave impact on the strenuous efforts to end the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
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