(Ha'aretz) Amos Harel - The IDF presence in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank does not take too much effort, at least for now. In Jenin, for example, the tanks and armored personnel carriers on patrol have often been replaced by one or two jeeps. The current operation has greatly reduced the amount of friction between the army and the civilian population. There is no permanent army presence inside the city and not a single house has been taken over. The troops go in and out of the city according to need, mostly for specific arrests. There is minimal resistance to the actions. Occasionally, a local Fatah cell lays some mines on the roads taken by jeeps. The tent camp put up in Jenin by the UN after Operation Defensive Shield is mostly empty. According to the army, it fills up only when the foreign press shows up, about once a month. A summary of the current Jenin operation shows some 70 arrests in a month, including 10 people - two of them young women - who sought to blow themselves up inside Israel. It's doubtful that the trauma of the shock suffered by the Palestinians in the territories as a result of Defensive Shield and the current operation is properly appreciated in Israel. "They felt they were about to break us, but it didn't happen," said a senior officer. "For them, the dream has been broken. It's almost like 1967 or even 1948. Nearly everything they built since Oslo is gone."
2002-07-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive