MIDDLE EAST: It has been another horrifying week in the Middle East. Israel returned yesterday to a brutal policy - first tried and failed 10 years ago. David Horovitz reports
Almost 10 years ago, a few months into the prime ministership of Mr Yitzhak Rabin, Israel tried to smash Hamas, the Islamic extremist group that openly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, by deporting some 400 of its alleged leaders to Lebanon.
But the Lebanese government refused to take them in, and they spent a winter at a makeshift tent-village on a hillside in south Lebanon no-man's land, studying, planning and attracting international sympathy, before a humiliated Israel was forced to bring them back home.
Yesterday, in a new effort to deter attacks on its civilians, the Israeli government announced a plan to exile to Gaza more than 20 West Bank relatives of the two Palestinians it claims orchestrated two murderous attacks this week. The plan, which has yet to be ratified and which is still being studied for legal ramifications by Israel's attorney-general's office, underlines both the increasing desperation of the government as the bombings continue, and the fact that relations with the Palestinians have deteriorated to that nadir of a decade ago, if not lower.
Some seven months after the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon declared that he would have no further direct dealings with the Palestinian Authority (PA) President, Mr Yasser Arafat, the Bush administration last month effectively staked out the same position, with President Bush publicly characterising Mr Arafat and his PA leadership colleagues as being "compromised by terror".
Hosted by US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the talks of their "quartet" in New York this week, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and the Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov privately came to a similar conclusion, it is understood, and acknowledged the need to bypass Mr Arafat if progress was to be made.
Where they differ from the US and Israel is regarding the effectiveness of calling publicly for the ousting Mr Arafat, regarding this as counter-productive in the shared goal of galvanising a more moderate Palestinian leadership. Privately, too, the word from the US is that the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, who held their own consultations with the "quartet", endorsed the idea of attempting to marginalise Mr Arafat.
The effort to bypass the Palestinian leader is precisely the tactic that Mr Rabin attempted when he took office - 10 years ago this week. It was only after he had tried and failed to make progress in peace talks with local PLO leaders that he reluctantly sanctioned negotiations with the then Tunis-based Mr Arafat, in what became the Oslo process.
Even if the international community is gradually closing ranks with the US and Israel on the sheer impossibility of dealing with Mr Arafat, and although he has lost much of his omnipotence this past decade, there is still no reason to believe that the pressure for his ousting will have a speedy impact.
The Palestinian leader indicated this week he intends to stand again for the post of PA president in elections he has tentatively scheduled for mid-January. And while he has talked of installing a prime minister, he has given no indication that, in creating such a position, he would be willing to see himself "kicked upstairs", as Mr Powell so graphically puts it. Neither are the Palestinian people clamouring for leaders Israel would find more convenient. Clamouring for an end to PA corruption, yes.
For a moderated stance on Israel, no. Least of all now, with the Israeli army deployed in seven of the eight major Palestinian cities, imposing curfews, restricting movement, and making house-to-house searches in the hunt for the bombers, their trainers and their weapons factories.
Israel knows well that its re-occupation of the West Bank deepens the hostility and bitterness of ordinary Palestinians. But it sees no viable alternative course of action, in its effort to prevent the bombings, so long as Mr Arafat heads the PA. At the same time, though, it recognises that even so widespread a military presence cannot thwart all the attacks, as was demonstrated by this week's two major incidents - Tuesday's ambush of a bus outside the Emmanuel settlement, in which nine Israelis were killed, and Wednesday's twin-suicide bombing in south Tel Aviv, in which three civilians died.
Hence the unveiling yesterday of the plan to exile relatives of those behind the attacks. Not to Lebanon or elsewhere overseas this time; that lesson has apparently been learned. But a kind of internal exile - an hour or two's journey from the West Bank, across sovereign Israel, to the Gaza Strip at the western foot of Israel on the Egyptian border.
A spokesman for Mr Arafat warned yesterday that such a step would only make "more trouble" for Israel. Hamas leaders are threatening "strong and bloody" consequences. Neither will unduly worry Mr Sharon and his ministers, since they are already being briefed by their intelligence chiefs about efforts, both by Hamas and Mr Arafat's loyalists in the Fatah Tanzim militia, to carry out acts of "mega-terrorism" against office skyscrapers and gas-distribution depots.
The fathers and brothers of Nasr a-Sida, the alleged commander of the cell that carried out the Emmanuel attack, and Ali al-Ajouri, alleged despatcher of the Tel Aviv bombers, are now in detention. The families' homes have been demolished. And their exile, and those of others like them, appears to depend on the ruling of Attorney-General Mr Elyakim Rubinstein who is understood to be inclined to approve it in cases where there is evidence that relatives provided active support for the attacks. The impending exilees have the right of appeal to the Supreme Court.