Behind the Headlines: Last Week’s Terrorist Attack May Be Sign of Change in Palestinian Tactics

Israel’s self-confidence has been badly shaken by the terrorist attack last Wednesday night in which a lone assailant managed to kill six soldiers and wound seven before he himself was gunned down.

One lesson immediately learned from the incident is that Palestinian tactics have changed. The popular image of the terrorist as a coward who will only attack unarmed civilians–women and children–has suffered a jolt.

Last week’s suicide mission proved that some terrorists at least are ready to go up against the “invincible” Israel Defense Force itself, and not simply by stabbing a soldier in a crowded marketplace. The terrorist who sailed over the electrified fences of the Lebanon-Israel border in a hang-glider powered by a small bicycle motor, showed daring worthy of IDF commandos.

The terrorists demonstrated they are capable of careful planning and have good intelligence. The single raider landed within easy walking distance of an IDF military encampment and he chose to attack it rather than the town of Kiryat Shemona a few miles to the west.

He caught the IDF off-guard and inflicted serious casualties in a short time. They might have been much worse had a second terrorist not landed his glider in the southern Lebanon security zone, just short of the Israel border. He was found and killed by an IDF search patrol alerted after the initial attack.

SOUL-SEARCHING IN THE IDF

The IDF high command is doing some serious soul-searching Lack of preparedness and, much worse, complacency, was evident at the military camp in upper Galilee. Some observers have likened the local situation to that which prevailed before the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Gen. Dan Shomron, the IDF chief of staff, and Gen. Yossi Peled, commander of the northern sector, have admitted publicly that something was terribly wrong with the way the security system functioned, or failed to function.

A division commander, whose unit was the one attacked, has already prepared his letter of resignation, it was reported Sunday. Other heads are expected to roll in the senior ranks of the IDF.

But while the military is apparently prepared to acknowledge its mistakes and evaluate the painful lessons, the political echelons so far have only pointed their fingers at Syria as the culprit ultimately responsible for the attack.

Shomron told military correspondents Friday there was no doubt that the attack was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small terrorist group headed by Ahmed Jabril. It is known to operate under Syrian protection and is considered unlikely to have mounted the commando attack without Syrian approval and probably complicity.

But the operation’s success cannot be attributed to Syria. The Palestinians have demonstrated a new sophisticated capability. In short, the nature of the enemy appears to be changing and this has political as well as military implications, though no senior political figure has commented on this in public.

AWAD CASE INDICATES NEW TACTICS

Palestinian tactics also appear to be changing in the administered territories, and this appears to have caught Israel off-guard as well. The most recent indication of this is the case of Dr. Mubarak Awad, a Jerusalem-born Palestinian who is the leading advocate of non-violent resistance to Israel’s occupation of the administered territories.

Israel claims that Awad, an American citizen, encourages sabotage, and was about to expel him from the country on Nov. 20. But authorities postponed the deportation order after the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv intervened and a State Department spokesman in Washington extolled Awad as a force for peace.

The Israelis said they did not want to create friction with Washington while Premier Yitzhak Shamir was visiting the United States. But it is apparent that the authorities here are at a loss to cope with Awad’s line of peaceful resistance, which amounts in fact to advocacy of civil disobedience.

The political authorities may also be overlooking the implications of last week’s terrorist attack on the attitude of the mass of Palestinians in Israel and in the territories. Arabic newspapers in East Jerusalem declined to comment editorially on the incident, apparently to avoid censorship.

But the story of the attack and the IDF casualties dominated the front pages. There were bold headlines in blue print and maps with arrows defining the area where the attack was carried out.

The Jerusalem Post quoted a Palestinian observer Sunday as saying the glider attack was a source of satisfaction to the Palestinian population, without the uneasiness that accompanied past terrorist attacks on civilians.