As most Palestinians in the administered territories become increasingly disenchanted with the intifada, hardcore activists are resorting to deadlier weapons.
Stones and home-made gasoline bombs are being replaced by firearms and high explosives.
The latest escalation occurred Saturday, when an explosive charge blasted a home in the Jewish settlement of Otniel, in the southern Hebron hills.
While no one was hurt — there was no one home at the time — the attack marked the first penetration of a settlement by intifada activists bent on attacking residents.
Last week, a barrage of eight gasoline bombs simultaneously hit the Gaza police station. By sheer chance, no one was hurt.
The use of firearms is also proliferating in the Gaza Strip.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens instructed Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Ehud Barak to devise new tactics to cope with the steep rise in the use of firearms.
That phenomenon harks back to the pre-intifada period, when only a small minority of the population in the territories participated in anti-Israel acts.
The intifada, which began in December 1987, differed from previous unrest, inasmuch as it was characterized by mass civil disobedience, stone-throwing mobs and widespread rioting.
According to security sources, the masses are no longer enthusiastic about the uprising aimed against the Israeli presence in the territories. They are, in fact, disgusted by the internecine mayhem of recent years.
Arabs are killing Arabs whom they suspect of collaborating with the Israelis, often using that as a pretext to settle personal scores. An estimated 400 Palestinians have been murdered by fellow Arabs in the name of the intifada.
“To tell you the truth, people are sick and tired of the intifada, they are just sick and tired,” an influential Palestinian confided to an Israeli companion at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem this week.
Another reason for the increasing appearance of firearms is the low status to which the mainstream Palestine Liberation Organization has fallen in the international community since PLO chief Yasir Arafat supported Saddam Hussein of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War.
The PLO ran the so-called “white intifada,” which benefited from the public image of stones thrown by Palestinian youths against live or even plastic bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and police.
For a time, that policy won the PLO a dialogue with the United States and Western European countries and seemed to bring it closer to the negotiating table as an equal.
But after the Gulf war fiasco, Arafat’s relatively moderate Al Fatah was shoved aside by hard-core rejectionists who favor deadly force.
The guidelines the rejectionists are circulating to their supporters in the territories call for return to the classic “armed struggle.”
Leaflets distributed by the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Moslem fundamentalist Hamas movement urge escalated violence against the Israelis.
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