Israel is considering a tougher response to the recent wave of violent crimes by Palestinians against Jews.
It includes the wider use of deportation as a deterrent and punishment, more spot checks and body searches of Arabs entering Israel proper from the administered territories, sealing off the territories and arming civilians.
More than 20 Israelis have been stabbed by Arab assailants in the last two months, five of them fatally. Seven of the Arab attackers have been killed.
Security authorities are concerned Palestinians may now be resorting to even deadlier forms of violence.
Three shooting incidents against Israelis in the administered territories Wednesday appeared to signal an escalation of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
The incidents followed the circulation of a leaflet issued by the “intifada high command,” exhorting Palestinians to use “all available means” in the uprising.
Authorities interpret this as a call for the use of firearms in Israel and the territories.
Until now, the mainstream Al Fatah wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization has opposed the use of firearms in the intifada because Israel could muster much greater firepower in response.
But Al Fatah may be changing its mind under pressure from two extremist Moslem fundamentalist groups: Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
ARENS PROMISES MORE DEPORTATIONS
The recent upsurge of violence can be traced to vengeance for the bloody Oct. 8 riots on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in which 17 Arab rioters were killed by Israeli border police.
Defense officials have come under intense pressure from elements in the right-wing parties to respond to the violence by deporting Palestinians responsible.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens told the Knesset this week that he favored expulsions and would order them more frequently in the future.
“Deportation is considered an effective and applicable means, particularly for inciters who create a fertile environment for violent acts,” the defense minister said.
He spoke in response to an agenda motion by Knesset member Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party.
Arens said he has not resorted to deportations since taking office last summer, because the lengthy procedure involved reduces its punitive impact while sympathy for the deportee is often generated abroad.
If it were possible to deport terrorists within one to two weeks of their offense, there would be a point in using deportation as a punishment, a senior defense official was quoted as saying Tuesday.
But if the situation remains the same, “there is no point in raising the deportation issue,” the official said.
A suspected terrorist ordered deported can appeal to a military panel and has final recourse to the High Court of Justice.
While neither a military tribunal nor the High Court has ever reversed a deportation order, the appeals process remains slow and cumbersome.
The defense establishment has been reviewing means to shorten the procedure, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported Tuesday.
Israel has deported 61 Palestinians since the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, began on Dec. 9, 1987. The most recent deportations were in August 1989, when five Palestinians were expelled.
MORE GUNS AND ROADBLOCKS
The United States and the United Nations have condemned deportation as a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which protects civilians in areas under military occupation.
Israel, which is a signatory to the convention, maintains that it bars mass deportations but does not preclude smaller-scale expulsions intended to maintain law and order.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Force and the police are considering ways to deal with the growing menace from guns as well as knives.
The police have ordered all their personnel, including office workers, to carry weapons at all times. They have increased the deployment of plainclothes operatives in areas frequented by Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Roadblocks have been set up on highways leading into metropolitan areas. Occupants of vehicles bearing the blue license plates of the territories are regularly subjected to body searches for concealed weapons.
Metal detectors are being used in spot checks for knives.
Bus drivers on interurban routes are expected to be issued handguns. The bus driver in Sunday’s attack was armed.
Police officials generally prefer limited access to gun permits. But the Interior Ministry has indicated it will institute a more liberal policy toward civilians without criminal records who apply for gun licenses.
There are contradictory schools of thought about sealing off the territories from Israel proper.
That measure, employed for several days after the Temple Mount riots, kept about 110,000 Palestinian day workers away from their jobs in Israel. It is said to be favored by Arens.
TWO MORE ATTACKS ON BUSES
But the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, is opposed on grounds that the widespread unemployment would create an explosive situation in the territories and swell the ranks of intifada activists.
The most serious of the three shooting incidents Wednesday occurred in the Sheik Radwan district of the West Bank city of Ramallah, where a border policeman was fired on as his patrol confronted a group of masked youths. He was reported to be badly injured.
Later in the day, three passengers were slightly wounded when an unidentified gunman opened fire on a bus near the village of Ein Sinya, just north of Ramallah. Not far away, in the town of El-Bireh, a Jewish driver reported being shot at, though the bullets did not hit his car.
Another attack was reported Wednesday night in Jerusalem, where an Egged passenger bus was hit by Molotov cocktails in the Wadi Joz district. The bus was damaged, but there were no injuries.
Police are braced for even more violence this weekend, when Palestinians mark the third anniversary of the intifada.
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