News Analysis: No End in Sight to New War of Attrition in Territories

On the 45th day of violence in the administered territories, Israel and the Palestinians are caught in a war of attrition, with no end in sight.

The battle ground is the same, but the weapons are different. Israel uses force, arrests, deportations and curfews. The most prominent Palestinian weapon is not, as it might seem, the stones thrown by the youths, but rather the general strikes.

As of Tuesday, the strike was felt throughout the administered territories. Most conspicuous was the general strike in East Jerusalem, which was observed despite warnings by police they would take action against the striking shopkeepers.

The affect of the strike on the Israeli economy is marginal. Many Arabs, mostly residents of the West Bank, have been showing up for work inside Israel. The closed stores therefore cause inconvenience and loss of income mostly to the Arabs themselves.

But while they pay this price, the Arabs are also sending Israelis a message of unprecedented solidarity, which embraces the left and right, the young and the old generations, the religious and the secular camps.

Israel is not free to use all the means possible in this war. Premier Yitzhak Shamir reiterated Tuesday that Israel’s undertaking not to use excessive force limits its ability to put an end to the riots. World pressure, the watchful eyes of the news media and internal criticism have forced the security forces to use as much restraint as possible.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin favors “beating” rather than shooting. But even as he spoke, a villager of Mazraa A-Sharkiya, near Ramallah, was wounded, apparently from a rifle shot during a violent demonstration.

One can safely assume that technically, Israel could have suppressed the “national uprising,” as Arab nationalists like to describe it, much sooner, but with much more bloodshed.

Instead, Israel seems to have opted for more moderate measures to deal with the unrest, assuming that in this war of attrition it has longer staying power than the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are well aware of the importance of time. The longer they can keep the issue of the territories high on the international agenda, the more prospect they have of creating political momentum.

So far, they seem to enjoy the support of world public opinion. This is apparently why, according to one report, Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat instructed his supporters in the territories to refrain from terrorism, for fear that it might swing world sympathy back to the Israelis.

But Arafat is not in control of the situation. Moreover, as events in the past few weeks have shown, there is no one single force that runs the show. In fact, part of the success of the Palestinians to perpetuate the momentum of the “uprising” is due to the general, popular nature of the events.

But reserve Gen. Aharon Yariv, head of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center of Strategic Studies, warned this week that the situation could easily deteriorate from a war of stones to the use of firearms.