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                                                                                MIDDLE EAST, Page 49

DEADLY FORCE


How Israeli commandos are waging an undercover war in the
occupied territories

By LISA BEYER/RAMALLAH -- With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/
Ya'bad and Jamil Hamad/Ramallah


    The operation begins with careful primping: the five men,
all commandos in the Israeli army, put on their makeup. To
create a dark complexion, they smear a thick, oily foundation
cream on face, hands and arms. One of the soldiers pastes on a
fake mustache; another paints a jagged scar on his cheek. To
complete their disguise -- they are posing as Arab
charcoalmakers today -- the men, clad in T shirts, jeans and
sneakers, smudge their faces with soot.

    Setting out from a hiding place in the woods near the
Palestinian town of Jenin, they drive through the West Bank
hills in a banged-up taxi and are greeted with friendly waves
by Palestinians who clearly do not suspect that the men are
Israeli infiltrators. Soon the commandos reach their
destination, a small house outside Jenin. Inside, they hope to
find Munir Jaradat, 18, allegedly a member of an armed
Palestinian group that calls itself the Red Eagles. Weapons
drawn, the soldiers storm the house, but they find only two
frightened women, a boy and a younger child. No Jaradat. "Never
mind," snaps the group commander. "Next time." Three weeks
later, another commando team catches up with Jaradat in the
nearby village of Silat al Harithiyah. According to the army's
report, he is shot dead after he pulls a pistol on the soldiers.

    More and more, that is the pattern of confrontation these
days in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Even as
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were preparing to resume
peace talks set for this week in Washington, their armed
compatriots were shooting it out in the territories. The new
pattern began to emerge eight months ago, when the Israeli army
launched an all-out offensive to end what it describes as the
"red intifadeh," resistance by an increasing number of
Palestinians who have switched from stones to guns in their
fight against the occupation. The army's campaign, which mainly
employs undercover units -- "Arabized" is the term used by the
media -- has produced a rash of Palestinian deaths under
controversial circumstances. Palestinian leaders charge that the
commando units are death squads. "We've seen this before, in
Guatemala, Argentina, the Philippines," says Riad Malki, an
activist associated with the outlawed Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine. "The idea is not to capture fugitives
but to eliminate them."

    Israeli and Palestinian human-rights groups charge that
the force used is excessive. Three weeks ago, Education
Minister Shulamit Aloni, whose leftist Meretz Party is part of
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's governing coalition, said she was
"opposed in principle to 18- or 19-year-old boys' passing
judgment on Palestinians and then carrying out death sentences
against them."

    Security authorities are unmoved by such complaints. They
see the campaign as a success, since it has reduced the level
of Palestinian violence directed against Israelis and prompted
the surrender of scores of wanted activists. Rabin, a former
general, has no intention of stopping the undercover
operations. "This is the way to go," he said recently. "We
intend to continue."

    So far, the activities of the special units, or sayarot,
have not disrupted the Middle East peace process. Palestinian
delegates to the talks have chosen not to make the killings a
major issue, in part perhaps because of embarrassment over the
fact that many of the militants targeted by the commandos are
thought to have the blood of fellow Palestinians on their hands.
Since the intifadeh began in 1987, Israeli security forces have
killed 775 Palestinians in the territories; 680 more have been
slain by their brethren, mainly for alleged collaboration with
Israel.

    Far fewer Israelis (117) have been killed by Palestinians
in that time. But a spate of armed assaults by Arabs last year
prompted the army to expand the role of undercover units, which
were first deployed against the intifadeh in 1988. Today the
sayarot -- their predecessors made the raid on Entebbe in 1976 a
synonym for military derring-do -- are conducting 200 or more
operations every day in the occupied territories, though many of
those sorties have limited objectives, such as gathering
intelligence or spotting rock throwers.

    The military's aim in using the sayarot is to pinpoint
Palestinian troublemakers and reduce contact and friction with
the general population. Since the commandos went into
large-scale action, the army has cut back routine patrols,
maintained fewer outposts and limited the imposition of curfews
in Palestinian towns and villages. Overall troop strength in the
territories has been trimmed a third, from 10,000 soldiers to
about 7,000.

    As a result of the new tactics, military officers say Arab
attacks on Israeli targets declined 30% during the first four
months of 1992, compared with the same period in 1991. So far
this year, 1,000 Palestinians on the wanted list have been
arrested and 39 killed. Militants are also said to be
surrendering in unprecedented numbers -- 130 since Jan. 1 --
presumably because they prefer jail to possible death at the
hands of the commandos. The military says the 130 are hard-core
fighters, a claim many Palestinians dispute. Saleh Abdul Jawad
Saleh, a West Bank political scientist who has studied
Palestinian fugitives, says most of those who have given
themselves up were wanted for lesser offenses, such as throwing
rocks or painting nationalistic graffiti. The shooters, he adds,
remain at large.

    One of them is "Ahmad," 23, a member of a militant
Palestinian group known as the Black Panthers, who is constantly
on the move to avoid being caught by the Israelis. Though he
knows the odds are against him, Ahmad says he prefers to keep
fighting rather than surrender. "One day," he says, fidgeting,
drawing on his cigarette, looking nervously about, "it will be
either them or me."

    It may be him. In encounters with real or suspected
militants, the army takes no chances. Last February it removed
a safety catch from regulations by giving soldiers the authority
to open fire in a wider range of circumstances. As before, a
soldier is permitted to shoot in two situations: if his life is
in danger or if a fleeing suspect does not respond to a warning
to stop. But under the new rules, the definition of a
life-threatening situation has been expanded and the amount of
warning that must be given to absconders has been reduced.

    The army insists that the soldiers are abiding by the
rules. "We are not killers. We only try to catch the fugitives
and make them talk," said Amir Rosenberg, one of the five
commandos in the first raid in search of Jaradat; Rosenberg was
shot to death by a Red Eagle last month. ``I have no problem
with what we do. Whom are we talking about? About people who
have already killed or committed a terrorist act." Added a
comrade: "Believe me, if we used our guns as freely as the media
say, the ground would be littered with hundreds of dead
Palestinians."

    Human-rights organizations think otherwise; they contend
that the sayarot shoot first and ask questions later. B'Tselem,
one such group, maintains that only about half the Palestinians
killed by the sayarot are armed. In a widely publicized
incident, Jamal Rashid Ghanim, 23, was playing soccer in the
West Bank town of Tulkarm when four undercover soldiers rushed
him and, according to eyewitnesses, shot down the unarmed man
in cold blood.

    Clearly, mistakes -- sometimes lethal ones -- are made, a
fact the army concedes and says it is working to avoid. Before
the unsuccessful raid to find Jaradat, the commandos who led it
made a dozen mock attacks in which soldiers played the roles of
Palestinians in the house. Each drill tested the raiders'
adherence to the open-fire regulations; often they failed,
"shooting" a "suspect" who moved merely to put his hand in an
empty pocket.

    Despite the controversy, the army plans to press the hunt,
above and below ground, for the 750 hard-core activists who
remain on the wanted list. The struggle is bound to be bloody.
Whatever the army's success rate, armed resistance is not likely
to fade away altogether. As Saleh points out, the killing of a
Black Panther or a Red Eagle often prompts volunteers to enlist
in the cause. "The violence stems from a political problem," he
says. "It requires a political solution" -- and that, as
Palestinians see it, means a settlement that would bring about
Israeli withdrawal from the territories. Yet the very search for
a peaceful solution risks more bloodshed: hard-line Palestinians
are convinced that negotiating with the Israelis is tantamount
to selling out the cause. Thus, Palestinian intellectual Sari
Nusseibeh suggests, as the peace process resumes and perhaps
accelerates, that Palestinian militants may continue to try to
sabotage it by force of arms. In that case, the sayarot will be
here to stay.