Sharon meets resistance from frustrated military
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Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Friday, June 22, 2001
JERUSALEM Ñ Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is urging the
military to stop Palestinian attacks on Israeli motorists in the West Bank.
Sharon met with both Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz as well as
brigade commanders in the West Bank and urged the military to launch
initiatives to stop the drive-by shootings and ambushes of Israeli
motorists. Two Israelis were killed in the West Bank on Monday by
Palestinian snipers.
On late Tuesday, Palestinian gunmen ambushed a convoy that contained a
prominent Israeli rabbi near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Nobody was
hurt.
The prime minister, however, is said to be meeting resistance from the
military. Military sources said regional commanders are constantly being
given conflicting orders and cannot plan operations that could be cancelled
at a moment's notice.
The sources said Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer have
repeatedly scuttled proposals by the military to stop Palestinian
attacks.
Sharon is said to feel disappointed by the military. Aides said the
prime minister, a former commando chief, wants the military to launch
initiatives that take into account the current ban on incursions into
Palestinian-controlled territory in the West Bank.
"The military faces a difficult and challenging task," Israeli National
Security Council chief Uzi Dayan said.
The prime minister is said to be under pressure from Jewish settlers and
their supporters in the Cabinet to launch an attack on the PA. Government
sources said PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has ordered attacks on Jewish
settlers as Islamic groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Lebanese
Hizbullah are planning bombings and abductions.
On Wednesday, police sappers dismantled a pipe bomb and a mortar bomb in
downtown Hadera in central Israel.
"The situation is very serious," Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said.
The sources said Sharon wants to delay any change in Israel's policy of
restraint until after the prime minister meets U.S. President George Bush
next Tuesday in Washington. On Wednesday, the security cabinet approved a
continuation of Sharon's policy of restraint.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian gunners have resumed mortar attacks on
Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. At least five mortars landed in or
around one settlement on Tuesday. Near the Egyptian border, Palestinians
fired rocket-propelled grenades toward military positions. Nobody was hurt.
For their part, Palestinian sources said that Arafat, who meets Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday, is under heavy pressure from the
United States and the European Union, to honor the ceasefire. They said
Jewish settlers are attacking Palestinian pedestrians and an elderly woman
was run over by an Israeli motorist near the West Bank city of Kalkilya on
Tuesday. Earlier, two Israeli youths attacked two Palestinian workers at a
gas station on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.
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