Military pushes Barak for major strikes against Palestinians

TEL AVIV —Israel's military is urging Prime Minister Ehud Barak to launch harsh strikes against the Palestinian Authority.

The appeal is coming from every arm of the military. They are warning that PA Chairman Yasser Arafat will order a further escalation of violence unless Israel launches major strikes against the PA and Fatah groups.

Senior military sources said Arafat has shrugged off Israeli military attacks, including the aerial bombing of the Gaza Strip on Monday. They said Arafat has, if anything, overestimated Israel's response to Palestinian attacks on civilian installations.

"The army wants to do something else and the political establishment is holding its hand," Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said. "We are even talking about tactical operations, like whether to strike a building."

The sources said that Barak and his aides have repeatedly stressed that the war with the Palestinians cannot be solved through military means. They warned that this approach could lead to disastrous results for Israel and greater international pressure.

For the first time, some senior commanders are going public with their feelings. On Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Amos Yadlin, chief of staff of the air force, said the military must significantly increase pressure on Arafat's regime.

Yadlin told the opening of Avionics 2000 in Tel Aviv that military pinpricks represented as messages to Arafat have proved useless. "It is not working," Yadlin said. "The only way is to hit with all your might. Otherwise, the other side becomes immune to the attacks."

The brigadier agreed that the current conflict with the Palestinians cannot be resolved with pure military might. But he said that a sustained and escalating military response can force Arafat to end the mini-war against Israel.

"Because we can't achieve victory does not mean that we have no military solution," Yadlin said. "There's a huge area in between."

Overnight Thursday, the Israeli Cabinet met for nearly three hours but failed to agree on a response to the bombing of the northern city of Hadera. Two people were killed and more than 60 were injured.

Hours later on Thursday, an Israeli air force jet dropped munitions near the West Bank city of Nablus during a training exercise. A military source said the release of the inoperative munitions was a mistake and Israel has offered help to the Palestinians. Nobody was injured and the military issued an apology.

Israeli officials attributed the attack to the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad. The officials said the PA, pointing to its release of suspected Islamic terrorists from prison, appears to have encouraged or at least permitted the attack.

Barak is scheduled to reconvene his Cabinet on Thursday evening. Sources said the Cabinet is divided over whether to resume air strikes on the PA and several ministers criticized Monday's attack on PA and Fatah installations throughout the Gaza Strip.

The ministers said Israeli attack helicopters attacked empty offices and was just seen by the international community as the aggressor. Instead, they said they would consider additional economic sanctions and commando operations against suspected Palestinian attackers.