Israel Security

Re "E. Timor Points a Way for Mideast," Opinion, Sept. 29: Ian Urbina's article misses several major differences between East Timor and the Mideast debacle. The East Timorese were hapless victims of naked Indonesian aggression. Indonesia had nothing to fear from losing control over East Timor. The Mideast conflict is a war with two sides. The unconventional nature of suicide bombings negates the effectiveness of U.N. peacekeepers. If Israel's world-class security apparatus is unable to stop them, there is no way that the members of the peacekeeping force could stop them.

The Egyptian government announced Wednesday that it will scale back contacts with Israel--but keep diplomatic channels open--to protest the Jewish state's military operations against Palestinians. Egypt's decision, while falling far short of calls to sever all diplomatic ties with Israel, reflects growing pressure faced by Arab governments.

Romema Schlossberg believes that divine intervention spared her son, Yoni, the night a pair of Palestinian bombers blew themselves up on a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem and killed 10 young people. Fifteen-year-old Yoni was there that Saturday night two weeks ago with a large group of friends, celebrating a birthday on cafe-lined Ben Yehuda Street. But he left early, minutes before the bombers turned the packed street into a charnel house.

For Saed Hindawi, learning how to fire assault rifles and make bombs at a military camp in Afghanistan seemed the natural thing to do. All the Palestinians in school with him in Pakistan were doing it. It was important that, as a Palestinian, he too be able to fight Israel. Today, Hindawi is in prison in Israel and on trial in a military court for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts against Israeli targets.

Israeli officials on Monday played down a statement by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat that he has ordered his forces to observe a cease-fire urged on both sides by the United States. In greetings he sent to Israelis for the Jewish New Year, Arafat said he had issued "strong and clear instructions for a full commitment to a cease-fire." He called on the Israeli government to "reply to this message of peace and take the decisions to cease fire too."

The day after a suicide bomber killed himself and 15 others last week in a Jerusalem pizzeria, Koby Sharf looked at his nearby Hillel Cafe--deserted by unnerved customers fearful of another attack--and took action. He hired a private security guard to stand at the front door. Having the burly, uniformed guard scrutinizing clients and their bags is not pleasant, Sharf said Tuesday. But he feels that he has no choice. "I have a regular clientele, and I saw that they were distressed," Sharf said.

Israel moved tank and infantry battalions near the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Jenin early today, its largest West Bank troop movement in 10 months of fighting with the Palestinians. The beefing-up of forces came after a day of escalation that saw Israel kill two Islamic militants and two others in a helicopter gunship attack and the Palestinians for the first time fire mortar shells in the West Bank. Two shells fired from Beit Jala fell near the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

A military closure so draconian that it has nearly brought life to a halt for millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remained in place Tuesday, four days after a suicide bomber killed himself and 20 others outside a Tel Aviv nightclub. The closure, announced Saturday by the Israeli government, bans Palestinians and their commercial products from entering Israel. It has seriously disrupted life for the 3 million people who live in the West Bank and Gaza.

A rush-hour explosion that ripped through the heart of a tourist town on Israel's northern coast Sunday, leaving four people dead and dozens injured, heightened the sense among Israelis that their security situation is spiraling out of control. "I saw the smoke rising up to the sky, body parts flying everywhere, people stained by blood and dirt running in every direction, wounded, bloody," said the owner of an office near the site of the suicide bombing, speaking to Israel Radio.

Caretaker Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has broken so many taboos in peace talks with the Palestinians that both the Israeli security apparatus and his family fear he could become the target of a right-wing assassin, just like his mentor, slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Michal Barak Lotenberg, the prime minister's daughter, says she's terrified by signs she has seen recently at right-wing rallies.