The West Bank: How Long Can This Continue?

Friday, Mar. 29, 2002
Nobody expected Ariel Sharon to embrace the Arab League's latest peace offer, and not only because of the latest round of suicide bombings in Israel. Sharon has always maintained that Israel needs to keep the territories it captured in 1967 to give it the "strategic depth" to defend itself. But the ongoing battle in the West Bank and Gaza, that raged with new fury on Friday, may eventually cause Israel to rethink that theory.

Responding to a Passover suicide bombing that killed 20 people in Netanya, Israeli troops stormed Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound early Friday, exchanging fire with his bodyguards. The object, said Israel's defense minister, was not to kill Arafat, but to "totally isolate" him. It was a compromise between cabinet hawks who favor expelling or otherwise disposing of the Palestinian leader, and doves who see that as posing even greater perils.