Israel - The Country

Burdened by American cash and a sense that the Arab world is not as unifed or wealthy as they thought, it appears that Israel and its neighbors are beginning to see eye to eye. New emigres who lack a knifelike hatred for Arabs and who have a need to just get on with things are slowly eroding the hawkish base that has made Israel both a pariah nation and a model for new countries.

On November 4, 1995, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down at point-blank range by an unrepentant 25-year-old Jewish extremist, Yigal Amir. The Jewish-Palestinian struggle came full circle, as Israel discovered the biggest threat to the peace accord may not be HAMAS, the Palestinian terrorist group bent on Israel's destruction, but may come from right-wing Jewish extremists within its own precarious borders.

The leader of Shin Bet (the General Security Service, or GSS-Israel's secret service apparatus), known only as "K" under Israeli law, resigned after taking responsibility for a dearth of GSS precautions in preventing the assassination of Rabin. But it's interesting to note that "K" was long aware of the kinetic dangers posed by the enemy within; his college master's-degree thesis had been on the need of Israel's security forces to be prepared not only for the Palestinian threat, but also that from Israel's own hard-core religious right.

Reach Out and Kill Someone

Israel paid a Gaza businessman one million dollars and a false passport to deliver a booby-trapped cellphone to 30-year-old Yehiya Ayash in the Gaza Strip. The phone was a loaner while Ayash's phone was being repaired. Yehiya Ayash was from the West Bank and is credited with the string of suicide attacks and bombings. He did not know that the phone had high explosives in the earpiece set up to be detonated by audio signal. The security people made a call to Ayash and then triggered the explosion. It is not known whether the call made to Ayash was collect or not. The businessman is suspected to be in hiding in the States, where his son lives.

Despite the Israelis' need and demand for a homeland, their Arab brethren refuse to see things eye to eye; it's more like eye for an eye. Despite the peace agreement reached with the PLO, the trading of eyes and teeth between Israel and its numerous enemies continues at unprecedented levels. The increase in terrorist threats against Israel, particularly in the wake of the historic Israeli-Palestinian pact, has turned out to be more than merely the holy smoke of bored car bombers.

America's checkbook diplomacy convinced Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to recognize each other's right to exist on September 9, 1994, with the historic signing of a Declaration of Principles by Rabin and PLO chairman Yasir Arafat. It would be fair to say that the increase in attacks, deaths and political violence is escalating due to the intense opposition to the agreement by extremist Palestinian groups such as HAMAS and right-wing Jewish groups.

While most of the world has lauded the pact as the most significant peace agreement in decades, enemies of Israel and Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories, believing they'd been bought out by the United States-which essentially they were-have nothing but revenge in mind for Arafat. These "enemies" include some heavy hitters. Both Abu Nidal of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), have threatened to assassinate Arafat for treason. George Habash, head of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), said the agreement would, ironically, increase intifada, the uprising on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He was right. Right-wing Jewish settlers and HAMAS alike have launched terrorist attacks in an attempt to discredit and dissolve the agreement.

Earlier that year, on May 4, 1994, Rabin and Arafat signed a long-awaited pact allowing Palestinians limited self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. Under the agreement, Israeli forces were withdrawn from designated areas, turning enforcement over to a Palestinian police force. A week later, the first contingent of nearly 150 Palestinian police officers entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt. (The agreement calls for an eventual force of 9,000 officers to police what is to become Palestine.) The new cops were greeted with flowers by inhabitants in the Strip. Not so by HAMAS and other radical factions.

While I was doing a radio interview, one listener phoned in and was surprised to hear me include Israel in DP's list of war zones. Then, on April 10, 1996, Israel responded to an April 9 Hezbollah rocket salvo in northern Israel-which injured 40 people-by invading Lebanon. Hezbollah continued to launch hundreds of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel despite the invasion. Attacks still continue into 2000 even though prospects are looking brighter-but until Israel finds true peace within and with its neighbors, it will remain a dangerous place.

Terrorism Strikes Back

In March 1998, hackers attacked the Prime Minister Netanyahu's Netvision Web site, redirecting it to the Penthouse site. Netanyahu's wife's site led visitors to Playgirl magazine. The Israeli government has not decided which Palestinian Web sites to rocket yet.