Israel Faces Up to the Cost of Conflict

Ariel Sharon "came to the government on a security horse", the Fatah West Bank leader Marwan Barghouti said in an interview last autumn with the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea, adding "I said, we will break this horse of his." When Barnea objected that if Sharon did eventually fall because of his failure to give Israelis security his likely successor would be the equally rightwing Binyamin Netanyahu, there followed a chilling exchange. "So Netanyahu will return," Barghouti replied. "No problem. In the end you'll understand. How will you understand? Not by talking. You'll understand only when you pay the price."

Israel has had an inkling of the price Barghouti meant this week. Not only has it lost young soldiers in a way that it has managed so far to avoid, but the reaction of the Sharon government in striking out at a range of Palestinian targets which have no obvious connection with the losses has diminished its international credit and could conceivably lead to a new UN initiative that would be less on Israeli terms than previous efforts. Sharon's reiteration, in his confused but perhaps important speech last night, of his old position that complete quiet must precede negotiations was followed by references to the total separation of the two peoples. This could mean that in his own way he is finally coming to terms with the need for a change in policy.

The price to which Barghouti referred was not the repeated carnage which was last year inflicted on Israeli shopping malls, clubs and restaurants. He was one of those who argued for a campaign restricted to soldiers and settlements and the avoidance of suicide bombings or other military action in Israel itself. The distinction between the two ought to be at the centre of any discussion of how the two peoples can escape from the deplorable combat in which they are now trapped. It is between actions that seem to be aimed at Israel's existence and those which are focused on the occupation and imply acceptance of Israel's permanence.

The military impasse is intimately related to the political impasse. In essence, Israeli success, by both political and military means, in inhibiting most "normal" military action by Palestinians in the territories drives Palestinian anger into the morally dubious and politically counterproductive direction of suicide attacks within Israel proper. Those attacks then sustain, or have in the past, a despairing solidarity among Israelis which, given a leader like Sharon, simply prolongs the agony.

But even as Sharon was trying, and failing, to get the Americans to agree to dispense with Yasser Arafat, the military balance seemed to be shifting. The signs of a shift are evident in more successful penetrations into settlements and above all in recent Israeli military casualties in the territories, including the first loss of a tank and culminating in the attack earlier this week on the Ein Ariq checkpoint.

The possibility of a bigger change still was signalled by the interception of the Karine-A, the ship that was bringing Iranian-supplied arms to the Palestinians. The arms aboard that ship would have changed the terms of combat in the territories, at least for a while. That they did not get through is less important than the fact that one day a substantial arms shipment will make it.

If, in order to pre-empt such possibilities, Sharon decides on a thoroughgoing reoccupation, that will bring no salvation - for it would increase the number of situations in which Israeli soldiers face Palestinians, and the more such situations there are, the more risks will arise. All these are reasons why support for Sharon is dropping, with 49% of Israelis believing, in a recent poll, that he has "lost control" of the security situation.

The deaths of soldiers, who are in the main just boys barely out of school, and of settlers are not the only costs that Israelis are now counting. Loss of production amounts to 4% of GNP in the business sector. Construction and tourism have both been much reduced and unemployment has risen. Security costs have slashed the money available for welfare payments, so that under the proposed budget for 2002 pensioners and disabled people will not receive promised increases.

Substantial funds are to be channelled to employers in job creation schemes that are in danger of becoming permanent business subsidies. Inequality in Israeli society, already marked, is increasing. The funds that should be available for social spending are draining away in increased security expenses and in the day-to-day costs of operations in the territories. The US may make up some of the shortfall, but not all of it.

While the senior ranks may be more rightwing now than at any time in the history of the Israeli Defence Force, the views of the experienced reservists, NCOs and junior officers on which the army depends are a different matter. Some have signed public petitions against service in the territories. Others have been quietly refusing such service for many months. The majority remain obedient, but such developments demonstrate the truth of the motto "Yesh Gvul", that "There is a limit", and that the army is not automatically dependable in every use to which the Sharon government might wish to put it.

The discontent among some reservists is one sign of a revival among Israeli groups opposed to present policy and advocating peace or at least withdrawal from the territories. But this change does not seem to have penetrated the Labour party. Yossi Beilin's attempt to get the party to consider pulling out of the ruling coalition last month got nowhere. "The party is ill, incurably so," radical commentator Haim Baram wrote in the magazine Middle East International.

The question of why this war, for that is what it is in spite of the occasional recourse to negotiations, is being fought is truly a rather mysterious one. As an editorial in the centre-right newspaper Ma'ariv put it: "Israel and the Palestinians are locked in a hopeless, pointless conflict - each side accusing the other, like children's 'He started it, you started it.'"

The majority of Israelis do not seem to share Sharon's wish that the occupation should continue in one form or another. Those who voted for Sharon did so not because he promised to fight a war but because he promised to finish one. Sometimes it appears that the war is not about whether Israel will leave the territories but about the terms on which it will depart.

Having made an effort, if not a sufficient one, to leave by agreement, and no longer having a government which can pursue that path, it may be that the only common ground among Israelis is that they should not be seen to be forced out. But is that worth the price - dozens more Ein Ariqs, or worse - that will have to be paid? That is the question which Barghouti asked.

m.woollacott@guardian.co.uk