The Ugly Truth About Suicide Bombers

The appearance in court on May 15 of four Arab-Israeli women accused of helping Palestinian militants carry out attacks in the Jewish state raises a disturbing question because it has received so little public attention.

To be sure, Israeli security officials have spoken of the "increased involvement" of Arab-Israelis in the Palestinian uprising, but given their penchant for heavily publicizing such matters via a pliant media, one has to wonder why they have been so relatively reticent to go after this one with the usual enthusiasm.

Israel's Arab community has ample reason to hold divided loyalties. Ethnic Palestinians whose homes were either in the areas granted to the Jewish state by the UN's 1947 partition plan or on territory captured in the war that followed the Jewish state's creation in 1948, their citizenship carries many asterisks.

Despite making up approximately one sixth of the population, Arab-Israelis are prohibited from serving in the military and other security bodies, which in turn denies them eligibility to hold many civil service positions. Their human rights have been routinely violated under official policies and court decisions that allow investigators to hold them for long periods of time without laying charges and to use torture as a means of interrogation.

Their neighborhoods receive far less financial support from the state than do Jewish areas, with the result that their schools, roads, sewer systems and other indicators of infrastructure development are decades behind those of their neighbors. Even their allotment of water - whether for household consumption or irrigation - is a small fraction of that provided to Jews.

Given the quasi-apartheid treatment afforded to Israel's Arab citizens, is it reasonable to assume that significant numbers of them are sufficiently disillusioned to help their Palestinian brethren carry out attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians? According to some of the people with whom I spoke, it would be unrealistic to have any doubts about the matter.

Suicide bombings have brought the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to a standstill by sparking a chicken-and-egg argument over how they can be stopped and who has the responsibility to do so.

Those who largely back Ariel Sharon's hard-line policies insist that the Palestinian Authority is to blame for continuing attacks on Israeli civilians - either because Yasser Arafat has failed to unleash his security apparatus against militant groups or because he has actually masterminded their activities.

Those who generally sympathize with Arafat point out that the Palestinian Authority's capabilities in this regard - as in many others - have been badly degraded by a year and half of conflict with one of the world's most powerful militaries: many security officers have been assassinated, and even if they could round up militants, dozens of buildings that might have been used to incarcerate them have been destroyed. Apart from undermining Arafat's ability to maintain law and order, Israel's consistent reliance on military force serves to provide a steady supply of the anger and despair that contribute so mightily to militancy.

Making Israelis and their government understand this is no easy matter. Alex Fishman, a relatively moderate commentator for the right-wing Maariv newspaper, concluded after the suicide bombings on May 19 that the "military achievements" of the Israeli offensive in the West Bank "are evaporating." In fact, unless a diplomatic breakthrough is achieved in the near future, the conseqences of that bloody rampage have only just begun to make themselves felt, and Israeli civilians will pay most of the toll with their lives.

In any event, the pro-Palestinian argument goes, terrorism is simply the response to continuing occupation: end that and you end suicide bombings.