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 Israel now resembels the person whose neighbor overhead has dropped one boot on the floor, and who is waiting for the second boot to fall.
Everybody knows that there will be revenge. Nasrallah has promised this, adding that it could take place anywhere in the world. For a long time already, people in Israel believe Nasrallah much more than Olmert. Israeli security organs are issuing dire warnings for people going abroad - to be on guard at every moment, not to be conspicuous, not to congregate with other Israelis, not to accept unusual invitations, etc. The media have magnified these warnings to the point of hysteria. In the Israeli embassies, security has been tightened. On the Northern border, too, an alert has been sounded - just a few days after Olmert boasted in the Knesset that, as a result of the war, the Northern border is now quieter than ever before. Such worries are far from baseless. All the past "liquidations" of this kind have brought with them dire consequences: The classic example is, of course, the "liquidation" of Nasrallah's predecessor, Abbas Mussawi. He was killed in South Lebanon in 1992 by Apache gunships. All of Israel rejoiced. Then, too, the Champagne was flowing. In revenge, Hezbollah blew up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, as well as the Jewish community center there. The planner was, it is now alleged, Imad Mughniyeh. More than a hundred people perished. The main result: instead of the rather grey Mussawi, the sophisticated, masterly Nasrallah took over. Before that, Golda Meir ordered a series of "liquidations" to revenge the tragedy of the Israeli athletes in Munich (most of whom were actually killed by the inept German police trying to prevent their being flown to Algeria as hostages). Not one of the "liquidated" had anything to do with the outrage itself. They were PLO diplomatic representatives, sitting ducks in their offices. The matter is described at length in Stephen Spielberg's kitschy film "Munich". The result: the PLO became stronger and turned into a state-in-the-making, Yasser Arafat eventually returned to Palestine. The "liquidation" of Yahyah Ayyash in Gaza in 1996 resembles the Mughniyeh affair. It was carried out by means of a booby-trapped cellular telephone. Ayyash's dimensions, too, were blown up to giant proportions, so that he had become a legend already in his own lifetime. The nickname "the engineer" was attached to him because he prepared the explosive devices used by Hamas. Shimon Peres, who had succeeded to the Prime Ministership after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, believed that the "liquidation" would lend him huge popularity and get him re-elected. The opposite happened: Hamas reacted with a series of sensational suicide-bombings and brought Binyamin Netanyahu to power. Fathi Shikaki, head of Islamic Jihad, was "liquidated" in 1995 by a bicyclist who shot him down in a Malta street. The small organization was not eradicated, but on the contrary grew through its revenge actions. Today it is the group which is launching the Qassams at Sderot. Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al was actually being "liquidated" in a street in Amman by the injection of poison. The act was exposed and its perpetrators identified and a furious King Hussein compelled Israel to provide the antidote that saved his life. The "liquidators" were allowed to go home in return for the release of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmad Yassin from Israeli prison. As a result, Mash'al was promoted and is now the senior political leader of Hamas.  Sheik Yassin himself, a paraplegic, was "liquidated" by attack helicopters while leaving a mosque after prayer. A previous attempt by bombing his home had failed. The sheik became a martyr in the eyes of the entire Arab world, and has served since as an inspiration for hundreds of Hamas attacks. The common denominator of all these and many other actions is that they did not harm the organizations of the "liquidatees", but boomeranged. And all of them brought in their wake grievous revenge attacks.
The decision to carry out a "liquidation" resembles the decision that was taken to start the Second Lebanon War: not one of the deciders gives a damn for the suffering of the civilian population that inevitably falls victim to the revenge. Why, then, are the "liquidations" carried out? The response of one of the generals who was asked this question: "There is no unequivocal answer to this." These words are dripping with Chutzpa: how can one decide on such an action when there is no unequivocal answer to the question of its being worth the price? I suspect that the real reason is both political and psychological. Political, because it is always popular. After every "liquidation", there is much jubilation. When the revenge arrives, the public (and the media) do not see the connection between the"liquidation" and the response. Each is seen separately. Few people have the time and the inclination to think about it, when everybody is burning with fury about the latest murderous attack. In the present situation, there is an additional political motivation: the army has no answer to the Qassams, nor has it any desire to get enmeshed in the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, with all the expected casualties. A sensational "liquidation" is a simple alternative. The psychological reason is also clear: it is satisfying. True, the "liquidation" - as the word shows - is more appropriate for the underworld than for the security organs of a state. But it is a challenging and complex task, as in a Mafia film, which gives much satisfaction to the "liquidators". Ehud Barak, for example, was a liquidator from the start of his military career. When the "liquidation" ends in success, the executioners can raise glasses of champagne. A mixture of blood, champagne and folly is an intoxicating but toxic cocktail.
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