Deadly Force

By LISA BEYER RAMALLAH

The operation begins with careful primping: the five men, all commandos in the Israeli army, put on their makeup. To create a dark complexion, they smear a thick, oily foundation cream on face, hands and arms. One of the soldiers pastes on a fake mustache; another paints a jagged scar on his cheek. To complete their disguise -- they are posing as Arab charcoalmakers today -- the men, clad in T shirts, jeans and sneakers, smudge their faces with soot.

Setting out from a hiding place in the woods near the Palestinian town of Jenin, they drive through the West Bank hills in a banged-up taxi and are greeted with friendly waves by Palestinians who clearly do not suspect that the men are Israeli infiltrators. Soon the commandos reach their destination, a small house outside Jenin. Inside, they hope to find Munir Jaradat, 18, allegedly a member of an armed Palestinian group that calls itself the Red Eagles. Weapons drawn, the soldiers storm the house, but they find only two frightened women, a boy and a younger child. No Jaradat. "Never mind," snaps the group commander. "Next time." Three weeks later, another commando team catches up with Jaradat in the nearby village of Silat al Harithiyah. According to the army's report, he is shot dead after he pulls a pistol on the soldiers.

More and more, that is the pattern of confrontation these days in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Even as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were preparing to resume peace talks set for this week in Washington, their armed compatriots were shooting it out in the territories. The new pattern began to emerge eight months ago, when the Israeli army launched an all-out offensive to end what it describes as the "red intifadeh," resistance by an increasing number of Palestinians who have switched from stones to guns in their fight against the occupation. The army's campaign, which mainly employs undercover units -- "Arabized" is the term used by the media -- has produced a rash of Palestinian deaths under controversial circumstances. Palestinian leaders charge that the commando units are death squads. "We've seen this before, in Guatemala, Argentina, the Philippines," says Riad Malki, an activist associated with the outlawed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. "The idea is not to capture fugitives but to eliminate them."

Israeli and Palestinian human-rights groups charge that the force used is excessive. Three weeks ago, Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, whose leftist Meretz Party is part of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's governing coalition, said she was "opposed in principle to 18- or 19-year-old boys' passing judgment on Palestinians and then carrying out death sentences against them."

Security authorities are unmoved by such complaints. They see the campaign as a success, since it has reduced the level of Palestinian violence directed against Israelis and prompted the surrender of scores of wanted activists. Rabin, a former general, has no intention of stopping the undercover operations. "This is the way to go," he said recently. "We intend to continue."

So far, the activities of the special units, or sayarot, have not disrupted the Middle East peace process. Palestinian delegates to the talks have chosen not to make the killings a major issue, in part perhaps because of embarrassment over the fact that many of the militants targeted by the commandos are thought to have the blood of fellow Palestinians on their hands. Since the intifadeh began in 1987, Israeli security forces have killed 775 Palestinians in the territories; 680 more have been slain by their brethren, mainly for alleged collaboration with Israel.

Far fewer Israelis (117) have been killed by Palestinians in that time. But a spate of armed assaults by Arabs last year prompted the army to expand the role of undercover units, which were first deployed against the intifadeh in 1988. Today the sayarot -- their predecessors made the raid on Entebbe in 1976 a synonym for military derring-do -- are conducting 200 or more operations every day in the occupied territories, though many of those sorties have limited objectives, such as gathering intelligence or spotting rock throwers.

The military's aim in using the sayarot is to pinpoint Palestinian troublemakers and reduce contact and friction with the general population. Since the commandos went into large-scale action, the army has cut back routine patrols, maintained fewer outposts and limited the imposition of curfews in Palestinian towns and villages. Overall troop strength in the territories has been trimmed a third, from 10,000 soldiers to about 7,000.

As a result of the new tactics, military officers say Arab attacks on Israeli targets declined 30% during the first four months of 1992, compared with the same period in 1991. So far this year, 1,000 Palestinians on the wanted list have been arrested and 39 killed. Militants are also said to be surrendering in unprecedented numbers -- 130 since Jan. 1 -- presumably because they prefer jail to possible death at the hands of the commandos. The military says the 130 are hard-core fighters, a claim many Palestinians dispute. Saleh Abdul Jawad Saleh, a West Bank political scientist who has studied Palestinian fugitives, says most of those who have given themselves up were wanted for lesser offenses, such as throwing rocks or painting nationalistic graffiti. The shooters, he adds, remain at large.

One of them is "Ahmad," 23, a member of a militant Palestinian group known as the Black Panthers, who is constantly on the move to avoid being caught by the Israelis. Though he knows the odds are against him, Ahmad says he prefers to keep fighting rather than surrender. "One day," he says, fidgeting, drawing on his cigarette, looking nervously about, "it will be either them or me."

It may be him. In encounters with real or suspected militants, the army takes no chances. Last February it removed a safety catch from regulations by giving soldiers the authority to open fire in a wider range of circumstances. As before, a soldier is permitted to shoot in two situations: if his life is in danger or if a fleeing suspect does not respond to a warning to stop. But under the new rules, the definition of a life-threatening situation has been expanded and the amount of warning that must be given to absconders has been reduced.

The army insists that the soldiers are abiding by the rules. "We are not killers. We only try to catch the fugitives and make them talk," said Amir Rosenberg, one of the five commandos in the first raid in search of Jaradat; Rosenberg was shot to death by a Red Eagle last month. "I have no problem with what we do. Whom are we talking about? About people who have already killed or committed a terrorist act." Added a comrade: "Believe me, if we used our guns as freely as the media say, the ground would be littered with hundreds of dead Palestinians."

Human-rights organizations think otherwise; they contend that the sayarot shoot first and ask questions later. B'Tselem, one such group, maintains that only about half the Palestinians killed by the sayarot are armed. In a widely publicized incident, Jamal Rashid Ghanim, 23, was playing soccer in the West Bank town of Tulkarm when four undercover soldiers rushed him and, according to eyewitnesses, shot down the unarmed man in cold blood.

Clearly, mistakes -- sometimes lethal ones -- are made, a fact the army concedes and says it is working to avoid. Before the unsuccessful raid to find Jaradat, the commandos who led it made a dozen mock attacks in which soldiers played the roles of Palestinians in the house. Each drill tested the raiders' adherence to the open-fire regulations; often they failed, "shooting" a "suspect" who moved merely to put his hand in an empty pocket.

Despite the controversy, the army plans to press the hunt, above and below ground, for the 750 hard-core activists who remain on the wanted list. The struggle is bound to be bloody. Whatever the army's success rate, armed resistance is not likely to fade away altogether. As Saleh points out, the killing of a Black Panther or a Red Eagle often prompts volunteers to enlist in the cause. "The violence stems from a political problem," he says. "It requires a political solution" -- and that, as Palestinians see it, means a settlement that would bring about Israeli withdrawal from the territories. Yet the very search for a peaceful solution risks more bloodshed: hard-line Palestinians are convinced that negotiating with the Israelis is tantamount to selling out the cause. Thus, Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibeh suggests, as the peace process resumes and perhaps accelerates, that Palestinian militants may continue to try to sabotage it by force of arms. In that case, the sayarot will be here to stay.

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Ya''bad and Jamil Hamad/Ramallah