JERUSALEM, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, put aside his M-16 gun, rolled up the sleeves of his olive green fatigues, and told diplomats what he plans to do in the West Bank, whose residents elected the radical Islamic Hamas into power.
Naveh heads Israel's Central Command that includes the West Bank. He knew the Palestinians were fed up with Fatah's corruption, but did not expect Hamas to take over with one seat short of a two-thirds majority in the legislative council.
The way he sees it, the average Palestinian wants to work, may not want to be directly involved in terror, does nor want his son to be a suicide bomber, but believes the armed struggle is the way to attain Palestinian goals.
Hamas will tread carefully, he predicted. The next Palestinian leadership may be ready for a cease-fire of three or four years to get the world used to a Hamas government, to get foreign aid, and to win the Palestinian people's hearts and minds. It will let other groups be its proxies in sporadic attacks on Israel, or as it has done in recent months, claim that cells it does not control are behind attacks.
The army would have liked the Cabinet to set Israel's strategic goals so that they would serve as guidelines for further decisions. Military Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, Sunday asked the Cabinet to do so but the ministers would not be rushed.
In his address to the diplomats and foreign correspondents at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Wednesday, Naveh wondered whether he and his brigade commanders would be able to meet their Palestinian counterparts, if they belong to Hamas. In those meetings they coordinate moves to avoid friction.
"Would I tell them, as I do now, that I am about to operate against terrorists in Jenin?" he wondered.
He intends to operate deep inside the West Bank, in order to gather intelligence and quickly react to planned attacks. That ability to act quickly on bits of intelligence has been an Israeli forte.
Daring in-depth operations should also shatter Palestinian beliefs that their fighters are the brave ones while the Israeli soldiers hide in tanks and armored vehicles, and take advantage of their superior technology and firepower.
"The greatest deterrent in fighting terror is the bare chest of the infantryman who appears at night inside a refugee camp, without tanks, without aircraft. (The terrorist's) understanding that we shall get to him wherever he is and take him," said Naveh.
Arrests operations have led to gun battles and, "Perhaps lead to more casualties in the short run but is much more effective in the medium and long run," Naveh added.
In military terms the intifada is a Low Intensity Conflict (or LIC in army jargon), and Naveh seeks to keep it as low intensity as possible.
"I am for using a minimum of tanks, airplanes and helicopter gunships," he said.
He feared an Israeli escalation would lead the militants to escalate their means, use anti-tank missiles and powerful explosive also against settlers "On roads used to reach schools."
More extensive use of aircraft and helicopter gunships would see the Palestinians introduce shoulder launched anti-aircraft missiles not only against military aircraft but eventually against passenger planes that sometimes turn over the West Bank in their final approach to Ben-Gurion International airport. That is Israel's only full-fledged international airport.
Naveh said he would like to distinguish between the militants and the rest of the population. Fight the first and try and spare the others.
That calls for reducing sporadic fire and instead, "Work precisely, selectively, and without collective punishment to reduce the level of hatred," he said.
In the past week three battalions, most of them elite paratroopers, have been clashing with militants in Nablus and the Balata refugee camp. Shops open, but civilians were hurt.
The B'Tselem information center for human rights in the occupied territories, said that 118 of the 197 Palestinians killed last year had not been fighting the moment they were hit. Naveh said that fewer than 10 people killed last year in the West Bank were killed by mistake.
Naveh would like to keep Israelis and Palestinians apart. Israel is building a security barrier in and around the West Bank, and fences around settlement blocks. That has already reduced the number of suicide bombers by more than 90 percent, he said.
However the 240,000 settlers are spread around the West Bank in at least 222 sites, according to Peace Now. They are surrounded by some 2.5 million Palestinians so keeping them apart is not that easy.
Naveh talked of building new roads for the Palestinians so that they would prefer them to the roads the Israelis use.
That is now on the drawing boards, said Shlomo Dror a spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in Jerusalem, Israel has already built a few dozen tunnels. Palestinians could use them to get from one side of an Israeli-traveled road to the other instead of crossing overland.
"The more we separate the neighbors the less terror and less friction that we'll have," Naveh said.
However as the occupying POWER, he is still responsible for the residents' welfare.
He wondered how he should treat a Palestinian who possibly voted Hamas but wants to work in Israel: As a man trying to feed his family or like an Iranian enemy trying to enter the Jewish state?
"It's a problem," he said.
The government's orders ban talks with Hamas, but life in the Palestinian cities cannot be put on hold. People must get municipal services, and Qalqilya's municipality for example, is run by Hamas.
If Israel does not cooperate with the local councils the army might have to solve the problems itself. "We don't want to control municipal issues again," he stressed.
So while there are no meetings with known-Hamas officials, there are contacts with the municipalities' civil servants.
Some 15,000 Palestinians have permits to work inside Israel proper and 10,000 to 15,000 more Palestinians work in the settlements, Dror told UPI.
