ELON MOREH, West Bank, 10 April — Members of an Israeli tank brigade waging an offensive in the West Bank found a unique way to show how they felt about the US president — they adopted a stray dog and named it “George W. Bush”.
“He’s a cowboy,” one soldier said as the brown pit-bull terrier prowled an Israeli hilltop encampment overlooking the city of Nablus. “He barks a lot,” said a second. “But he’s useless,” another chimed in.
Bush’s ever more strident demands for an end to Israel’s 12-day-old military campaign in Palestinian areas has struck a sour note among army commanders and their troops — a reflection of growing resentment among the Israeli public as a whole.
“If the US had this problem, they wouldn’t ask for permission. They would finish the job like they did in Afghanistan,” said Commander Oran Ben Goya, head of Israeli forces in the eastern part of Nablus, the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the past few days. Opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Israelis support the operation, which the army has depicted as an effort to crush a “terror infrastructure” behind a recent spate of attacks in a Palestinian uprising against occupation.
Many Israelis believe Bush has turned against the Israeli campaign because he wants to mollify Arab states to shore up his global anti-terror alliance ahead of possible military action against Iraq.
Since the Jewish state can ill afford to alienate its chief ally and provider of $3 billion in annual aid, most commentators believe a pull-out will be well under way by the time US Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives at the end of the week.
Israeli commanders expressed deep frustration that they were running out of time to complete their mission. “I don’t think we will be able to do all we wanted to do,” Ben Goya said. “That means we may have to come back again.”
Israeli forces have fought fierce battles, house by house and alley by alley, in Nablus’ ancient casbah market area and in a refugee camp in the nearby city of Jenin. Both have been subjected to heavy bombardment by tanks and helicopter gunships.
Army officers say soldiers stationed at Elon Moreh, a Jewish settlement overlooking Nablus, peer down with high-powered telescopes on neighboring refugee camps and see Palestinian fighters roaming freely.
But officers say they have yet to strike key Palestinian strongholds in the camps and are increasingly doubtful they will be allowed to undertake such operations before they are ordered to end their offensive. The army’s mood was further darkened by the killing of 13 Israeli soldiers in an ambush in a refugee camp in Jenin, the worst single blow to the Middle East’s best-equipped armed forces in 18 months of conflict.
Israelis, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, seem to have been caught off guard by the Texas-raised president’s uncompromising demands for a withdrawal from all Palestinian-ruled cities and towns. “The Texans, as any American knows, are a breed of their own,” political commentator Hemi Shalev wrote in the Israeli daily Maariv. “Sharon apparently did not take into account President George Bush’s short Texan fuse when he decided to ignore him for many days.”
