With the completion of operations that led to the renewed Israeli occupation of all the Palestinian cities - except for Jericho - a new policy appears to be developing, in which Israel is consolidating a permanent presence, or at least a long-term presence, inside the occupied territories. The IDF now sets timetables to allow Palestinians out of their homes, while discussions between Israeli and Palestinian officials are focused only on economic and humanitarian aid, and the reestablishment of the Israeli Civil Administration is only a matter of time.

This new policy is backed up by a concept the military is trying to advance: as long as the IDF maintains its presence in the Palestinian territories it will be possible to efficiently prevent or foil suicide attacks inside Israel. As evidence for its argument, the army presents the fact that for more than two weeks suicide attacks have tapered off, and the Israeli public has been able to feel a modicum of relief from its daily fears of such attacks.

But this concept is inherently wrongheaded, even if for a short period it appears the territories are calm. Israel has a lot of experience from both the territories and Lebanon about what can happen during an occupation. A population under occupation, especially when it has lost all hope for a peaceful solution, and its daily life has collapsed with its sources of income gone, manages to very quickly reorganize, finding ways to engage in armed resistance. And that's certainly true for a population that has weapons and munitions at its disposal.

Israel's experience obliges it to take extreme caution, lest a familiar scenario repeat itself, in which soldiers become targets for attacks, guerrilla warfare ensues, so larger numbers of forces are sucked into the territories to find a more creative and violent military solution.

Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who has explicitly stated that the conflict has no military solution, cannot allow the government to adopt a policy that leads Israel precisely into more military and civilian involvement in the occupied territories.

This is not the only contradiction in his policies. A senior minister in the government who claims that a political solution is possible on the condition that an alternative to Arafat is found, cannot abide by demonstrations of force against someone considered a moderate Palestinian public figure. The police assault on the offices of Professor Sari Nusseibeh, the closure of Al-Quds University, which he heads, and the confiscation of documents from his office, was a brutal step for which no reasonable explanation has been provided. Nusseibeh is not known to be involved in violence of any sort. Palestinian public figures of his stature and position embody the hope of the peace process. If he is conducting political activity from his office, it is meant to advance the kind of peaceful solution that by its own declarations the government also desires.

That desire and the political declarations emanating from the government do not jibe with deepening the occupation in the territories and blocking activity by moderate Palestinians. As long as such actions take place, the government cannot wash its hands of them, claiming that it is doing everything possible to advance a peaceful solution.