Terror attacks against Israelis dropped sharply in July to their lowest level since the violent Palestinian attrition war began in the autumn of 2000. The stemmed flow of blood was mainly the result of a hudna, or temporary ceasefire, declared by several Palestinian groups on June 29th. Despite the relative calm, very few Israelis thought that the long and bitter Palestinian jihad war against the detested Jewish State had really come to a permanent end.

Army officials reported that "only" 85 attacks had taken place in the Gaza Strip by July 21st, compared to the usual hundreds of assaults. An even smaller number occurred in Judea and Samaria. However, three people were killed in terrorist assaults by that date, and five others wounded. An Israeli cyclist was stabbed in late July by four Arab teenagers in northern Jerusalem. The attack came just three days after a similar assault in the Jerusalem Yemin Moshe neighborhood, located below the King David hotel not far from the Old City's Jaffa Gate.

An Israeli grandmother was slaughtered on a farming settlement near Tel Aviv on July 7th when terrorists blew up her home with gas canisters. Three of her grandchildren were injured in the powerful blast, attributed to an Islamic Jihad cell operating in the area. Another murder victim was a foreign worker, and the third a Jewish father who had just married off his son the night before. He was shot dead while driving north of Jerusalem. His parents-visiting Israel for the wedding from New York-were wounded.

July's relatively low death and injury toll compares with an average of 24 Israelis murdered each month, along with some 150 injured, since the so-called "Al Aksa uprising" began in late September 2000.

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Israeli government and military leaders commended the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, for helping to reduce the number of terrorist attacks. However, they also pointed out that the international Road Map peace plan calls upon the Palestinian Authority to do much more than quell such assaults. In fact, the process of totally disarming the radical groups was supposed to begin in May.

So far there is no evidence that such action is even being planned by Palestinian officials, let alone implemented. This fact prompted Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to complain during a July 22nd visit to Washington that Abbas has "not yet internalized" the need to disarm the terrorist groups. "Unfortunately, we can't say the Palestinians are implementing their commitments," he told reporters after meeting with American officials. He added that the new PM was following in the footsteps of his mentor Yasser Arafat, who promised in writing to suppress all Palestinian violence against Israelis in 1993, but failed to follow that up with any substantial action to keep his pledge.

While the Israeli public and government were obviously glad for the steep drop in terrorist assaults, few believed that the "ceasefire" declared by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades was anything but temporary. Indeed, the terrorist groups all stated quite openly that it would last just three months, and only be extended if Israel met the absurd demands being issued by the three groups. These included the immediate release of around 6,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, including some men who have slaughtered hundreds of innocent Jewish civilians in recent years.

Israeli experts on Islam pointed out that in the Muslim holy book, the Koran, a hudna is never pictured as a permanent cessation of warfare. Instead, it is portrayed as a temporary laying down of arms until Muslim holy warriors are strong enough to resume their assaults upon their enemies. The best known Koranic example of a hudna was Muhammad's "peace treaty" with the Quarish tribe in Medina, north of Mecca, which was tossed aside as soon as his jihad forces were strong enough to capture the town.

The temporary nature of the latest "ceasefire" was apparent to senior Israeli security officials and cabinet ministers. An unnamed army leader stationed in the Gaza Strip told reporters in late July that Hamas is using the period of relative clam to construct a new generation of Kassam mortar rockets that will apparently be fired at Israeli targets in the coming months. He said that over 1,000 of the short-range rockets are illegally being built in Palestinian-controlled portions of the Gaza Strip.

More ominously, senior Israeli officials said that the new Kassams have a longer flying range than their predecessors. They revealed that the new version can hit targets up to 20 kilometers (some 14 miles) away, placing the large Israeli town of Ashkelon, just north of the Gaza Strip, under potential rocket threat. They said material for the new rockets was being smuggled into the Gaza Strip in tunnels from Egypt. Israeli military leaders complained that the Palestinian "ceasefire" is preventing the army from carrying out necessary operations to destroy the tunnels and the factories producing the rockets.

DARK DEMANDS

As noted above, the Palestinian terrorist groups issued their own "conditions" for continuing to observe their hudna in the coming months. Under intense international pressure to make the new peace plan work, Israeli government leaders actually agreed to release around 600 of the over 7,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails, including around 100 who were indirectly involved in horrendous terrorist assaults. This controversial decision-fiercely opposed by several right-wing members of Ariel Sharon's coalition government-came despite the fact that no such release is called for in the Road Map plan. However, government leaders made abundantly clear that those prisoners who directly carried out terrorist atrocities would not be set free, no matter what world leaders demanded.

Abu Mazen repeated the prisoner release demands during his own late July visit to Washington-the first by a senior Palestinian official since George W. Bush took office in 2001. "Releasing them would strengthen moderate elements among the various groups," he maintained. Israeli officials believe just the opposite: setting terrorist killers free would only encourage more atrocities to take place in the coming months.

The fact that Abu Mazen quickly adopted the terrorist "ceasefire conditions" as his own merely demonstrated how weak he really is, said many Israeli Middle East analysts. They noted that the Palestinian PM clearly realizes that the Road Map calls upon him to quickly jail the terrorist radicals, not to champion their demands. His rapid adoption of the outlandish prisoner release probably shows that he has no real desire to fight the militants, they added, or it may indicate that he is unable to do so, given that they could attempt to assassinate him if he truly cracks the whip. Either way, it signaled stormy waters ahead for the controversial Road Map plan.

To be fair to Mazen, he has never actually claimed that he has the ability or desire to destroy the powerful terrorist networks that accurately represent the extremist Islamic religious opinions of a large portion of his people. In fact, unidentified gunmen made clear to him that he could follow Anwar Sadat to an early grave if he truly crosses them up. Shots were fired at Mazen's private home on July 3rd, along with the home of his cabinet crony, PA Security Minister Muhammad Dahlan. Analysts said the attack may have been ordered by Yasser Arafat in an attempt to remind the two men know that he is still officially "president" of the Palestinian Authority, whatever President Bush, Tony Blair, or others may pretend. Media reports throughout July spoke of intense behind the scenes power struggles between Arafat and Mazen, with Arafat using his PLO Executive Committee to undermine his subordinate's shaky power base.

The fact that Abu Mazen failed his first real test by choosing to give in to Hamas and company, instead of attempting to fight them, reveals the underlining weakness of the new international "land for peace" plan. The apparent and unwarranted expectation from the White House and European capitals that the new Palestinian PM-nervously seated in the notorious shadow of his longtime PLO boss-would somehow be willing and able to stand up to the powerful radicals is based on nothing less than vain pipe dreams. By adopting their prisoner release demands lock stock and barrel, Mazen was basically declaring that he would not, or more likely could not, seriously resist the many armed terrorists that openly run quite loose in his camp. To say the least, this bodes serious ill for the Road Map's future course.

ARMY WITHDRAWS FROM SEVERAL AREAS

While Palestinian Authority leaders were busy making shrill demands upon PM Sharon instead of attempting to fulfill their central Road Map commitments, Israel's Likud-led government was trying to make Washington happy by carrying out its part of the highly dubious strategic bargain. Army forces were withdrawn from the biblical town of Bethlehem and surrounding areas on July 2nd after Mazen promised that all suicide bombers and gunmen would be prevented from launching attacks from the abandoned zone. Israeli soldiers entered the town as part of the broad military operation that followed the Passover massacre in Netanya in late March, 2002. They had earlier entered the Bethlehem sector to conduct limited operations after armed attacks were launched from the area upon the nearby Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

Troops were also redeployed from parts of the Gaza Strip in early July. This was quickly followed by renewed Kassam rocket attacks upon the Israeli town of Sderot, prompting the army to retake some abandoned ground. Analysts said the rocket assaults showed that Hamas warriors are itching to get back to their holy war, despite orders from their superiors to stem the flow of blood for the moment. The attacks prompted the Sharon government to hold off on other scheduled withdrawals from the town of Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, and other areas. Government leaders said they would delay further pullbacks until the Palestinian Authority began a serious crackdown on the militant terrorist groups named in the road Map plan.

After his White House meeting with Abu Mazen, President Bush criticized the Sharon government for building a security fence to prevent terrorists from entering Israel's pre-1967 territory, and called for an immediate end to "all settlement expansion." He also said he told Mazen that terrorist violence must be "rooted out" if the peace process is to move forward. This came one week after the Palestinian Authority demonstrated its contempt for world opinion by officially naming a girl's summer camp in the town of Kalkilya after the first female suicide attacker, Wafa Idris, who slaughtered one Israeli civilian and injured nearly 150 others on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road in early 2002.

By the end of the month, international pressure prompted the Israeli government to declare that further army withdrawals from Palestinian towns would take place soon, despite Mazen's failure to take any serious action to dismantle the terrorist groups. Pullbacks were scheduled for two more unnamed cities, one of which was expected to be Ramallah. Meanwhile there major Israeli army roadblocks were set to be dismantled as well, despite the risks that this could lead to more homicide bombers slipping into Israeli cities. This came as a search continued for Oleg Shaichat, a missing Israeli soldier who was believed to have been kidnapped by Palestinians.

OPEN AND SHUT

The new Jerusalem mayor, Uri Lupolianski, blasted Israel's Likud-led government for deciding in early July to reopen the hallowed Temple Mount to non Muslim visitors. The sacred site has been closed to all Jewish and Christian visitors since Arab rioting broke out on the holy hill in late September, 2000. "This is not the place or time, nor something that is needed," he told a local newspaper. The new mayor is an Orthodox Jew who agrees with most of rabbis that Jewish visits to the site should not take place lest the sacred spot where the Holy of Holies once stood is violated (only the ancient Jewish High Priests were allowed inside the Holy of Holies).

Harsher comments came from none other than Yasser Arafat, who continues to maintain that there is no evidence that a Jewish temple ever stood on the mount in biblical times. He termed the government's decision "a big crime" that could ignite a new round of violence in the holy city. Arafat has earlier used the emotional Temple Mount issue to launch two incendiary verbal volleys at Israeli leaders. Both times he succeeded in provoking widespread bloodshed; first after a tourist tunnel was opened along the western wall of the mount in 1996, and later when Ariel Sharon visited the site just before Rosh Ha Shana in the year 2000.

Also in July, the Israeli government decided to flatten the foundations of an Islamic mosque being illegally constructed just below the world-famous Annunciation Church in Nazareth. Muslim workers began building the mosque in December 2001, despite a lack of government permission to do so. Roman Catholic Church leaders had strongly protested the Muslim action in the very heart of Israel's largest Arab Christian town-seen by many as yet another Islamic provocation designed to drive even more traditional Christians out of the Holy Land.

Whatever Israel's many enemies may do or so, the God of Israel will rule and reign in Jerusalem! "Let God arise let His enemies be scattered: And let those who hate Him flee before Him. (Psalm 68:1).