With an iron fist

As Palestinian activists prepare to invade Ben Gurion airport on Friday, Israeli police will have to come up with a name for the operation. Operations are usually assigned random names by a computer, but this time that will not be necessary. I recommend calling it "Operation Strong Hand and Outstretched Arm." Or to invoke a related metaphor, Israel must act with an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Preparations for the operation looked promising as of Tuesday. The police understand the necessity of a delicate approach, one that avoids confrontation, if at all possible. They realize the infiltrators will have undergone security checks, and will therefore be unarmed. They realize that those involved will be Palestinians and their supporters who hold citizenship in friendly countries.

The results of the operation, however, must be quick and unambiguous. When David Ben-Gurion decided to turn fugitive spy Dr. Robert Soblen over to the United States in 1962, he ordered for him to be packed up and dispatched from Israel immediately upon his arrival, giving him no time to maneuver through the organs of Israeli bureaucracy. This should serve as a model for what will take place at Ben Gurion airport.

The airport at Lod, like the nuclear reactor at Dimona, is Israel's soft underbelly. But what happens there on Friday will not be a surprise. Therefore, the senior official in charge of the incident must set up his headquarters at the airport and direct Israel's response from there -- not in absentia. When a hijacked Sabena jet landed at the airport in 1972, Moshe Dayan assumed direct responsibility for rescuing the hostages. He became the commander on the ground, and that is what must be done now - even though the current situation is vastly less dangerous.

One of the Palestinian spokesmen appeared on television saying they would resist being expelled from the country and are prepared to go to jail for up to two weeks. They must be thrown out immediately -- if possible, not by the airlines that brought them here in good faith but by an Israeli plane that will take them to another country. This will prevent any awkwardness for airlines whose passengers have no interest in finding themselves in the air with handcuffed criminals.

The events of the past few months are no accident. The Palestinians have decided to launch a physical struggle - nonviolent, for now - over what they call "the Right of Return," in an attempt to rectify "the tragedy of the Nakba." Dr. Ahmed Tibi's attempt to introduce the Nakba into Israel's law books, the Syrian infiltrations near Majdal Shams and those at the fence in Bili'in (despite the fact that its route has been adjusted according to a High Court of Justice ruling), the grounded flotilla at the port in Piraeus, and now the invasion from the air - these are all links in a chain that erases the 1967 lines from the map, to replace them with the 1947 lines--scratch that, they'd like to erasing all of the Jewish State's borders in one fell swoop.

Itzhak Aharonovitz and Yohanan Danino must build a containment wall at the airport as well. There, more than any other place, it will be impossible to overlook the tiniest crack. They need to be completely contained, like the suggested name for the operation: "With a strong hand and an outstretched arm."

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