THE COMING WHIRLWIND: Unless a drastic improvement in the situation occurs, Ze'ev Schiff warns that Israel may have to move against the families of suicide bombers. Under the current situation, those who blow themselves up are taking out a grisly life insurance policies for their families, who receive payments from sources such as Saddam Hussein for the services of their murderous relative. While I can't imagine Israel ever physically harming the families of suicide bombers, I could easily see a policy of putting them in detention so as to prevent monies from reaching them and generally make the point that the families will not be taken care of. Schiff notes that:
it is already clear that damaging property is not enough, because those who would not build one house for their refugee brothers are willing to build a new house for the martyr's family after he kills Israelis.
Such a tactic would be reminiscent of those used by Jordan to destroy the Abu Nidal organization over a decade ago. As Seymour Hersch describes:
In an interview, two former operations officers cited the tactics used in the late nineteen-eighties by the Jordanian security service, in its successful effort to bring down Abu Nidal, the Palestinian who led what was at the time "the most dangerous terrorist organization in existence," according to the State Department. Abu Nidal's group was best known for its role in two bloody gun and grenade attacks on check-in desks for El Al, the Israeli airline, at the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985. At his peak, Abu Nidal threatened the life of King Hussein of Jordan—whom he called "the pygmy king"—and the King responded, according to the former intelligence officers, by telling his state security service, "Go get them."
The Jordanians did not move directly against suspected Abu Nidal followers but seized close family members instead—mothers and brothers. The Abu Nidal suspect would be approached, given a telephone, and told to call his mother, who would say, according to one C.I.A. man, "Son, they'll take care of me if you don't do what they ask." (To his knowledge, the official carefully added, all the suspects agreed to talk before any family members were actually harmed.) By the early nineteen-nineties, the group was crippled by internal dissent and was no longer a significant terrorist organization. (Abu Nidal, now in his sixties and in poor health, is believed to be living quietly in Egypt.) "Jordan is the one nation that totally succeeded in penetrating a group," the official added. "You have to get their families under control."
This would be a horrific development, but Israel may be forced in that direction if the current conflict continues.