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Mideast offers lessons in Iraq war
By Kelly Wallace
JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Some of the images from the battlefields in Iraq look increasingly like those from another Mideast war: the 30-month-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian experience appears to be providing lessons for each side in the U.S.-led war against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The political circumstances of the two wars may be different, but in some areas -- including combat tactics being used by both sides -- some approaches are strikingly similar. Suicide bombing, for example, a tactic used by radical Palestinian groups against Israeli civilian and military targets, was used by Iraqi fighters in an attack that killed four U.S. troops with the technically superior coalition army. In other action, Iraqi paramilitary and "irregular" fighters dressed as civilians or taking refuge in residential areas at night have encountered coalition forces in much the same way as Palestinian guerrillas have fought Israeli troops. "The martyrs and sacrifices in Palestine (were) a clear message to the whole world, not only to Iraqis, that this has been a strong tool to bring fear to the enemy and cripple their movement and their actions," Mahdi Abdul-Hadi, of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, said about suicide bombings. U.S. Central Command Director of Operations Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart Jr. condemned the attack on the U.S. soldiers but said it did not change the coalition's operational strategy. "That kind of activity I think is something of a symbol of an organization that is getting a bit desperate," said Renuart. "Having said that, our troops do in fact train to those kinds of events." In preparing their plans for the war in Iraq, U.S. military officials sought advice from Israel. A senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Israeli officials gave at least two seminars to U.S. military officials sometime after Israeli forces, in response to a spate of suicide bombings, moved into the West Bank and Gaza last spring. Sources say the Americans were particularly interested in Israel's experiences in urban warfare in Gaza and the West Bank, especially in Jenin; its use of bulldozers and helicopters in densely populated Palestinian refugee camps; and its defense against suicide bombers. Martin van Creveld, a Hebrew University professor of military history and strategy, briefed U.S. Marine Corps officers at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in September. He warned they would face the same ethical challenges Israelis have been facing -- fighting in urban areas, surrounded by civilians. "All I told them is this is going to be your most important problem by far, try and make sure that when you come back, you can still look at yourself in the mirror," van Creveld said. In Iraq, some of the tactics coalition forces are using to combat Iraqi guerrilla efforts are similar to those used by Israeli forces, van Creveld said.
These tactics include soldiers storming crowded neighborhoods looking for wanted men, being on constant lookout for any would-be suicide bombers, demanding IDs and searching cars. As it has in the West Bank and Gaza, the uncertainty of this type of warfare already has led to unintended consequences in Iraq. Earlier this week, U.S. soldiers in Iraq fired on a car after it failed to heed repeated warnings to stop at a checkpoint, U.S. officials said. Seven Iraqi civilians, including children, were killed. The shooting came after the the suicide bombing that killed four U.S. soldiers at another checkpoint.
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