Israel's Less Offensive Missions

By Melissa August, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sora Song, Heather Won Tesoriero

The only strategic successes Israel could point to last week after 10 days of intensified fighting, spurred by the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, didn't come from the tanks that rolled almost as far as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. They were from small undercover units. Sources in the domestic intelligence service tell TIME that officers from a Jerusalem police undercover unit nabbed Mahmed Rimawi, one of the gang that allegedly killed Ze'evi, from a hideout in the hostile Kalandia refugee camp. Another undercover team found a second member of the hit squad, Salah Alawi, hiding under a car outside his house on the outskirts of Jerusalem. And in the West Bank village of Doura, an undercover unit of the border police snatched Yusef Tabeishi, an Islamic jihad activist Israel says was involved in several terror attacks. Senior officers say they will be able to extract valuable intelligence by interrogating the three men. These are also the kinds of operations that usually don't rub the Bush Administration the wrong way.

--Reported by Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem

With reporting by Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem