Palestinian leader Mr Yasser Arafat's call for a ceasefire averted a harsh Israeli air-strike in retaliation for the deadly suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, a senior Israeli security official said Sunday.
"We were just about to launch a very very severe air-strike ...before his declaration, after the devastating attack in Tel Aviv," the official told a briefing for foreign reporters on condition of anonymity.
"But because of the declaration of ceasefire, we decided to stop it," the official added, without giving further details about the planned operation.
But he warned: "But I am sure you will see it will happen, unfortunately, whenever the chairman (Mr Arafat) will decide to go back to terrorism and not to keep the ceasefire."
Mr Arafat called on his forces to implement a ceasefire yesterday, after the bomb attack at a nightclub in Tel Aviv the night before that killed 19 Israelis and the bomber, the latest in a series of strikes.
Israel - which has so far held back from retaliatory action after the Tel Aviv bombing - used F-16 warplanes in raids on the West Bank last month in retaliation for a suicide bombing in the resort of Netanya which killed five Israelis plus the bomber.
The security official said Israel had to determine whether Mr Arafat had declared a "strategic or tactical" ceasefire.
In particular, Israel was waiting to see whether Mr Arafat implemented a key Israeli demand: the jailing of militants from the Palestinian Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad which are behind most anti-Israeli attacks.
But asked about an Israeli radio report that the government had issued orders to the army to launch operations against the groups, he said "I haven't heard that."
Earlier today, a bomb exploded near the car of an Islamic Jihad militant in the northern West Bank in what Palestinians said was an assassination attempt.
The official also warned that Israel faced a problem preventing attackers infiltrating from the Palestinian territories because it was not able to hermetically seal the border, and that having "a fence or a minefield" was not an option.
AFP