Summary
The IDF’s large-scale operation in the West Bank, 29 March-21 April 2002, treated by Inbar and Shamir as the first of their four twenty-first-century Mowing the Grass case studies: launched after the Park Hotel attack, it aimed to regain security control of the West Bank and dismantle the terror infrastructure, and it marked, in their account, the beginning of the end of the Palestinian suicide-bombing campaign (‘Mowing the Grass’: Israel’s Strategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict, PDF p.15-17).
Details
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Context as the article gives it: a Palestinian campaign of terror from the end of September 2000, in which 244 Israelis were killed and hundreds more injured in nearly 7,000 terrorist attacks by the start of 2002; the trigger was the attack on the Park Hotel on 27 March 2002 that killed 30 Israelis and wounded 140 (PDF p.15).
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Objectives: the political objective was ‘to create a different security reality for Israel’ (Gal Hirsh, as cited); Moshe Ya’alon, then Deputy Chief of Staff, is quoted: “The military rationale for the operation was to regain the security responsibility in the West Bank…in order to stop the terror attacks.” There were no plans to change the Palestinian Authority or its leadership (PDF p.16).
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The IDF invaded almost all the major West Bank cities under PA control, killed almost 500 terrorists and arrested 7,000, of whom 1,500 remained in detention, destroying weapons caches, bomb-making laboratories, headquarters and training camps (PDF p.16).
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Outcome as the article presents it: combined with defensive measures such as the security barrier, the operation proved very effective in eliminating the suicide bombing threat, successful attacks falling dramatically by 2004; Israel retained military control over large parts of the West Bank and continues mowing there primarily by preventive arrests (PDF p.16-17).
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Orbach et al.’s Chapter 7 treats the operation’s Jenin battle as a case study in casualty assessment: the trigger is given as the April 2, 2002 Park Hotel suicide bombing killing 30 Israeli civilians (Inbar and Shamir date the attack 27 March 2002; both dates stand as their sources give them), the camp as the origin of at least 23 of the first 100 suicide attacks in Israel claiming 131 lives, with factions preparing a joint operations room and houses packed with explosives; about 90 percent of residents evacuated within three days and the operation ended April 12, 2002 after more than 200 armed individuals surrendered (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.165).
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On that account the Palestinian massacre claims (hundreds to thousands killed, mass graves, more than half women and children) were false: Human Rights Watch’s May 2, 2002 report identified 52 Palestinians dead, 27 of them fighters, largely corresponding with the UN fact-finding mission and the Palestinian Authority’s own investigation of 56 killed, yet the reporting organisations’ war-crimes conclusions rested almost entirely on resident testimonies many of which were later discredited (PDF p.165-168).
Related pages
‘Mowing the Grass’: Israel’s Strategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict, Mowing the Grass, Second Intifada, West Bank, Palestinian Authority, Jenin, Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025