AS soon as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon learned of last Thursday's terrorist attacks in Kenya, he summoned Mossad chief Meir Dagan to a meeting that promises to have momentous consequences for the conduct of the US-led war on terror.
War had been declared on the state of Israel by the global Islamic terror syndicate, Mr Sharon told Israel's top anti-terrorist expert. Change your priorities and get the enemy one by one.
Mr Sharon's blunt order on the day of his re-election to the leadership of his right-wing Likud party will compel Mossad – Israel's secret service for intelligence and special operations – to resort to the kind of measures it has not taken for 30 years.
According to a well-informed source, the service has alerted sleeper agents in Saudi Arabia and Yemen to hunt down the planners of the attacks on the Israeli-owned tourist hotel and Israeli passenger plane at Mombasa.
Codenamed Warriors, these highly trained agents who volunteer to live under cover in Arab countries normally remain dormant except in wartime, when their mission is to undermine Arab preparations for strikes against Israel.
The last time such a serious order was given was in 1972. The then prime minister, Golda Meir, ordered Mossad to kill the Palestinians involved in the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. All but one were eliminated over six years.
Mr Dagan is a veteran of such operations and is reputed to have killed more than 30 Palestinian terror suspects in Gaza during the 1970s.
Mr Sharon's forceful reaction last week illustrates how seriously he views the twin terror attacks in Mombasa.
"This is a wake-up call from hell by al-Qa'ida," said Gilad Milo, an Israeli government official sent to Kenya to fly out survivors of the attack and bodies of the victims.
The Israelis have little doubt the attacks are the first by Osama bin Laden's organisation against the Jewish state. An unknown group, the Army of Palestine, claimed responsibility, and a possible link to a fundamentalist organisation such as Hezbollah has not been ruled out in Washington.
But in the absence of any clear evidence to the contrary, Israel and Kenya both blame al-Qa'ida for the Mombasa attacks. Mr Milo said a direct line connected the September 11 terror attacks on the US to the Bali bombings and the strikes in Mombasa.
Two Mossad teams were sent to strengthen the organisation's Nairobi station and to pursue potential targets in east Africa.
Within Mossad, Israel's dramatic entry into the war against Bin Laden had a mixed reception. "If bin Laden was involved in the Kenya attack, this man is a walking corpse," said one agent. "The price tag on Jewish blood is very high."
Others criticised Mossad's decision to activate the Warriors as overkill. One source said: "Muslim terrorism is not a critical threat to the state of Israel. We should keep these people for an all-out war."
Only time will tell whether Israel is squandering the most extraordinary weapon in its intelligence arsenal. None of the Israeli tourists who endured last week's horrors think so. They believe the terrorists have crossed a new threshold.
It may be that bin Laden has decided to make propaganda gains from the anger felt by many of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims over Israel's repeated crackdowns on Palestinians.
So far Israel has conspicuously stayed out of Washington's war on terror, and President George W. Bush has struggled to distance the US-led campaign from any link to the Palestinian question.
Some analysts believe bin Laden wants to provoke an Israeli military response that would discourage Arab governments from signing up to a US-led war on Iraq.
With Mossad joining the war on terror and the hunt for bin Laden, it remains to be seen whether the al-Qa'ida leader has pulled off a strategic masterstroke or whether he has fatally miscalculated.
