Capturing Baghdad by force would be like "if somebody decided to commit suicide," said Arnon Soffer, professor at the University of Haifa and at the National Defense College.

He doesn't think US forces would do it.

US troops seized control of Saddam's International Airport, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the center of Baghdad, early Friday and were preparing for a decisive assault on the city.

But Israel's top military intelligence believe storming Baghdad is not the only option that US forces are weighing right now.

In an interview with the daily Yediot Ahronot published Friday General Aharon Zeevi Farkash, director of military intelligence, said there is "the option of imposing a closure ... blockade, assassinations ... special operations."

He believes US troops "are testing the ground," and that they are a lot more experienced now than they were two weeks ago at the start of the US-led campaign to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The Israeli advice to the United States comes from experience in places like Beirut in 1982 and recent incursions into the Palestinian territories. The US Army has frequently sent its officers to observe the Israelis on the ground.

"If there is one lesson, I would call it in one word: intelligence," said Shlomo Gazit, a retired major general and former head of military intelligence.

He believes that without exceptional intelligence the Israeli army's incursion last year into the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, would have been a lot more deadly for both sides.

That operation in a densely populated area of about 15,000 led to the death of 52 Palestinians, half of whom were civilians, and 23 Israeli soldiers.

Gazit believes that without good intelligence on Baghdad, coalition forces would be faced with two scenarios: laying siege to the city of about 5 million and waiting for it to surrender or going in for what could be a "bloody war" literally "from house to house."

The top US military brass seem to be playing it cool regarding their plans for Baghdad and, as would be expected, are keeping their cards close to their vest.

"You're just going to have to be ready for lots of things. So this notion of a siege and so forth, I think, is not the right mental picture," said General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a press conference on Thursday.

Myers said that once Baghdad is isolated, what is happening inside the city becomes "irrelevant" to the rest of the country.

As they weigh their different options for gaining control of the capital, US forces will not lose sight of one of their main objectives: finding Saddam Hussein, according to professor Soffer, who said that he has had consultations with the US army before the war.

Soffer says one way US forces can get Saddam is by conducting nightly incursions into the center of Baghdad "with a mighty power for a short period of time."

Another way is to win over collaborators close to the regime soon either with money or promises, according to Mordechai Kedar, senior research associate at Bar Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and a 25-year veteran of military intelligence.

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