Mideast Roundup

 

Iraq Watershed

1. Bush Administration Bids for International Legitimacy

The generally grim appraisal of a sharply deteriorating security situation in Iraq is not shared by the heads of the Bush administration in Washington or US civilian and military leaders on the spot. Allegations that Washington's strategic decision-making and diplomatic policies on Iraqi war management and its recovery are fatally disjointed are firmly rejected. Exhibiting unexpected self-confidence and cool heads, the White House on Wednesday, September 3, launched two fresh initiatives on both these critical fronts.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld both took to the air on mutually complementary missions.

Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage flew to New York to go round the permanent members of the UN Security Council in search of a mandate to expand and also fund the UN role in Iraq's mighty reconstruction program. They also began shopping for a multinational force to shore up the 150,000 US troops.

Rumsfeld was dispatched by the president to Baghdad, the Persian Gulf and Kabul. His mission in Iraq is to see how far the guerrilla war plaguing the country is undercutting American control and stability in the country and also to calculate in what directions events are heading.

In Kabul, he will need to find out how the Taliban was able to regroup so much strength in Pakistan without any warning from Islamabad, how its fighting forces could seize such large tracts of territory in western Afghanistan and how the major battles against Afghan government and US forces escalating in the last two weeks developed. Units of the deposed Taliban regime will be found to have thrust to within 100 miles north and east of Kabul.

No one in Washington entertains the illusion that longwinded Security Council debates will generate an instant supply of troops and funds to bolster US efforts in Iraq.

At UN headquarters, on Thursday, September 4, the secretary of state produced the first tortuous locution of his mission:

"The United States will be in command of a unified US-UN command and there will be an element in the resolution that calls upon the US as head of the military coalition to report on a regular basis to the United Nations."

This kicked off discussions that will drag on for months - possibly up to the spring of 2004 - whose outcome is far from clear. There is no knowing how many Council members will back an agreed draft or how many are willing or capable of deploying enough high profile combat forces for Iraq.

Of the five permanent members, the only two with armies large enough to detach substantial strength are Russia and China. French military chiefs would welcome an invitation to deploy a small force in Baghdad for purposes of intelligence and a boost for French prestige. This eagerness is not shared by the Elysee Palace. Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder were quick on Thursday, September 4, to reject the Powell plan.

The Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, sounded a lot more promising. He said on Thursday that Russia might consider providing peacekeepers for Iraq under a UN aegis providing the wording of the resolution was right. Moscow will most certainly pose stiff conditions for its troops, such as the allocation of a well-defined region as its responsibility and a role at least equal to that of the British in the southern region of Iraq. Ivanov has already stressed that his men would be under UN not a US aegis. US diplomats are toying with a formula that would grant direct command of the Russian force to the Russian army's representative on a joint US-UN command - if and when such a body is eventually set up.

China would be delighted to be offered a military foothold in the Middle East, but would want to take up a presence around Persian Gulf shores rather than the Iraqi interior. Therefore, Beijing may insist on any contribution to the multinational force taking the form of naval units or air patrols - not exactly the sort of assistance the Americans seek for combating guerrilla fighters. Furthermore, the Chinese would not accept American or other foreign command over their forces.

A potential Russian and Chinese input for a force in Iraq would be further complicated by their deep involvement in Tehran's prohibited nuclear program. The Bush administration hopes before the end of the month to lift the Iranian nuclear weapons issue out of the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency board in Vienna and place it before the Security Council which is empowered to impose sanctions on nuclear miscreants. The Iraq and Iran debates running in parallel in the Security Council could result in a serious tangling of wires.

2. First International Jihad of 21st Century Is Declared in Iraq

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's political experts note that US Secretary of State Colin Powell's diplomatic offensive at the world body at this time is vitally important notwithstanding the low expectation of real UN action before months elapse. What he is aiming for in the short term is a measure of international legitimacy for the US military operation in Iraq. This license is demanded by New Delhi and Bangladesh before they will consider committing military personnel to Iraq. But the cloak of legitimacy is vital for even more pressing reasons:

First, The Bush administration has failed to obtain pan-Arab endorsement for the US-appointed provisional government in Baghdad and needs an overarching international imprimatur instead.

Second, Radical Islamic voices have called on the faithful around the world to join up for a fight in Iraq under the rallying slogan of "Iraq Tumadikum!" - We March on Iraq!

Only two such call-ups are known to have been issued in the 20th century: From 1982-1987, Muslims were called to fight a Jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet Red Army.

In 1989, the Muslim world was rallied by the slogan of "Palestine Tumadikum!"

Now for the first time in the 21st century, Muslims are being called to fight - this time against the Americans in Iraq.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's political sources in Washington report that the Bush administration feels impelled to make a fitting response to the gathering international dimension of the guerrilla-terrorist forces ranged against the United States in Iraq and the transformation of Iraqi warfare into an Islamic war. Washington has therefore embarked on a diplomatic offensive to internationalize its Iraq campaign. White House strategists estimate that this epic development might tip the scales of decision-making in Moscow, Beijing and Berlin. Those powers may decide to offer assistance out of sheer self-interest to fend off a danger that could encroach on their own societies. Moscow, Beijing and Bonn may start out by cautiously supporting a the principle of a multinational effort in Iraq as incorporated in a UN Security Council motion and then move on to active participation in that effort - and not only in Iraq but on other fronts of the same war.

The Bush administration has lost hope of drawing France into this front. At best, Washington hopes for Paris's neutrality in the expanding conflict, although the latest reports from the French capital indicate that this posture may also be more than President Chirac is prepared to offer.

Iraq's governing authority needs recognition

On the face of it, the US administrator Paul Bremer has been resoundingly successful in establishing the groundwork for Iraqi self-government at astonishing speed. A provisional 25-member government was sworn in Wednesday, September 3, with 13 seats for the Shiite Muslim majority, 5 for the Sunnis, 5 for Kurds, 1 Turkmen and 1 Assyrian Christian. However, the key posts of prime minister, defense minister and information minister are vacant, leaving Bremer ex officio head of government.

Before the appointments were made, the interim government council sent a delegation headed by acting chairman Ibrahim Joafri on a tour of Arab capitals.

That tour of introduction to gain Arab approval was supposed to have been carefully choreographed in advance by the State Department in Washington and the US ambassadors in the capitals visited. Yet according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Persian Gulf sources, it was a diplomatic fiasco - both for Washington and the newly appointed Iraqi officials. They were snubbed everywhere except Kuwait and Jordan. Elsewhere, they were received by low-ranking officials at best; In Cairo and Riyadh, they were stood up by lowly local functionaries.

The Egyptian semi-official daily al Ahram actually stigmatized the new Iraqi ministers as "a group of fugitives following US orders who set up opposition groups to Saddam Hussein in nightclubs abroad".

Jordan's Abdullah did his best to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to receive the Iraqi appointees in Damascus with courtesy. He sent his prime minister Abu Ragheb secretly to the Syrian capital with largesse: Assad was offered a unique opportunity to sort out his differences with the Bush government and even perhaps the re-opening of the Iraqi-Syrian oil pipeline that US forces shut down at the outset of the Iraq War.

All the same, Assad declined to receive the Iraqi officials.

The Iraqi delegation returned home deeply affronted.

Washington has encountered more than one embarrassment in the inter-Arab domain. Officials in the US capital as well as Bremer are keen on Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraq National Congress, assuming the post of interior minister with responsibility for internal security. The problem here is that Chalabi's financial past is murky; he has been linked with two bank failures in the Middle East and a 22-jail sentence with hard labor for embezzlement is outstanding against him in Iraq's neighbor, Jordan, in connection with the Petra Bank which he founded and liquidated.

To clear Chalabi's name, it is being suggested that he was falsely implicated in the scandal by officials in the regime of Abdullah's father the late King Hussein, who kowtowed to Saddam Hussein because they were scared of him.

It has been decided therefore to try and bridge the lacuna created by determined Arab non-recognition of the US-sponsored regime in Baghdad by seeking international accreditation. Otherwise it is feared that even the 30 or so countries which have contributed personnel, such as Poland, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Mongolia and others, will fade out. To expedite the smooth and rapid transition of government into Iraqi hands, Washington needs the aegis of a United Nations presence in Baghdad with all possible speed.

3. Up to Six Iraqi Mechanized Divisions Will Soon be Rolling

Washington's decision not to appoint a defense minister to the new Iraq cabinet was no oversight. It stemmed from two reasons:

A.
Chances are nil, now or in the foreseeable future, for the provisional government or any of the rival ethnic and religious factions in Iraq to put up an agreed candidate for the post.

B.
Perhaps more importantly, there is no Iraqi army at the moment, so there is no pressing need to cross that bridge yet. But DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report the US civil administration and military command in Iraq are rapidly reconstituting the Iraqi armed forces.

US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld half admitted as much when he said on his arrival for unscheduled visits to the Persian Gulf and Iraq Thursday morning, September 4: We are looking for ways of accelerating the process of bringing former members of Saddam Hussein's military - and possibly his security services - into the Iraqi security services.

The defense secretary made it sound as though he was talking about police and security personnel. But he was really referring to combat-worthy army proper.

On the quiet, the US civil administration and military command in Iraq have been recruiting thousands of former Iraqi soldiers into the force, excluding only officers and enlisted men with political links to Saddam's Baath party. In especial demand are officers and NCOs who served in special operations combat units.

Three mechanized Iraqi infantry divisions were initially envisaged; another two or three divisions have been added to the plan to meet the mounting guerrilla-terrorist assaults on American troops. In all, some 30,000 to 40,000 Iraqis will be put back in uniform.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources also report that 15 to 25 US officers will be attached to each division to supervise organization, training and the unit's first ventures into operational activity. These US advisers will stay on with the Iraqi divisions as long as necessary.

A military source familiar with the recruitment process told our sources:

"These Iraqi soldiers folded away their uniforms only four months ago. Their weapons and armored vehicles are waiting, oiled and ready to go, in their old bases. All that's left to do is to train them in the use of new US military-supplied communications networks and familiarize them with their new command structure."

The recruits have been busy getting themselves equipped and settling into their new units. One Iraqi division is all set and ready to go into action.

For the Americans, the revival of Saddam's army is a radical about-face. Only a short time ago, in mid-May, Paul Bremer when he took over as civil administrator in Baghdad, ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and Iraqi ex-soldiers disqualified to assume any security capacity.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources note that this policy had the adverse effect of pushing some former officers and enlisted men, finding themselves jobless, into the welcoming arms of Saddam's loyalist guerrilla forces. The United States is striving for the impression that it is seeking through its approach to the United Nations to attract large-scale foreign forces to back up the US military effort in Iraq. However, Washington is at the same time focusing heavily on building up combat units composed of Iraqi fighting men.

Shiites to have their own militia

The five to six Iraqi ground divisions of primarily Sunni Muslim soldiers are not the only military frameworks the Americans are fashioning in Iraq; they are also setting up an Iraqi Shiite militia.

Its nucleus sprang up, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, immediately after the assassination on Friday, August 29 of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who was a moderate leader much revered by Iraq's teeming Shiite millions.

On the spot, the US military issued weapons to the bodyguards of the Shiite ayatollahs and local security contingents. They fanned out without delay to safeguard additional potential terrorist targets - clerics and shrines - against further violence. Their task acquired urgency when it was discovered that the car that blew up at the Imam Ali Mosque, killing up to 100 Shiites with the Ayatollah al-Hakim, was only one of four such bomb vehicles that had been infiltrated to the city several days earlier. Two of the three missing vehicles were quickly found and disarmed.

But meanwhile the Americans used the opportunity to expand this dedicated Shiite band into a militia in view of the paramount importance of effectively protecting from assassination moderate Shiite religious leaders, such as the most senior Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who are willing to co-exist with the United States.

The Americans are also concerned by the aggressive claim to the leadership of Iraqi Shiites posed by the youthful head of a faction that opposes the moderate clerics. Twenty-two year old Mugtada al-Sadr, who has been held responsible for the murder of the pro-American cleric Ali Khoei, runs his own militia, which is backed by Iranian agents. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, US commanders in the Najef region have discovered that the young hothead secretly visited Tehran in the second half of June and was received by the hard-line spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Since his return, his tone is increasingly pugnacious and arrogant and the militia detail guarding his home has ballooned. United States authorities report that al-Sadr commands more armed men than all their moderate Shiite allies combined.

As of last weekend, American forces in Baghdad and Najef have been distributing weapons, ammunition, communications gear, unmarked vehicles, uniforms and cash to thousands of Shiite fighters and security personnel, who man their posts according to rosters set by the ayatollahs.

This Shiite force made its first public appearance as guards of the funeral procession that carried Hakim's body round the country for three days up until its burial in Najef on Tuesday, September 2. Elements of the force also secured the Imam Ali Mosque and other Shiite shrines in Najef and nearby Karbala.

Last week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly revealed that Kurdish fighting units from Jalal Talabani's PUK and Massoud Barzani's PDK had been deployed in the Sunni Triangle that stretches from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit to Baghdad to support US ground troops under constant guerrilla pressure in the region. While the bulk of the two militias - some 30,000 men - police jointly with American units the Kurdish regions centering on the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, some 10,000 armed militiamen are now in the thick of the action further south, where Saddam's loyalists are supported in their war against the US military by allied foreign Arab and Muslim fighters.

Elements of the newly-formed Iraqi mechanized divisions will soon be thrown into the fray. This injection will in the first stage boost pro-American fighting strength in the embattled Sunni Triangle to around 20,000 and down the road to between 30,000 and 40,000.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources do not have the exact figure for the Shiite militia in the making. It is thought to be starting out with at least 5,000 to 6,000 fighters, who will work alongside US forces and newly-arrived Polish-led multinational contingents holding the central-southern region that covers the most important Shiite cities.

US war planners never imagined Iraq would fall so soon into three regions manned by local Iraqi forces. But Saddam loyalists' guerrilla campaign and the imported jihad has forced Washington to rethink its strategy.


Al Qaeda - 9/11 Plus Two

Putting a Spin on Jihad

Call it another first for Osama bin Laden's terror network.

Almost two years after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, Al Qaeda has published a glossy 76-page, photo-packed booklet showcasing its "achievements" and explaining for the first time why it carried out the deadly May 12 bombings against foreigners' compounds in Riyadh.

Why now? Al Qaeda never before packaged its operations - even the first bomb attack on the World Trade Center and the "Blackhawk Down" battle against US troops in Mogadishu, Somalia - both in 1993. So what brought on a slickly-produced annual report at this time?

The answer is found in the booklet. It contains a defense for the triple suicide attacks on Riyadh.

Osama bin Laden's group struck at the heart of their commander's homeland. They found it necessary to justify their action and do so by accusing the Saudi royal family of being in league with what they call the "Black House" in Washington and of practicing a lifestyle that flies in the face of Islam.

Since the Saudi princes and US leaders have become soul-mates, both equally deserve to be punished until they are destroyed.

Some of this rhetoric is familiar, but a new vein runs through the publication.

The martyrs of Riyadh are identified as the men who fought alongside Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora cave complex of Afghanistan. Today, they are continuing their mission by battling US troops in Iraq.

The day before it was published, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism experts report, the Ansar al-Islam group that had its beginning in northern Iraq, admitted for the first time to being an operational arm of Al Qaeda and claimed responsibility for the devastating bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on August 19th.

Our terror experts link the two events as part of a supreme effort by Al Qaeda to prove the fundamentalist network had fully covered from its rout in Afghanistan in 2001 and proclaim the opening of its next front in Iraq.

Under the caption "Al Qaeda mobilizes for all-out war against the Americans in Iraq", DEBKA-Net-Weekly on August 22 laid bare the three routes - Iranian, Saudi and Syrian - through which bin Laden's men infiltrate Iraq.

We can now disclose that the jihad movement rolling towards Iraq is gathering its first non-al Qaeda Muslim fighters. They are coming from India, Bangladesh and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Others are setting out from Indonesia and Malaysia, adherents of sects or branches of militant Islamic movements that identify ideologically with Al Qaeda but are not part of its organization.

It looks as though Bin Laden's latest slogan of "Iraq Tumadikum!" - We March on Iraq! Has caught on in outside the circles of Afghan war veterans and Al Qaeda fighters and is percolating through the radical Muslim world.

Recent electronic message traffic and money transfers show that Al Qaeda has appropriated for its Iraq jihad a large chunk of the Muslim donations circulating round the money markets of the Gulf, Pakistan and the Far East. The funds have been diverted away from their traditional donees, such as the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Muslim fighters in Bosnia, Kosovo and even Chechnya.

Iraq jihad attracts radicals outside al Qaeda

Bin Laden has thus been enabled to reactivate the recruitment system he created and used to raise anti-Soviet fighting strength for Afghanistan in the early 1980s - at the behest of the American CIA.

Only 25 Indian Muslim fighters have so far reached Iraq. It is therefore too soon to make sweeping assessments of the volume of the new jihad movement. But if the flow of fighters and funds continues at the current pace, the United States will be confronted with a new kind of war, an Al Qaeda-orchestrated Muslim jihad unrelated to Iraq's unique problems.

Should this war spread, it would represent a new departure in the global war against terrorism. President George W. Bush may have been correct in assuming that two-thirds of Al Qaeda's leaders and fighters have either been captured or killed. But what he said applied to the first generation of bin Laden's movement. Since the defeat in Afghanistan, new terror cells have been formed and are up and running. For the jihad threatened for Iraq, Al Qaeda's impressive intelligence apparatus will be put through its paces after repeatedly throwing Bin Laden hunters off-track and carving out safe passages for its members' clandestine movements around the world.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that the prevention of a new jihad ranks high on US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's agenda for his visits to Iraq and Afghanistan this week.

One of the keys to prevention would be the sealing off of Iraq's borders. Washington has been pressuring Saudi crown prince Abdullah, Syrian president Bashar Assad and Jordanian king Abdullah to tighten their border controls and stop the flow of Muslim fighters to Iraq. The United States has seen few concrete results. The Syrians moved three divisions toward the Iraqi border, but contrary to their promises to Washington they have not mounted air patrols to spot groups of fighters crossing the frontier. The Saudis also moved forces to the Arar region near the Iraqi border, but the lengthy, porous frontier makes interdiction a mission impossible.

The Jordanians took a different tack. Their forces have been carrying out spot inspections along highways and small roads leading into western Iraq in a bid to intercept these Muslim intruders.

But while the three countries are making some attempt to seal their respective borders, Iran is doing nothing to choke off the flow of armed men across its 100 miles of frontier into Iraq.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources report that on Wednesday, September 3, Ansar al-Islam chief Hassan Shafi - whose name is revealed here for the first time - relayed a circular to its members informing them the battle against America had been relocated from the Ansar base in northern Iraq to the country's center.

Ansar al-Islam fighters and other Muslims taking up arms against US troops in Iraq now feel empowered by the mullahs of Teheran to move further away from the Iranian frontier and infiltrate deep into central Iraq.


Some Hard Facts in Brief

On August 25, Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi was received in a secret audience by Chinese president Hu Jintao. He asked China for further assistance to help Iran complete the construction of a nuclear device. Hu refused and made it clear that Iran had received as much Chinese nuclear technology as it was going to get. All the same, it is noted that Kharrazi was accorded a rare honor. It is highly unusual for a Chinese president to receive a foreign official of the rank of foreign minister except in the case of an American secretary of state. It is also noted that the meeting took place exactly 24 hours before the three-day crisis conference on North Korea's nuclear program opened in Beijing attended also by the United States, the Koreas and Japan.

Although visiting Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and President Vladimir Putin signed a five-year accord on cooperation between their oil industries in Moscow this week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Russian sources reveal that, even before the Saudi prince was out the door, Putin was on the phone to the White House. He assured President George W. Bush that the visit was of no importance any more than the accord signed by the world's two largest oil exporters. To his advisers, the Russian president complained that Abdullah had come unprepared for his talks in Moscow and had not bothered to read the prepared agenda.

Damascus is buzzing with a double murder riddle. Who caused the sudden deaths on Monday, September 1, of two high-placed Syrian intelligence officers, General Hassan al Tajer, former deputy chief of military intelligence, and Ghasen Kenaan, brother of the political intelligence chief General Hamdi Kenaan? Both disappeared from their offices and their homes without explanation. The official version denies any mystery. Tajer is said to have died of an illness while Kenaan was knocked over by a car. These explanations have made things worse, suggesting a cover-up. Tajer's friends say he was perfectly well when they saw him a few days earlier and displayed no symptoms of ill health, while the Damascus police blotter has no record of a traffic accident in which Kenaan was reputed to have been killed. The general conviction in Syria's political circles is that the two were murdered, with much speculation over who was responsible.


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

31 August: Washington's stern warning to Yasser Arafat to beware of toppling Mahmoud Abbas' government at the Palestinian legislative council worked surprisingly well. The scheduled confidence vote which Abbas would have lost was cancelled under the US threat that if Abbas is ousted, support for the road map and a Palestinian state will be withdrawn.

However Arafat's subversion campaign against Abbas aka Abu Mazen and his internal security minister Mohamed Dahlan needs no parliamentary help. Arafat is clearly the strongest power in the Palestinian Authority. After his denial of the forces needed to strike down terrorist structures tied the two hand and foot, Arafat placed a massive roadblock in their path in the burly form of Jibril Rajoub, named National Security Adviser to the head of the Palestinian Authority (Arafat).

To undercut the Abbas administration, he was granted a free hand to pick his deputies and a supply of ready cash. This means he can reactivate his old following which once numbered 20,000 men.

Rajoub and Dahlan, old adversaries, will thus jostle each other for the same terrain.

In a few days he managed to win back most of the West Bank Fatah and Tanzim members who deserted Arafat and went over to the Abbas camp and also repair an old feud with the Hamas whose leaders have fled underground from targeted Israeli attacks. Jibril has thus appropriated Abbas's option of bidding for Hamas consent to another ceasefire arrangement.

Despite the Israeli air blockade over the Gaza Strip, the Hamas have succeeded in launching their extended-range Qassam missiles. One reached the Israeli town of Ashkelon for the first time last week. At the same time, Israeli civilians of all ages and walks of life are targeted singly by Palestinian gunmen in both territories. Friday, August 29, Shalom Har-Melekh, 25, from Homesh, died protecting his pregnant wife Limor from Palestinians shooting into their car at Alon Junction east of Ramallah. Sunday, August 30, two Israelis were hurt in separate attacks by Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Faced with these setbacks, Mahmoud Abbas's influence is fading. He has never really stood up to Arafat, any more than the other high-profile Palestinian leaders and has now been maneuvered into a corner with diminishing resources for making the Aqaba program come true.

There is no end in sight to the terrorist war of attrition waged against Israelis collectively and individually while the Palestinians' prospects of a state own recede with every day of violence.

1 September: Israel's Labor government and police chiefs who held office at the time are roundly criticized by state inquiry commission for gravely mishandling the Israeli Arab riots that swept northern Israel in October 2000 in which 13 Arabs - 12 Israelis and 1 Palestinian - were shot dead by police. One Jewish Israeli was killed by a stone and hundreds of police were injured.

The disorders erupted as a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian confrontation declared one month earlier. The panel was made up of Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or as chairman, Judge Hashim Khatib and Professor Shimon Shamir.

Although not disqualified from future high office, ex-prime minister Ehud Barak's crisis management was gravely faulted, he was accused of arrogance, failure to stay informed on the progress of events and of addressing insufficient thought to the problem at the national strategic level.

Former police minister Shlomo Ben-Ami was condemned outright for falling down on his job and ruled unfit for future service in any similar capacity.

Retired police commissioner Yehuda Wilk was judged to have failed and disqualified from future service. The same failed grade was awarded to Northern District Commander Alec Ron. His officers were said to have unjustly killed 7 out of the 13 who lost their lives for which criminal investigations were recommended.

Israeli Arab leaders, Knesset Members Dahamshe and Beshara and Islamic movement head Sheikh Raed Salah, were held responsible for fomenting hate and projecting violence instead of using their influence to calm the riots. They were not penalized.

1 September: Israeli governments have never formulated any clear, consistent policy towards the country's Arab citizens, who today number some 1.3 million, representing one fifth of the population. Their longstanding grievances were behind their bitter skepticism over the state commission's findings on how 13 Arabs came to be shot dead by Israeli police in the course of tumultuous, admittedly anti-Israel, riots staged in most Arab centers in northern Israel in October 2000 in support of the Palestinian confrontation.

They were not satisfied by the commission's judgment that the police were wrong to open fire on the demonstrators and that 7 of the 13 Arab deaths were unjustified.

The police were just as resentful. Yehuda Wilk who was police commissioner at the time recalled the country had come perilously close as never before to an Arab-Jewish civil war. For ten days, tens of thousands of inflamed Arab rioters attacked Jewish traffic on the northern highways. The police warded the mobs off as best they could without proper equipment or preparation. The government ordered the highways linking northern and central Israel opened to traffic at any price.

The panel members' failure to produce strong and clear-cut conclusions means that loose threads will be hanging over the courts for years to come - and possibly reach international tribunals.

It reflects the irreconcilable realities of day to day life in Israel. After more than three years of warfare, the government has never declared the country at war or shifted into emergency mode but persists in the pretense that the trouble will blow over soon. The same is true in other fields. Israel has promulgated exceptionally progressive social laws, but in recent years they are applied less and less. No efficient ruling establishment stands guard to step in and reconcile these inconsistencies and weed out destructive elements. It is easier to paper them over by drumming up a false consensus. This is why the Arab Israeli judge Hashem Khatib on the Or panel was prevented from publishing a minority report. Instead, Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or and Professor Shamir insisted on subordinating some of their own judgments to the minority view in order to produce a unanimous report.

The commission's recommendation of urgent official attention to the Israeli Arab problem as a primary national strategic objective is likely to stay on paper. Israeli Arab leaders thrive on their community's grievances and underprivileged status. Should, heaven forbid, any Israeli government remedy this inequity, they would lose their most important asset for furthering the interaction and close affinity between the plight of Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian national struggle. Since most Israelis in high places regard this linkage as inevitable, they see little advantage in investing in measures to correct inequalities at the cost of national security.

For these reasons, the report will do little to dispel the progressive alienation of Jews and Arabs in the Jewish state:

1.
Today, few Jewish Israelis dare venture into many Arab localities for fear of being attacked. Public services, such as posts, electricity, national insurance, send their personnel in with armed escorts and only after touching base with the local police. Israeli Arabs have no such fear and move unafraid around Jewish and mixed districts up and down the country. This asymmetry instills in Israelis the sense of harboring an enemy in their midst.

2.
Certain Israeli Arab groups are increasingly drawn into the anti-Israel militancy of the Palestinian Fatah, Tanzim, Hamas, Jihad Islami and Hizballah - and even al Qaeda.

3.
Intelligence sources report a fresh wave of Israeli Arab violent demonstrations in the offing that threaten to be more violent and extensive than the 2000 outbreaks that so shocked Israelis.

4.
Prosecutions of a group of Israeli Islamists led by Sheikh Raed Salah on charges of collaborating with the Hamas, Iran and the Hizballah, have deepened the sense of persecution preying on Israeli Arabs.

3 September: Yasser Arafat celebrated the death of the Middle East road map in an interview Wednesday, September 3, blaming Israel and the US. His main butt, Palestinian prime Mahmoud Abbas, declared he supported the US peace initiative, but threatened to quit unless given more powers. Arafat chips away at these powers day after day. Having retained his grip on the bulk of Palestinian security forces, he is now about to take over Abu Mazen's diplomatic prerogatives as well.

A pretty forlorn attempt to repair the disarray at the top of the Palestinian leadership was initiated earlier this week by Egyptian security chief general Omar Suleiman, architect of the first Palestinian ceasefire that broke down in August. He gathered in Cairo Yasser Arafat's new security czar, West Bank strongman Jibril Rajoub, Beirut Hamas chief Osama Hamdoun and Palestinian culture minister Ziad Abu Amr, present as the eyes and ears of prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

Hamas was more than ready for a ceasefire after losing 11 operatives in two weeks to Israeli airborne targeted attacks. All the participants endorsed a ceasefire Tuesday afternoon, September 2. Hamas Beirut chief Hamdoun then took off for the group's headquarters in Damascus to seek the signatures of Hamas-in-exile leaders Khaled Meshal and Mussa Abu Marzook.

According to DEBKAfile's intelligence and counter-terrorism sources, the collapse of the ceasefire in mid-August caught Arafat's Fatah, Tanzim militia and suicide arm, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, as well as the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, unawares. They did not expect Israel to react so strongly to their reduced attacks or even to the August 19 Jerusalem bus bombing that left 21 Israelis dead and 150 injured. All their systems were in the middle of taking in new recruits and distributing weapons, explosives and funding. The men collected their tools of terror in one place - Arafat's office at Palestinian headquarters in Ramallah, ready for the most powerful terrorist campaign ever for launching on several fronts:

The Gaza Strip: The Hamas and Arafat's Fatah and al-Aqsa Brigades have joined forces in the framework of "popular resistance committees". They plan an onslaught on a never-before-seen scale against the Jewish Katif Bloc, using suicide bombers, shaped explosive charges for blasting tanks and other Israeli armor and attempts to overrun IDF posts and seize captives. Missile and mortar barrages will target towns and villages in southern Israel.

Bethlehem-Jerusalem Sector: Palestinian terrorists are gathering in increasing numbers in the Bethlehem area abutting on Jerusalem. In the six weeks since the town and its outlying villages were handed over to Palestinian control, the terrorists have been accumulating intelligence and marking out targets in Jerusalem and its environs.

Hebron Sector: Similar preparatory steps for the launching of a blanket terrorist war on the Jewish quarters and neighboring communities have gone ahead there too.

Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm and Qalqilya: In the northern sector of the West Bank, Arafat's Fatah terrorist infrastructure is in charge of setting up attacks in the northern and central districts of the West Bank as well as across the border in the Sharon region of central Israel between Tel Aviv and Netanya.

No wonder Israeli leaders practically froth at the mouth when there is talk of a new "ceasefire". In a radio interview this week, Mofaz declared that he favored deporting the Palestinian terrorist chief, possibly by the end of the year, because he was complicating peace moves. Each time the subject came up in the past, Sharon under pressure from Washington stepped in to say no and, each time, rickety measures like the phony ceasefire were given another chance.

A Palestinian reconciliation plan faithfully mirrors the balance of power between them:

1.
Arafat will head a new Palestinian national security council, whose five members must be approved by both.

2.
Arafat and Abu Mazen undertake to refrain from unilateral reforms or appointments in Palestinian Authority Palestinian institutions.

3.
Abu Mazen will go back to attending the meetings of the Fatah central council which he boycotted after being attacked by the majority commanded by Arafat.

4.
Abbas will accept the nomination of Arafat loyalist Hani al-Hassan as interior minister, while Arafat will not query Abbas' ally Mohammed Dahlan in internal security.

5.
Arafat or his representative will lead the Palestinian side in any negotiations with Israel. Abu Mazen will desist from diplomatic, military and economic initiatives with Israel that are not endorsed by Arafat.

If Abbas buys this plan, he will be shorn of both the troops and the power for stemming the tide of terror and talking peace with Israel. Arafat will have grabbed them both.

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