Mideast Roundup

Oct. 31, 2003

Saddam’s Guerrillas Pounce in Total Hush

Top-Level Confab in Washington

Updated White House Iraq Strategy Omits Four Key Elements

Ideas for a new strategy for America’s war on terror were exhaustively thrashed out at the three-day White House get-together of the Bush administration’s top policy advisers and strategists ending Tuesday October 28. The Sunday-Monday Ramadan bomb blasts in Baghdad added to the urgency of the deliberations. They also provided an unsavory foretaste of the impact continuing violence in Iraq would have on the president’s coming re-election campaign.

One principle clearly emerged, as articulated by George W. Bush on Tuesday, October 28. The administration would not be frightened into backing off from its policy goals in Iraq. Most immediately, the conference resolved to accelerate the mass recruitment of Iraqis for security units the American administration was setting up. The recruits would be trained by American and Jordanian instructors. The President stressed that he wanted to see this Iraqi force holding down security and intelligence functions without delay in every corner of the country.

Aside from the new urgency, there is nothing new in the policy of handing these tasks from the American military to Iraqi units as soon as possible.

However, four separate events took place three weeks before the high-level White House confabulation. All were highly confidential and all deeply disturbing to the Bush administration. Although each has potentially momentous implications for America’s course in Iraq, they have all been kept under tight wraps and none has so far found expression in updated US decision-making.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources uncover the four events:

The Feldman Report:

President Bush took the advice of vice president Richard Cheney and in mid-September sent a strategic expert he recommended, the New York lawyer Noah Feldman, who is close to the Cheney circle and known for his original cast of mind, on a top-secret mission to Iraq for a fresh assessment of the situation on the ground. Defense secretary Rumsfeld approved the highly confidential mission.

Feldman returned with four disturbing conclusions:

1. Whatever policies America enacts in Iraq, the long-term result will be the same: Iraq will never embrace the path of democracy but will end up as a Muslim state.

2. The text of a constitution the US-appointed interim governing council is now compiling will never be accepted by the Iraqi people; it will ultimately make way for Islamic law, the Sharia. Even before America finishes shaping a democratic regime in Iraq, it can already be said that democracy has no chance of taking hold in the country.

3. That being the case, Feldman states his view that Iraq will not evolve into a pro-Western nation and American’s hopes in this regard will never be realized.

4. Neither is there any short-term or long-term prospect of Iraq ever signing a peace treaty with Israel. The Bush administration had hoped that the new Iraq would blaze the way for the old Arab regimes to make peace with Israel on a more amicable basis than the Egyptian-Israeli accord. Feldman advises Washington to abandon that hope.

Report on Foreign Fighters in Iraq:

The latest secret intelligence rundown of foreign combatants in Iraq has been laid before President Bush. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources reveal that the report finds as few as 200 to 400 foreigners fighting alongside Baath guerrilla forces. They are mostly Syrians, Chechens, Saudis, Sudanese and Yemenis. Most entered through Syria and are in close communication with their parent cells or bases on either side of the Iraqi-Syrian frontier. Their participation in attacks on American forces and suicide bombings is scaled as follows: the largest number is carried out by Chechens, followed by Syrians and Saudis. DEBKA-Net-Weekly 121 first revealed the presence of Chechen terrorists in Iraq on August 15 in an article captioned “International Islamic Guerrilla Force is Fighting US Forces in Iraq.” The units were sent to Iraq by the commander of Saudi forces in Chechnya, Abu Walid.

Senior Iranian Defector Waits in Prague for Washington

Last week, CIA director George Tenet reported to President Bush that a high-ranking Iranian defector had landed in Prague and brought a proposition to the CIA station in the city. In exchange for protection, American citizenship and a large cash reward, he would hand over the names of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who masterminded the most disastrous terrorist outrages in Baghdad, the August 7 bombing at the Jordanian embassy — the first large-scale attack on a non-American target — the August 19 suicide blast at UN Headquarters in which UN special representative Sergio de Mello died, and the August 29 Najef massacre and assassination of the venerated Shiite leader Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al Hakim and 100 others.

The defector claimed that those strikes were carried by the Al Quds Battalions, special units set up inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and under the direct command of its senior officer, Gen. Yaha Rahim Safavi.

(On August 28, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 123 reported on the Al Quds Battalions and their support for al Qaeda.)

The Iranian defector offered to lead the Americans to these units’ secret base in Iran at a location that is readily accessible to the Iraqi frontier. The units headed out of this base to carry out their big operations in Iraq.

Under exhaustive investigation to establish his bone fides, the Iranian defector awaits word from Washington in Prague.

If this defector’s information checks out, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s analysts believe it is capable of turning Washington’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq on its head, including the decisions reached at this week’s White House conference. It would mean that the guerrilla-terrorist war rampant in Iraq may well be run by Syria and Iran rather than Saddam Hussein and his Baathists. If so, how would the Bush administration handle this altered threat?

At his Rose Garden news conference Tuesday, October 28, Bush stressed: “Military action is our last resort.” He acknowledged that he is capable of “looking at the enemy and adjusting” in Iraq and presumably elsewhere. “We’ve chosen to put together a multinational strategy to deal with Mr. Kim Jong Il. Not every action requires a military response.”

These words have left everyone guessing.

US Representatives Negotiate with Kurdish Terrorists

Senior US government officials, including CIA officers, spent most of October in an unusually intensive effort towards creating conditions for Turkish troops to join the coalition forces in Iraq, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence and counter-terror sources. High-ranking Americans stationed in Baghdad and Mosul traveled to the northern Iraqi Kurdish town of Kandil to negotiate with Osman Ocalan, brother of Turkey's Kurdish Workers’ Party-PKK-Kadek leader, Abdallah Ocalan, who is confined for life on a Turkish island-prison in the Sea of Marmora

For the Americans, this was an unusual encounter since the organization Ocalan represents is listed as a dangerous terrorist group by the FBI and the State Department. It was set up by a small local Kurdish faction that calls itself the Social-Democratic Party, with the knowledge of the Turkish government in Ankara, for the purpose of extracting a promise from Ocalan that his men would not attack Turkish troops entering northern Iraq on their way to deploy in western Iraq.

Our sources report that six American-Kurdish encounters took place and ended without results.

Ocalan said his forces would hold their fire against Turkish contingents passing through northern Iraq if the Americans offered guarantees that the Turkish troops would not lay hands on them or take them captive. He also wanted Ankara to reduce prison sentences of Kurdish rebels and allow his brother better prison conditions.

These terms were turned down by Ankara.

The breakdown of the American initiative elicited the statement on Wednesday, October 29, from President Ahmed Sezer and prime minister Tayyip Erdogan: “No step has been taken to place Turkish soldiers in Iraq since the necessary conditions and agreement were not settled.”

For the time being, therefore, America has forfeited the only trained non-American military force willing and able to undertake combat missions in Iraq’s war zones. The Bush administration has not given up hope of bringing the Turks and Kurds together at some point. But for now, the Americans have suffered a setback to their plans for bringing order to Iraq by first vanquishing the pro-Saddam resistance.

Their willingness to do business with terrorists may cost dear; terrorist groups operating in Iraq may be encouraged to keep up the pressure on coalition forces in the hope of eventually forcing the Americans to talk terms with them.



Ramadan Blast

Saddam’s Guerrillas Pounce in Total Hush

The explosive start to the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan struck Baghdad like a bolt from the blue. The US-led coalition authorities in Iraq were caught unawares by the 48-hour campaign of death against target after target, American, international and Iraqi. Its most painful aspect was its exposure of the large hole in the ability of US intelligence to penetrate the command level of Saddam Hussein’s loyalist forces.

More than six months after his overthrow, the United States doesn’t have a clue to Saddam’s whereabouts, operations or intentions. US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz was lucky enough to escape two attacks, the first in Tikrit and then, Sunday, October 26, in Baghdad, from an audacious missile strike against the heavily-guarded al-Rashid hotel in Baghdad. Lieutenant-colonel Charle Buehring, the senior counter-terrorism adviser to chief civil administrator Paul Bremer, lost his life.

The next day, suicide car bombers hit Red Cross headquarters in the Iraqi capital and targeted four police stations. Monday’s toll, put later by Iraqi police sources at 57 dead and more than 220 injured, and confirmation of 233 attacks on coalition forces from October 22-29, provided bloody evidence that Saddam Hussein had succeeded in reconstituting his national chain of command

That US intelligence agencies lack the information for severing that chain is all the more embarrassing in view of the thousands of raids carried out by massive US forces against Saddam diehard bastions, in which thousands of army officers, former government officials and Saddam’s supporters and relatives have been detained and interrogated.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources report the belief that the Ramadan guerrilla offensive was the work of a special operations wing, called the “1920 Revolution Brigades”, which is comprised of Saddam loyalists and based in the Baghdad area.

The name relates to the Shiite insurgents who rebelled against the British occupation of Iraq in 1922. While the original Brigades are defunct and Shiites no part of his campaign, Saddam’s tacticians have craftily recycled the old name to lend religious tone to the resistance and so cement its connections with Al Qaeda and Saudi fighters who have flocked to his cause. It is also meant to show Iraq’s fencing-sitting Shiite majority that the deposed Iraqi ruler is willing to go out on a limb to challenge the occupying force in 2003, while present-day Shiites are failing to live up to the glories of their past revolt against an invader.

Three months to prepare suicide attack

Saddam’s “Brigades” are made up of two segments — diehard field commanders who do the fighting and intelligence officers who secure hideouts and provide the tools of assault, explosives-packed ambulances, car bombs and missile launchers. Some of the suicide killers are Iraqi Baathist hardliners; others Arab recruits from foreign countries, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror experts reveal these suicide bomb attacks are set up three months in advance to allow time for intensive preparations, training and intelligence-gathering. Dry runs are staged to familiarize the “martyrs”, especially the foreigners, with the geography of their field of operation, Baghdad, a large city of 5 million, and the routes to their targets.

Encouraged by the impact of their early Ramadan offensive, Saddam’s brigade commanders are eagerly planning escalation to the next stage of their campaign that will send missiles streaking towards US and other Western targets in the capital. Electronic intercepts of Iraqi websites have picked up word of a missile called Ramadan-1. Information about this weapon is sketchy, little beyond the presumption that it is a surface-to-surface missile with a short range of 10 to 12 km (six to seven miles). It is hard to tell if the missile is stored in one of the tunnel caches Saddam laid in in advance of the US invasion or a homemade Hizballah product smuggled into Iraq from Syria.

Evidence of a Hizballah role of this kind in the pro-Saddam guerrilla movement would strongly indicate that terrorist activities in Baghdad and Israel are synchronized.

The intercepted electronic messages also mention anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. These have been used before in Baghdad’s international airport compound.

Straight after Monday’s suicide attacks, Washington appealed yet again to Syria to seal its frontier crossings into Iraq with military units. Back in mid-September, Syria did indeed dispatch troops to the frontier in response to American demands. However they were given secret orders not to interfere with the guerrilla traffic in and out of Iraq. Now Damascus is not bothering to go through the motions again, claiming this time it is helpless to take effective blocking action on a border stretching for hundreds of kilometers across the desert. The expanse is so vast and empty, that the guerrillas easily dodge round the Syrian patrols.

US forces unprepared

While Baghdad is a very large metropolis that defies absolute security, nonetheless some of the actions of US military and intelligence arms are puzzling.

Why were US forces in Baghdad replaced by two fresh divisions, the First and Fourth, both unfamiliar with the city, just before the start of the Muslim holiday? Not only were they unwarned, they were operating in terra incognita, as was evident by the confusion reigning among US officers and enlisted men before and after the Rashid hotel attack and subsequent bomb attacks. The men also seemed to lack the proper training for dealing with major terrorist attacks. The failure of communications between US intelligence officers and their Iraqi counterparts was particularly jarring.

Why, too, was deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s mission to Iraq scheduled for the sensitive period of Ramadan eve? He was bound to become an irresistible target at a volatile period in the Muslim calendar. And why did US administrator Paul Bremer choose this of all times to absent himself in Washington? Even Middle East tyros understood that his absence would fuel an already unstable situation.



Saddam's Missing WMD

US Spy Satellites “Saw” Heavy Eve-of-War Convoys to Syria

The absence of a real, life-size chemical or biological weapon — or evidence of a banned nuclear program in Saddam’s Iraq — that dogs President George W. Bush’s footsteps wherever he goes, was partly offset this week by a statement from an authoritative figure, head of a top American spy agency. Lieutenant-general James Clapper Jr., the outgoing director of the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), said publicly what DEBKA-Net-Weekly first reported prior to the US war in Iraq.

According to Clapper, satellite images recording a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion in March had led him to believe “unquestionably” that illicit weapons material was moved outside Iraq.

“I think people below the Saddam Hussein and his sons’ level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse,” he said.

While hard pressed by the WMD debate, President Bush nevertheless decided this week to shift intelligence resources from David Kay’s WMD hunters, the 1,200-strong Iraq Survey Group, to boost counterinsurgency operation inside Iraq following the spate of bomb blasts that struck Baghdad. The Group still has nine months left to turn up proofs of Saddam’s forbidden programs for developing unconventional weapons that are substantial enough to silence Bush administration’s detractors and challengers.

The heavy traffic detected by General Clapper’s satellites was reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly on three different dates.

DNW 97, February 14, 2003, a little over a month before the war began, disclosed: “In the last two weeks, our military sources discovered that Iraq staged a major removal of its forbidden weapons systems, sending them overland by truck to Lebanon via Syria.”

DNW 106, April 25, 2003, 10 days after the capture of Baghdad, reported: “Though on the run, he (Saddam) retains control of sufficient stocks of unconventional weapons, intelligence, assets and money to wage war on the United States from bases and hideouts outside Iraq, where some of his WMD systems are also tucked away.”

Those systems, of course, had been hidden in Syria.

DNW 107, May 2, the day after President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq at an end, pointed to Syria as “having secretly disposed of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction” by hiding them in three places — two in the Lebanese Beqaa and one in Syria. The first site is located in a valley stretching between the Jabal Akroum Mountains and the Lebanese town of al Qabayyat and the Syrian border; the second at a point lying between the Lebanese towns of al Labway and Hirmil between the Orontes River and the Lebanese-Syrian border.

The third site is Syria’s underground military industrial facilities near Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.

Saddam’s weapons experts still guard Aleppo caches

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources have reconfirmed our first report that Iraq’s non-conventional weapons were moved to those three hiding places between January 10 and March 10, 2003, 10 days before the war began. They also reveal now that the Iraqi engineers, scientists and officers who managed Saddam’s WMD program remain in Aleppo and enjoy direct access to the stored weapons material.

We can now report exclusively that, in addition to NIMA surveillance, Israeli intelligence satellites, spy planes and assets on the ground also tracked the Iraqi-Syrian WMD convoys.

In the light of Clapper’s comments, sources in Washington said this week that the Kay team has been scrutinizing information on the WMD transfer to Syria as well as the possibility that some of the weapons systems were moved to Iran. This scenario DEBKA-Net-Weekly outlined several weeks before the war in its report of a secret visit Saddam’s son Uday paid to Teheran to procure large quantities of arms. He was turned down by Tehran which was then adjusting its military steps in the coming war with Washington.

On October 5, after delivering his interim report to a closed-doors congressional sitting, Kay complained that the national debate on whether or not Saddam was running illicit programs focused on what had not been found, such as a small vial of anthrax amid 600,000 tons of weapons in thousands of depots, private homes, farms and courtyards. An abandoned refrigerator or a junkyard could be the hiding place for a single contaminated shell assembled according to the instructions he found. The discovery by his team of 24 clandestine laboratories and four illegal missile programs would have made headlines had the UN inspections found them before the war. Now they were scarcely reported.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s weapons and intelligence experts have carefully studied the preliminary report Kay presented to Congress. He is clearly convinced that “banned activities” did take place in Saddam’s Iraq. He devotes long segments to detailing the instructions compiled by Iraqi intelligence for the rapid reassembly of chemical and biological weapons from material dispersed in various storage sites, together with detailed reports on how to strip the systems down to their component parts.

Some biological matter and chemicals for weapons system were separated out, their elements distributed and stored in different hiding places. Iraqi documents found by the Kay team contain guidelines for shipping and caching all the constituents in close proximity for fast assembly — no more than 15 minutes for loading forbidden substances on a bomb or artillery shell. Kay and his team have no doubt that these documents were no mere exercises in theory but practical directives.

All WMD roads lead to Damascus

The materials smuggled into northern Syria could present the same needle-in-a haystack problem as Iraq. They too would have been broken up and stored in separate locations according to the same Iraqi intelligence guidelines. However, teams of Iraqi scientists, engineers and military men holed up in Syria know the location of each weapons system, how it was taken apart, the time it would take to assemble all the pieces into a lethal weapon and, most importantly — how to do it. According to our intelligence sources, Saddam’s loyal associates who are still at large, Syrian military intelligence chiefs in Damascus and the heads of Syria’s military industries know exactly where the concealed hiding places are located and have in their possession lists of the weapons and banned materials stowed there.

In Washington, vice president Richard Cheney has co-opted new talent to his staff with ideas on the Syrian dilemma. David Wurmser, a neoconservative strategist who has urged the United States and Israel to work together to “roll back” the Syrian government, is Cheney’s new adviser on the Middle East.

Our sources in the American capital read the appointment as indicating that amid the drop in public confidence in the president’s handling of the post-war Iraq crisis, the neocons remain as influential has ever in the circles around the Bush administration. The Wurmser appointment looks like a straw in the wind at a time of rising Washington-Damascus rancor. The Syrians are angry over the US application of its veto to a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s October 5 air strike against a terrorist training base near Damascus and the bill approved by the House of Representatives for the imposition of sanctions against Syria, which continues to be listed by the state department as a sponsor of terror.

Wurmser, who is married to an Israeli, is head of Middle East studies at the Hudson Institute. In a paper he wrote in 1996, he urged Israel to instigate strikes on Syrian soil by its “proxy forces” in Lebanon. “Israel can shape its strategic environment,” he argued, “in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria.” The paper offered the view that Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq and Turkey would form a “natural axis” that would “squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi peninsula”.



Israel

Skids under Sharon and Mofaz

Municipal elections are normally of less than compelling international interest. However, the local poll that took place in Israel on Tuesday, October 28, turned out to be a seminal political occurrence on two scores. In the first, they were a platform for the ongoing campaign to unseat prime minister Ariel Sharon and defense minister Shaul Mofaz, which has been waged in recent months by local opposition politicians with solid backing from some European quarters.

The campaign did not get very far. However, this week, it was fueled from a completely unexpected source: Israel’s chief of staff, Lt.-Gen Mosha Yaalon, suddenly rose up and fired a broadside against the Sharon government’s Palestinian policies which he called disastrous to a select group of invited journalists.

Horrified officials in Jerusalem spoke of the damaging effect this outburst by the top Israeli soldier would have on the soldiers under his command who fight Palestinian terrorists day by day, on the country’s far-from-firm international standing and Sharon’s delicate relations with the Bush administration. Yet some of Sharon’s own Likud ministers, including foreign minister Silvan Shalom, hurried to endorse the general’s views against the government in which they serve. They only disparaged his manner of seeking to publish them, through the media instead of the proper forums.

Clearly, Sharon’s rivals scented weakness and were sharpening their claws.

On the very day of the outcry, six police investigators called at the prime minister’s residence and spent six hours questioning him on his involvement with his two sons in suspected illegal fundraising for his 1999 primaries campaign and allegations of improperly profiting from his sons’ business dealings over a Greek island.

Most legal experts believe the police investigation will lead nowhere and end up by closing the Sharon dossier. In the meantime, Sharon’s reputation and political standing are suffering profound injury.

In these circumstances, even municipal elections became the arena for a contest inside his party over which contender wouldl be first to knock the old man out and take his place.

Likud slipped, Labor and Shinui crashed

Whenever the media pundits and political mavens are certain that, this time, the Likud will be tossed out on its ear, they are confounded by the Israeli voter’s detestation of the alternatives — whether the peace-at-any-price left-wingers of Labor, the extreme right-wing factions, the ultra-religious parties, or the zigzaggers. Tuesday, October 28, the ruling Likud had its wings clipped but did not crash.

Hail to the victors: An emergent Israeli middle-of-the-road class of small entrepreneurs, self-employed professionals and members of the high-tech fraternity in their thirties and forties who seem to be surviving the bad times overtaking Israel with their own agenda. They want firstly to make a buck and live nicely — but are not prepared to let the Palestinians get away with anything. This rising class is made up of two seemingly different elements: third— or fourth-generation Sephardim born in Israel and Russian-born Israelis who have settled in comfortably and no longer regard themselves as new immigrants. Both are to be found in the crowded urban sprawl of central Israel.

Wholly cynical about politicians as a species, it is they who boosted independent mayoral candidates at the expense of established party men. Because of them, the ruling Likud did not pay the full price predicted for the Sharon government’s inability to end the Palestinian terror campaign or its ruthless economic program. Savvy Likud politicians like finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his deputy, Meir Sheetrit and trade minister Ehud Olmert identified this new as yet amorphous class of voter as a useful instrument for kick-starting their own post-Sharon leadership runs. In the short term, they served a useful purpose in filling the ranks of former Likud loyalists who defected to Shinui or left the country after being worn down by economic hardship and the security pressures.

While these voters were willing to divide their favors between independents and Likud, they shunned Shimon Peres’s pro-peace Labor, which had cherished hopes of mining the dragging war and the scandals even for slim gains to offset its devastating decline in the national elections. Labor’s ex-leader Amram Mitzna tried hurling epithets at the Likud leader (“Sharon is not a legitimate prime minister and most of the public is against him.”), Labor’s ally, trade union leader Yehoshua Peretz, tried to hijack the election with a series of crippling strikes.

But Labor found no straws to clutch. It looks as though this veteran party is doomed to continue its slide until it produces a young, charismatic leader capable of steering firmly towards the political center and attracting the next, highly pragmatic generation of voters.

Equally unavailing was the battle cry of “Anyone but Likud” plastered on billboards by the ultra-religious opposition Shas, which was tapped with Shinui (Change) which swept into government at its first national election earlier this year, as the certain victors. Shas hoped to lure away from Likud the poor, whose number has tripled in thirteen years, while Shinui hoped to strike roots as a permanent feature of the national political fabric.

Young middle class swings towards independents

In the event, the electorate retained 13 incumbent mayors who did a good job, confronted 39 hopefuls with runoffs and went for can-do independent candidates who promised to take care of pressing local problems This was the pattern in working class Bat Yam, where solo runner Shlomo Lehiani won the mayoral election, in Ramat Gan where incumbent Zvi Bar remained aloof from parties and kept his seat and in Beersheba, where Yaakov Turner kept his job.

Two issues that cut through the general voter apathy were the environment and the increasing financial distress in outlying districts — most pronounced in the sparsely populated south of the country, where Likud lost most heavily.

While bruised by the recession, the towns of central Israel are home to the new entrepreneurial talent that is less sentimental about the social inequities resulting from the double-fisted economic policies of finance minister Netanyahu.

The election results indicate Israelis are willing to give his call for hard work a chance -

a theme different from a clarion call by Labor and union leaders for a general strike that would paralyze an entire country over the dismissal of 1,000 government workers from a bloated civil service.

Despite the stubbornly high unemployment figure of more than 10 percent, and the individual’s tough daily grind, the Israeli economy and the shekel have begun to rebound.

Shinui has become one of its first victims. Just nine months ago, right after the parliamentary poll, Shinui claimed pride of place as the new center party and lodestone for the new and old Israeli middle class. But, instead of working for a broader power base, its leaders Tommy Lapid and Avraham Poraz have exploited their first terms as cabinet ministers to focus on bashing religious Jews, a campaign that held little appeal for the majority of the new middle class outside of Tel Aviv.

Shinui also began gravitating toward the left in a bid to attract Meretz supporters. Justice minister Lapid then made a crucial “bucks for the boys” mistake by disbursing tens of millions of shekels to Shinui supporters, whom he said represented the best in Israeli culture. All Lapid did was to show the Shinui constituency that the newly voted in party did not represent change but more of the same. Shinui paid paid the price at its first municipal election. Six of its seven mayoral candidates failed to get in. In its Tel Aviv bastion, Shinui was trounced by the largest single council faction, a truly new party founded by and for senior citizens, and Meretz.



HOT POINTS

26 October: The thought-provoking memo penned by Donald Rumsfeld ten days before rockets slammed into the al Rashid hotel, barely missing his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, contained questions loaded enough to be rhetorical. But his key question was: “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the clerics are recruiting, training and deploying?” Later, he called for a “21st —century information agency to help fight the war of ideas against the Islamic “radical madrassas, alongside military victories.

The defense secretary also noted that US intelligence capabilities have been “compromised through spies and through trading of information among rogue nations and terrorist networks.”

It has taken America long years to appreciate that intelligence is the most sensitive aspect of the global war on terror. It was not immediately accepted that, without hostile spies planted inside America, information trading among terrorist groups and electronic espionage capabilities, the traumatic 9/11 terrorist assault on America could not have been carried out — any more than Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could have managed to elude American pursuit for so long. Intelligence capabilities are also the key to Yasser Arafat’s sustained long-running terror campaign against Israel.

For nine days this month, Palestinian terrorist attacks were confined to targeting military and security personnel — three US CIA security men and six Israeli troops, a tactic possible only with the help of precise intelligence. Similarly, the disastrous August 19 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, in which 22 people were killed and 150 injured, was no random outrage. Vital inside intelligence pointed the assassin to the where and when of Sergio de Mello, the UN secretary’s personal representative in Baghdad and mainstay of US administrator Paul Bremer’s projects for putting Iraq on its feet. This information would not have been available in Baghdad’s bazaars — only in Washington, the UN Center in New York, the US command center in Iraq or the targeted official’s own office at UN Headquarters in the Iraqi capital. The terrorists’ successful assassination testifies to this level of inside penetration — and is an example of the sort of “compromised” US intelligence capabilities troubling Rumsfeld.

Clearly, if the theatres of the counter-terror are examined one by one, it will be seen that the enemy’s resources, recruitment, intelligence, intelligence and logistical support from sponsor-states and cash flow have not diminished but expanded.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban is retaking lost territory. In Pakistan, banned Islamic terror groups have reestablished ties with the SIS. In Saudi Arabia, terrorist cells abound and Riyadh has failed to persuade Saudi al Qaeda activists to head out to Middle East countries. Syria continues to host the largest terrorist command center concentration in the world as well as a madrassa network. Lebanon is the Hizballah’s base of operations with facilities for Iranian Revolutionary Guards and al Qaeda units. One of America’s most wanted terrorists Imad Mugniyeh lives South Lebabon under Hizballah protection. In Iran, al Qaeda’s deploys rear bases. In the Palestinian Authority, most of Arafat’s terror cells remain operational and increasingly violent.

27 October: In 48 hours, the Ramadan bombing offensive on Baghdad claimed 35-40 dead — mostly Iraqis — and over 220 injured. It struck terror at the heart of the Iraqi capital, first targeting US administration and military headquarters at the heavily secured landmark al Rashid hotel missing US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz escaped unhurt. The next day, Monday, October 27, five suicide bomb-cars targeted International Red Cross center and four police stations. One attack was foiled by Iraqi police who shot and wounded the only assailant to be caught. He had a Syrian passport and drove a car packed with TNT and three mortar rounds.

To achieve this clockwork precision, the deadly series must have been planned in detail for months and the targets carefully chosen with the help of expert intelligence — which the Americans clearly lack. The masterminds showed audacity and cunning.

Saddam Hussein’s Interim Command for Armed Activities against US and Zionist Forces attached an assassination squad of Iraqi loyalists and allied combatants to each of the six governors he appointed (see last week’s DEBKA-Net-Weekly) to mark down Iraqis or foreigners cooperating with the Americans or the provisional Governing Council.

One or more of those squads may be presumed to have carried out the strikes against the two most sensitive targets — the al Rashid Hotel and International Red Cross headquarters.

28 October: Asked by Irish parliamentarian David Norris how Israel could talk about “executing (sic) Arafat if it is indeed, as it likes to say, the only democracy in the Middle East”, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon retorted: “Don’t worry about our democracy. Arafat lives, and not only is he healthy, but he is very active in organizing acts of murder against women and children.”

He went on to deny any intention of killing him, “although the man is responsible for the deaths of&Mac183; thousands&Mac183; mostly civilians.”

He took advantage of the visit by of 170 European parliamentarians from 24 countries to settle some scores: I have never heard anyone in the European Parliament speak out against Iran’s public threat to destroy Israel or its race for a nuclear weapon. “They only call me when the battery of Arafat’s mobile runs low — never when Israeli families are wiped out by Palestinian suicides&Mac183;”

Sharon’s abrasiveness was influenced by the discovery of an innovative plan afoot in Brussels that was detailed in an article by Thomas L. Friedman in the October 27 New York Times: To secure Europe, NATO must stabilize regions to its south. Iraq, after getting a democratic government, will need a force “over the horizon” as guarantor. But NATO is short of “usable” troops and for the ideal multinational force an Arab-Muslim component must be recruited. Egypt is the best bet because it has a huge surplus of military manpower.

In other words, both Iraq and Egypt would join NATO. Israel would then be co-opted to the alliance as well. If Israelis and Palestinians reach a peace accord, they will need a credible multinational force to police it, and the only one would be a US-led NATO force. Since US, European and Canadian forces are “maxed out” elsewhere, Israel would have to accept Egyptian-Iraqi “peacekeepers” provided they were packaged under American command.

Lo and behold, Arafat’s dream of an international force to police the conflict becomes attainable with the help of the creative strategists of Brussels.

This gambit has surfaced of late in different guises.

Nineteen days before the New York article appeared, a DEBKAfile informant heard a remark from a highly-placed British intelligence official to the effect that: “Some people in the West believe the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was a mistake. Since its entire Jewish population is little more than 5 million, why should not the US and NATO finance their relocation in other countries and so solve many Middle East problems?”

This is the scheme lurking behind the recent rush of anti-government political initiatives on the part of Israeli leftwing circles who maintain intimate connections in certain European capitals. The Israeli pilots’ revolt against operations in Palestinian territory was enthusiastically backed by the same group that went on to instigate the “Geneva understandings”. At the core of this draft is a panacea for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: All points at issue will be brought to international arbitration or handed over to international monitors.

The realization of the Brussels plan would satisfy Arafat’s demand for internationalization of his dispute with Israel because it would internationalize the Jewish state. Israel’s standing as an independent democracy would make way for its subservience to international rule. This proposition would not be likely to go down with the Israeli voter. It certainly explains why two senior NATO members, Belgium and France, enthusiastically granted its senior author, Yossi Bailin, $7 million for domestic marketing and promotion as an official document.

29 October: A shrill chorus of threats has been emanating from Syria, the Palestinians and the Hizballah as the Middle East heads toward another bleak winter.

President Bashar Assad, smarting from Israel’s October 5 retaliatory air strike against a terrorist training camp at Ein Hatsav 15 miles from Damascus, dispatched his military chief, General Hassan Turkmani, and deputy chief of staff general Ali Habib to Beirut on Monday, October 27. They notified Lebanese leaders that any future Israel strikes would bring forth Syrian reprisals for which Lebanon would be required to stand shoulder to shoulder with Syria and open up its air space

Syrian foreign minister Farouk a-Shara had already spelled out Syria’s intentions of striking the Golan Heights if attacked again.

For Damascus, artillery or missile attacks against Israeli targets on the Golan Heights would be regarded as legitimate military action inside Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. Hizballah uses a similar argument to justify its shelling attacks in the disputed Har Dov/Shebaa Farms region which remained in Israeli hands after the UN approved the pullback of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon to the international frontier in May 2000.

This change in the strategic situation on its northern frontiers not only poses a challenge for Israel but represents a dramatic reversal for Washington’s efforts to stabilize the Lebanese government and strengthen its pro-US leaders, such as prime minister Rafik Hariri by weakening Syrian and Hizballah influence in Lebanon.

On the Palestinian front, prime minister Ahmed Qurie, better known as Abu Ala, has decided to stay on after forging a seven-point pact with Yasser Arafat.

DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources reveal the key points of the pact:

The Palestinians will refuse to join Israel in peace negotiations as long as construction of Israel’s separation fence continues. Any Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire agreement must be based on terms quite different from the conditions of what Abu Ala calls “Abu Mazen’s failed hudna”.

The Palestinians will demand the evacuation of settlements as condition number one for a ceasefire. No Palestinian administration will agree to dismantle terrorist infrastructure.

Abu Ala has cast his lot in with the “rais” (boss) and does not seek relations with the Americans or Europeans.

Hizballah

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Hassan Nasrallah warned the German mediators he was giving Sharon one last chance to carry out the prisoner exchange as negotiated thus far in relation to the Lebanese prisoners. Otherwise, the Shiite group would resume its attacks against Israel, including kidnaps of soldiers and civilians. Official Israeli sources do not credit the Shiite extremist’s claim that the barrage Hizballah loosed on Monday was unrelated to the prisoner issue. Tuesday, October 28, Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz stated: “Israel has very deep information of the Hizballah’s intention to carry out a major attack in the north”.

http://www.debka.com