Mideast Roundup
Mid East War
1. Iraq and Hizballah under Assault
In total hush, the US has embarked on the next stage of its global assault on terrorism: the opening steps of the much-awaited Middle East war. Twin operations are reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly to be in their opening stages ®¢ the thrust into Iraq and Israeli elite units' strikes inside Lebanon against the Iran-sponsored Hizballah group.
In both cases, the action is covert, pinpointing military, economic and political targets.
(See also DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 70 of July 26 for article on accelerated military preparations in target region.).
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources have learned that the White House and Pentagon based their crucial go-ahead decision on conclusions reached at a comprehensive war game secretly run by the Pentagon in Boston last week. The players rehearsed optional military approaches for the offensive against Iraq. In consequence, new tactical decisions were reached in Washington as to strategy of the Iraq campaign, amid a flood of conflicting reports - some of them disinformation.
The war game and its lessons
According to our military sources, senior officers from the operational branches of the British, French, Turkish, Dutch, Egyptian and Jordanian general commands took part. On the US side were commanders from various branches of the US military, including the central command, counter-terror units, special forces, the navy, marines, air force and representatives of US intelligence services, including the national security council and the CIA.
The war game produced a crop of lessons and key developments:
1.
American special forces units are now advanced deep in Iraqi territory, targeting the Baghdad area, important Iraqi cities, key military camps and troop concentrations, airfields and transportation routes. This operation is programmed for swift, sharp hits at simultaneous targets to inflict maximum casualties among Iraqi security forces and sap their fighting spirit and morale. Rumors of these pinpointed setbacks are intended to reach the civilian population and undermine national confidence.
The Pentagon has now plotted this stage of the offensive to be the softening up lead-in to the main action.
2.
The war game in Boston showed that, despite the network of new air, naval and land bases the United States has built or expanded in Qatar, Kuwait, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Kenya, it will need after all ground facilities in certain Arab countries, to be assured of winning the war against Iraq. They are: the northern Jordanian air base at Mafraq, Egypt's Cairo-West military airfield and the massive Prince Sultan airbase northeast of the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The war simulation also demonstrated that for the campaign to succeed, the US navy and air force cannot do without full control of the Suez Canal and its airspace.
3.
Belying widespread reports that the United States was set to open its offensive from the north and push south directly to the Baghdad region, American war planners were persuaded by the war game's outcome to chart flexible, optional permutations which may work independently or in combination:
A. Invasion from the south
This plan is built around an evolving main offensive launched from Kuwait in the south. Two US corps comprising six or seven armored divisions will head out in two directions: east and north, their mission: to seize control of the oil fields and Shiite Muslim regions of southern and central Iraq. (The Shi'ite community numbers slightly more than 16 million, or 65 percent of Iraq's total population of about 23 million.
(See separate article in this issue on the US-Iran tug-of-war over the Iraqi Shiites.)
The first column heading east will make for Iraq's chief port city, Basra, capturing the big land and naval base at Umm Qasar along the way. It will then seize the Safwan air base. In addition to taking control of the Iraqi shore of the Shatt al-Arab mouth, Iraq's naval outlet to the Gulf, the force will advance towards the Iraqi side of the Khozistan oil fields and then capture them
(More about US-Iranian relations and role assigned the Khozistan Liberation Front in a later article.).
The advance softening up stage here has started with elements of the Khozistan Liberation Front, trained and commanded by American officers, already fighting alongside US special forces in sorties against Iraqi targets. It was these strikes that sparked the high state of alert declared this week in Iraqi army units along its Kuwait and Saudi frontiers.
When the main offensive begins, the second US force will head north toward the Shiite hub city of Najef, capturing en route the Iraqi airfields of Shaibah West, north of Zubayr, and Tallit. Here, too, the Americans are assured of local support from militias attached to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, Iraq's largest Shiite opposition group, whose leaders are based in Tehran.
The results of the war game have not altered a tactical constant of the war plan noted in the last issue of DEBKA-Net-Weekly, namely the decision to occupy key Iraqi air bases at an early stage of the offensive. This tactic will enable the US army to operate from inside the country. Engineering teams stand ready to upgrade Iraqi air installations at lightening speed and prepare them to serve as internal launching pads for American warplanes, helicopters and cargo planes to go out and expand the territory under American control.
B. The central front
This plan calls for a US force built around a backbone of armored and special forces to push into western Iraq along with Jordanian forces and seize the strategic group of air bases - H-3 northwest, H-3 northeast, H-3 main base and the H-3 landing strip, which consists of a stretch of highway running from western Iraq across the border into central Jordan. US and Jordanian forces will also capture H-2, northeast of the Iraqi city of Ar Rutbah.
As in the south, here too small units of US special forces have gone into action ®¢ this time with Jordanian special forces ®¢ for strikes at Iraqi command centers, transportation routes and military and supply convoys, thereby preparing the ground in this sector too for the main thrust. On this front, the United States will have the use of units stationed for some months in Jordan. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, they are stationed in two bases in close proximity to one another on the kingdom's eastern border with Iraq and at the Jordanian air base of Ruwayshid, while a smaller contingent is located further north at the air base in Wadi al-Murbah. Formerly an airstrip serving light planes and helicopters tracking smugglers and minor Iraqi incursions, this base has been converted by US army engineers into a major air installation.
C. The northern front
This sector has so far seen more military engineering work than combat.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, US engineers and equipment are working round the clock in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq to throw up a series of six to eight small airfields that will cater to the main body of American and Turkish forces when they cross over into Iraq. The new fields, some of which are no more than widened landing strips, will also serve the fighter planes and helicopters providing the special forces with air cover. The airfields are strung along three strategic axes.
Axis 1, or the western axis, starts in the northern Kurdish city of Zako and stretches southwest along the Iraqi border with Syria to the city of Sinjar, west of the oil city of Mosul.
Axis 2, or the central axis, stretches from Zako south to the Kurdish-controlled city of Irbil, located between the two main Iraqi oil cities of the north ®¢ Mosul and Kirkuk. The airfields now under construction are points on the axis.
Axis 3, or the eastern axis, stretches from Irbil to the Kurdish power and government hub in northern Iraq, Sulamaniya.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts report that work on the air bases is almost finished and the facilities are practically ready for limited use by US or Turkish warplanes and helicopters. They are going up behind the backs of Iraqi armored divisions deployed along the Lesser Zab and Greater Zab rivers. Although the American engineers pose as personnel working for Kurdish construction contracting firms, Iraqi air and ground reconnaissance units almost certainly know what's up, but have so far made no move to interfere with the work.
2. Resistance Thaws in Riyadh and Cairo
A number of Arab leaders, hitherto dead set against the US military campaign to unseat Saddam Hussein, have quietly experienced a late-in-the-day change of heart, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and political Middle Eastern sources. What changed their minds ®¢ in the nick of time for Washington - is the onset of America's military ground operations in Iraq, although this policy transformation is being kept as closely under wraps as its cause.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the most notable converts.
Saudi Arabia relents
The most remarkable about-face is that of Saudi crown prince Abdullah. In recent weeks the rift between the de facto Saudi monarch and the White House yawned ever more widely, as Abdullah drew closer to fundamentalist Wahhabi Muslim elements and conservative tribal chiefs at home. He went so far as to ask US forces, traditional bulwark of the Saudi throne, to leave the kingdom and forbade them the use of the big Prince Sultan air base northeast of Riyadh.
Suddenly, a few days ago ®¢ according to circles close to the crown prince ®¢ he sent word to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that he would be prepared to turn a blind eye to American military use of Saudi military installations, including the Prince Sultan air base, for its military assault on Iraq ®¢ an unexpected windfall for the US campaign command.
The true extent of Abdullah's change of heart is not yet clear, nor is his rationale.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts and sources offer some logical hypotheses:
1.
Abdullah is afraid Iran or Iraq may hit Saudi or Gulf oil fields during their counter-offensive to the US-led military assault, and is scared of being caught without protection. He knows the Bush administration is rapidly topping up its emergency strategic oil reserve to around 700 million barrels ®¢ a sure sign the United States is guarding against a total oil cutoff from the Persian Gulf. Even if the oil fields were spared attack, military or political circumstances could lead to a production halt. In either case, the House of Saud would have need of its historic military cooperation with the United States.
2.
A degree of military cooperation over Iraq still lingers between Riyadh and Washington, albeit on an ad hoc basis. Abdullah, despite his slide towards Islamist extremists and acceptance of al Qaeda partisans, present and past, which so angers Washington, is a realist when it comes to Saddam Hussein. While cultivating a friendship with the Iraqi ruler, the Saudi crown prince never forgets that the Iraqi ruler is capable at any time of imperiling the royal family and his chances of acceding to the throne. Saddam's brutal regime, his territorial aspirations in the Gulf and the arsenal he has built up of weapons of mass destruction hang menacingly over Saudi Arabia, no less than the United States and Israel.
3.
Abdullah appears to have seen the light the moment he learned from his intelligence chiefs that American troops are already engaged in Iraq. He appears to reckon that when the smoke of battle clears, Saddam will most likely be gone and the Americans will be left in control of an Iraq carved into federally linked autonomous entities. According to the post-Saddam map of the region drafted in Washington, federal Iraq promises to become a welcome buffer between the oil kingdom and Shi'ite Iran.
4.
One of Washington's military plans - to advance from the south and seize control of the Shiite regions of southern Iraq ®¢ may appeal particularly to Abdullah. A US-sponsored autonomous Shi'ite province in Iraq could serve as model for the Shi'ite regions of eastern Saudi Arabia and their administration links with Riyadh. An alliance between the two Shi'ite entities would serve Abdullah's goals to offset Iranian influence among Saudi Shi'ites.
5.
The feud tearing into the House of Saud has reached the point that Abdullah needs Washington's support to hang on to power. Outside the kingdom's borders - and in the pages of DEBKA-Net-Weekly and DEBKAfile - the schism has been attributed primarily to differences among the princes over Abdullah's initiative in setting up a Riyadh-Teheran-Baghdad-Damascus bloc and its support for such terrorist groups as Hizballah, al-Qaeda and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
But our Saudi experts report a new bone of contention is dominating Riyadh: the escalating war over who succeeds to the throne after the next two kings: When Abdullah succeeds, his half-brother Sultan, the defense minister, takes over as crown prince. But after that comes a blank. The order of succession set by the late King Faisal half a century ago stops with Sultan. The fierce rivalries besetting the estimated 6,000 princes of the House of Saud have become fixed more intensely on the line of succession than on the degree to which the kingdom is involved in global terrorism.
Abdullah may have decided to play along with Washington in order to buy a helping hand for ensuring that the succession after Sultan passes to his branch of the royal family, before it is extended to another branch.
Whatever the reasons for Abdullah's about-face, they have led to his acceptance of the American air force's reinstatement in valuable Saudi bases and the freedom to use its skies in the war against Iraq.
Egypt follows
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak came round to very discreetly endorsing the US offensive against Iraq after he heard about the Saudi crown prince Abdullah's about face. He too informed President Bush that he would be acting on the quiet and would continue to speak out against the American campaign. But, at the same time, he would place the Suez Canal and the giant Cairo West air base at the disposal of the US navy and air force, a tremendous boost for the American war effort. US aircraft carriers and other warships in the Mediterranean will be able to take advantage of the short cut through Suez to the Red Sea and Jordan's Aqaba, the main supply port for Jordan-based US forces, before sailing on to the Persian Gulf.
However, a new fly in the ointment is fast developing in the improved Washington-Cairo relationship as a result of the recently-signed Sudanese peace agreement. On Thursday, August 1, Egyptian foreign minister Ali Maher declared his government adamantly opposed to this accord, calling it a red line.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly explains Egypt's resistance to the Sudanese deal on the grounds that it provides for Sudan to be partitioned between the Muslim North and the Christian-animist south, along the lines of the Bush administration's plan to redraw Middle East and Africa borders. Egypt is deeply concerned lest control of the Blue Nile pass into the hands of the Christian rebels.
3. Washington and Tehran Vie for Iraq's Shiites
Perhaps the strangest bedfellows made by the US campaign against Iraq are America itself and the hardline ayatollahs of Teheran.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington and the Gulf, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with his senior political adviser Hashemi Ranfsanjani okayed a secret visit to Washington by the Tehran-based Iraqi Shiite opposition leader, Mohamed Baqir al-Hakim, head of a group calling itself the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution. In fact they gave a US air force plane permission to land at an air base near Tehran and take off on August 1 with the Iraqi Shiite leader on board.
This episode does not signify a relaxation in the animosities governing Washington-Tehran relations. On the contrary ®¢ both countries are rivals for the future control of Iraq's largest community, some 16 million Shi'ites who inhabit the oil-rich region of the south.
Why then, did Iran's leaders agree to let al- Hakim be flown to Washington?
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in the Gulf cite two reasons:
1.
The Saddam regime's removal is of such paramount importance for Iran, that its leaders have decided not to impede the early stages of the American military assault on Baghdad ®¢ even if the Americans employ Shiite militias to achieve their goals. If those goals are the disappearance of Saddam's rule together with his security apparatus and powerful Republican Guard divisions, Iraq's Shi'ites would win a reprieve from the Iraqi Sunni Muslim threat hanging over their heads. Having failed to blunt Saddam's Sunni sword by their own political and military efforts, the ayatollahs are willing enough to leave the job to the Americans and even smooth the way for them to cultivate al Hakim as a war ally.
2.
Washington's invitation to the Iraqi Shiite leader is a dark secret for two reasons: First, members of the Bush administration have been vehemently outspoken in their criticism of the Tehran regime and cannot afford to let it be known that they are now employing an Iranian protÎgÎ as a war ally. Second, for the same reason, the other seven Iraqi opposition leaders invited to Washington next week will never accept al Hakim as one of their number or even a member of the new federal government, else they will look like collaborators with the Iranian enemy.
This fits the Iranian game plan. The rulers of Tehran will not accept an American role in establishing an autonomous Shiite government in southern Iraq or choosing Shiite representatives in the new federal Iraqi administration in Baghdad.
Iran has taken three steps for damage control:
A.
Hakim was warned before he flew off to Washington that if he betrayed Iran and switched his allegiance over to the American side, Iran would raise the pro-Iranian Shiite clergy and is intelligence agents in south Iraq to overthrow him as Shiite leader.
B.
To give substance to their threat, the Iranians declared a general military call-up and placed on alert the Badr Brigade, the special commando force training for years to operate inside Iraq. Composed of pro-Iranian Iraqi Shi'ites who defected or fled to Iran from Saddam's religious persecution, the 3,000-strong force is trained in guerrilla warfare and stationed in four bases along the Iran-Iraq border. Ten days ago, small units of five to eight infiltrated Iraq at points in the south and the north. The Badr squads made for the southern oil region and began skirmishing with Khozistan Liberation Front contingents fighting with US special forces, therefore striking at the American advance action in the region against Iraq.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, the Badr units were ordered to destroy the Khozistan Liberation Front guerrilla forces aiding the Americans for fear they may cross into Iranian Khozistan and touch off an anti-Tehran revolt in this oil-rich region.
Tehran has long-standing designs on southern Iraq's oil fields, which the presence of the Iraqi Khozistan guerrillas would block. Badr Brigade spies have gone there on advance logistical and intelligence missions in case Tehran decides to grab those oilfields before the Americans get there.
Finally, the Iranians want the Khozistanis out of the way of a possible Badr Brigade advance on the Shiite cities of Iraq, Najef and Karbala.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, a separate group of Badr fighters was recently spotted moving over the northern and eastern hills overlooking the northern Iraqi oil city of Mosul, in the company of fighters of the Kurdish Hizballah, an organization controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
US intelligence estimates that these mixed pro-Iranian squads were sent to keep an eye on US special forces in southern and northern Iraq, and spy out the land in case Tehran orders strikes against the American military presence.
4. Saddam Bids for Tehran's Help Against US Attack
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources confirm that Saddam made a serious bid for an understanding with Iran to join forces against the American offensive. They reveal that his son Qusay led the initiative.
Iranian authorities have gone to much trouble to conceal the details of Qusay Hussein's talks with senior Iranian officials. But DEBKA-Net-Weekly has uncovered the following:
Qusay's interlocutor was Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, acting commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the strongman of the biggest national military force after the army. He is also fiercely anti-American and a rabid supporter of terrorist attacks against the US presence in the region, especially in the Gulf and Emirates.
When they met in a small town in Kermanshah province near the Iran-Iraq border, Qusay laid down a list of requests. He asked Iran to:
In return, Qusay promised to arrest and extradite to Iran all the leaders of the Iranian opposition Mujahideen e-Khalq, which uses Iraqi territory for launching sabotage activities inside the Islamic Republic. Teheran regards the Mujahideen e-Khalq as the most powerful and dangerous Iranian opposition group. As a gesture of goodwill, Iraq handed over to Tehran a large group of dozens of Mujahideen. They were imprisoned immediately in Teheran and Iranian TV plans to feature them soon in televised "confessions" and denunciations of their former comrades.
Iran's response to Qusay's requests was grudging to say the least.
The message from Tehran to Baghdad was terse:
"We will not sell you any weapons. We will treat Iraq in accordance with our Islamic interests and the changing situation in your country. We will not open our borders but, as always, will supply humanitarian assistance to the citizens of neighboring countries."
Iran added a demand for Iraq curtail the activities of the Mujahideen e-Khalq and close its bases "without pre-conditions".
5. Washington Is Advised to Go for Saddam's Sons
The most surprising result of the Boston war game falls under two headings:
The first and most striking finding is that, in the interests of a quick victory and clean removal of the Saddam regime, Washington would do better to liquidate Saddam Hussein's sons, Qusay and Uday, rather than concentrating on the father.
The Iraqi ruler, the players found, has laid plans for his sons ®¢ especially Qusay, who is partially paralyzed after an attempt on his life ®¢ to seize the reins of government the moment he is gone. The two would retain control of the national armed forces and security services, as well as the elite Republican Guards, which is exclusively loyal to Saddam's family and his Takriti clan. Its divisions are also equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry in the Iraqi arsenal and have carte blanche to move around in Baghdad, unlike the rest of the armed forces.
The course recommended by the Boston players is to start off by capturing or killing Uday and Qusay and only eliminating Saddam when his sons have been disposed of and are no longer a threat, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources.
The second finding is that it would be a mistake to establish an Iraqi government in exile. This maneuver would only bolster Saddam's regime while uniting the main Iraqi tribes behind him. Better to set up an alternative government inside Iraq that would hasten the delegitimization of Saddam's government and also rouse opposition forces lying dormant or afraid to act without a supportive framework.
The war game participants drew the outlines of this alternative administration according to a federal model representing all of Iraq's important opposition groups. The heads of these groups are due in Washington next week to take part in the founding conference of a new government. They include the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani, the Kurdistan Democratic Party headed by Mustafa Barazani, and the Saudi-backed Iraqi exile group, The National Accord.
Saudi crown prince Abdullah's green light for National Accord leaders to attend the meeting is further testimony to the improved understanding between Riyadh and Washington on the Iraq issue.
The meeting, to be co-hosted by Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, will "discuss next steps in our coordinating work with Iraqi opposition figures," and encourage "coordination and cooperation among these groups," a State Department spokesman said.
One notable absentee is Mohamed Baqir al-Hakim, the Teheran-based leader of Iraq's dissident Shiite Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution. The organizers feared that his presence would be taken as evidence that the participants were working with Iran, the enemy, to topple Saddam. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington can report exclusively that Hakim has been flown to the US capital on board a special US air force plane and he will hold separate, top secret talks with American officials.
6. IDF Pre-Empts Hizballah Threat to N. Israel and US Targets
Israeli special forces units have secretly crossed into Lebanon this week, aiming to strike at primary Hizballah targets, according to an exclusive report from DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources. Those targets are the terrorist group's command centers, bases, convoys and the routes its units frequent; its missile positions and the three lines of defense the Hizballah set up in south Lebanon (as reported in DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 68, July 12).
Monday, July 29, a large battle erupted between Israeli soldiers and a Hizballah ambush. The sounds of fighting spilled over into northern Israel, arousing some curiosity. But otherwise the Israeli public has no inkling as yet of the engagement in Lebanon.
The only sign from Damascus that something out of the way was going on came in a speech by Syrian president Hafez Assad on Thursday, August 1, at a ceremony marking the 57th anniversary of the Syrian armed forces. Assad said the military must maintain the highest state of alert and total preparedness in the face of coming events.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts link Israel's military activity in Lebanon directly to developments on the Iraqi front.
A.
It is aimed both at neutralizing the threat of Syrian- and Iranian-supplied Hizballah missiles flying against northern and central Israel as well as pre-empting the opening of a Hizballah anti-American missile front to the rear of the US offensive against Iraq once the way is underway.
B.
Disarming the Hizballah's military threat will expose Syria to direct military pressure from Israel. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources and experts stress that the Bush administration is supremely concerned with the situation in Syria and Assad's posture on the offensive against Saddam Hussein. Assad stands out as the only Arab leader still deeply committed to supporting Saddam's regime in Baghdad.
Intelligence reports reaching Washington from Damascus reveal that the Syrian economy is almost totally reliant on two sources of revenue: the wholesale smuggling of Iraqi oil to world markets via Syria's Middle Eastern ports, as well as its commissions for allowing foreign arms destined for Iraq to unload at those ports and transit Syria by rail to Iraq's arsenals. The more arms Iraq buys, the higher Syria's earnings. Last month, Assad secretly gave Syrian officers and personnel and favored civil servants a 15 percent pay hike, adding to his popularity.
So far, Washington has refrained from applying direct pressure against the Syrian-Iraqi strategic partnership, out of reluctance to overtax its fragile relations with Saudi Arabia's crown prince Abdullah or even Iranian leaders. Both patronize Assad for their own reasons.
But that could change. With relatively large US military contingents, including special forces and engineers, now operating in northern Iraq in areas near the Iraq-Syria border, the US command has been concerned about the possibility of Iranian commando units turning up to confront them. Now, American commanders worry about Hizballah terrorist bands crossing into northern and western Iraq from Syria, which they can with relative ease.
Assad realizes Hizballah will not be able to hold out for long if Israel piles on the military pressure in Lebanon. He knows the Syrian army, deployed in central Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa Valley, will eventually have to confront the Israeli military. The fighting could spill over into Syrian territory, cut off Syria's links with Hizballah and put an end to Syria's lucrative trade with Iraq and its main source of revenue.
HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives
27 July: The speech delivered Friday night, July 26, by US ambassador John Negroponte at the UN Security Council in New York, drew little attention, surprisingly because it snapped Washington's last ties to some critical historical conventions of the Middle East conflict.
Negroponte: "For any resolution to go forward, the United States ®¢ which has a veto in the 15-nation council ®¢ would want it to have the following four elements:
An explicit condemnation of terrorism;
A condemnation by name of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas groups, groups that have claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on Israel;
An appeal to all parties for a political settlement of the crisis;
A demand for improvement of the security situation as a condition for any call for a withdrawal of Israeli armed forces to positions they held before the September 2000 start of a Palestinian uprising in which 1,467 Palestinians and 564 Israelis have died."
Just hours before the council session, Friday afternoon, Palestinian gunmen killed from ambush four Israelis driving on a road south of Hebron.
The "Al Aqsa Intifada" Yasser Arafat declared in September 2000 is denied acceptance as the uprising of an oppressed people against a brutal occupier; it is branded as a war of terror, which Israel has every right to combat and defeat.
DEBKAfile's Washington and Middle East sources examine the motives behind this dramatic departure.
A.
The US relies on Israel as a rear base in its approaching assault on Iraq - ranging from air bases at its disposal to military stores and medical facilities, including hospitals for the swift intake of casualties from the front. Israeli military's iron grip on terrorist strongholds in Palestinian towns is important for holding Palestinian terror in check and keeping West Bank road links and US military installations safe from terrorists.
B.
The Lebanese Hizballah also threatens US forces from the rear. Their three fortified lines running from the Mediterranean in the west to Mt. Hermon in the east, parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli frontier, bristling with 10,000 missiles and rockets, can be turned not only against Israel but also against US Mediterranean warships and carriers, preventing them from approaching the Lebanese coast and bringing northern Iraqi military targets on the Syrian border within range.
The Hizballah may well "heat up" the Lebanese-Israeli border in solidarity with Yasser Arafat's legions of terror, thereby provoking a powerful Israeli military reaction, most likely directed at wiping out Hizballah training bases and command posts in Lebanon and destroying its triple-tier fortifications and missile batteries. Israel may go so far as to demolish Syria's strategic infrastructure that supports the Hizballah.
If the American war effort counts on Palestinian terrorism being held on a tight leash it requires the Hizballah military resources to be rooted out.
C. The American UN stand was a putdown for the European Union and its efforts to whitewash Palestinian terrorist groups and wean them away from suicide tactics to save them from being eclipsed in the American overhaul plan for the Palestinian administration (detailed in the three-part series DEBKAfile ran last week). Washington resents the futile efforts made by EU foreign affairs executive, Javier Solana, through his representatives in Palestinian areas, to induce the Palestinian Fatah-Tanzim, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami to publicly adopt a truce in their suicide attacks on Israelis as an impediment to its own program for revamping the Palestinian administration without making concessions to terrorists.
1.
Sunday, July 28, Israel is transferring its first down payment of NS.70 million (roughly $15 million) of frozen tax receipts due to the Palestinians directly to the new Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayyad ®¢ both for urgent humanitarian needs and to help the Washington-approved minister create a US-Palestinian-Israel mechanism for keeping track of incoming funds.
2.
On Tuesday, July 23, he sent an important letter to Arafat's Ramallah office demanding ledgers, bills, receipts and other documentation pertaining to his office's financial activities.
30 July: On July 29, Yasser Arafat posed with Rev. Jesse Jackson in Ramallah before cameras and roundly condemned "suicide terrorism". Within hours he was venting his real feelings for Americans of any stripe with a series of contemptuous actions - all aimed at undermining the credibility of the US-sponsored reform program for cleansing the Palestinian administration of terrorist and corrupt elements.
First, he ordered his Fatah to launch a fresh wave of terrorist attacks - three in 12 hours:
Tuesday morning, July 30, masked Fatah terrorists waylaid and shot at close quarters two Israelis who drove a fuel truck into the Palestinian village of Jama'in south of Nablus; before dawn, a terrorist armed with two knives attacked a sleeping couple in Itamar, south of Nablus. The couple were injured but survived by fighting back and stabbing their assailant to death. Later that morning, a suicide bomber entered a falafel kiosk on Jerusalem's Haneviim Street and blew up a bomb he carried in his knapsack, injuring five passers-by.
Second, he arbitrarily swept aside the police and security appointments made by the new Palestinian interior minister Gen. Abdel Razek Yahya, claiming they were unauthorized, and reinstated seven security officers the new man fired because of their records in orchestrating suicide campaigns. Arafat's move left the pro-American interior minister humiliated and stripped of powers for setting up the single security force mandated in the reform program to replace the dozen forces dedicated to Arafat and his terrorist assaults.
Yahya responded by leaving for Amman to join his family an dropping out of the Palestinian delegation invited to meet secretary of state Colin Powell next week. Washington thereupon called off the delegation.
Third, Arafat refused to accept Egyptian and Jordanian instructors to train the new security force's men, under the training program approved by the US and EU.
Fourth, Arafat pointedly humiliated the second pro-American, reform minister, Salam Fayyad, who was named to the Palestinian finance portfolio. Monday, July 29, when Arafat received the EU Middle East envoy Miguel Moratinos in Ramallah, he was attended demonstratively - not by the new minister but by his own appointee, Maher al-Masri - his reply to Fayyad's request for a financial accounting of the Palestinian Authority Chairman's office.
European leaders are still loath to stigmatize the men orchestrating terror against Israel. Moratinos did not take amiss Arafat's anti-reform gesture, while French President Jacques Chirac turned aside a request by Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres for the EU to place the Hizballah on its list of terrorist organizations, considering the danger that the group's provocations could destabilize the entire region.
Tuesday, July 30, Shin Beth Director Avi Director submitted to the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee a grim summing up of the 22 months of Arafat's violent campaign of terror; it has cost the lives of 585 Israelis and 1,547 Palestinians, many slain in the 139 suicide murders and massacres, of which Hamas was responsible for 51, Arafat's Fatah for 42, Jihad Islami for 31 (5 in collusion with Fatah) and the PFLP for 5. Israeli military incursions into Palestinian towns on the West Bank since April have thwarted an additional 138 potential suicide murders.
31 July: The difficulty of identifying the seven victims killed and more than 76 injured was complicated by the severe nature of their wounds and the fact that many were foreign nationals who were rushed to hospital unconscious. Some of the critically wounded underwent emergency surgery before regaining consciousness.
Most suffered from severe burns and internal injuries caused by blast as well as flying shrapnel, glass and debris. The first overseas students identified among the injured were from the United States, Turkey, Japan, South Korea and Italy, on summer courses at the Hebrew University Overseas Students Institute on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, or new immigrants taking pre-graduate courses. The Israeli students, some Arab, were there for exams. (Of the Hebrew University's 23,000 students, 5,000 are Arab.)
The Mount Scopus campus, with its idyllic, leafy nooks and stunning panoramic view of historic Jerusalem, is ringed round with a perimeter fence, its gates manned by armed guards. But, as students have often complained, any determined trespasser can find his way in. The Palestinian bomber who blasted the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria could have climbed the low fence dividing the campus from the Jerusalem Arab village of Issawiyeh, slipped through the National Botanical Garden, or thrown his bomb-laden bag over a fence and strolled empty-handed past the security guards at one of the gates. It is easy to reach the first elevator from the parking lot or the bus stop.
The Hamas in Gaza proudly claimed responsibility for this massacre. In English, Sheikh Rantissi declared the strikes would continue until Israeli occupation ends. In Arabic, he put it differently: "Éuntil the Jews are thrown out of this land." The Palestinian cabinet headed by Yasser Arafat, with Rev. Jesse Jackson at his side, condemned the Mount Scopus attack on the grounds that it is "harmful to the Palestinian cause".
Earlier in the day, Jackson was on his way to call on the Hamas leader Sheikh Yasin in Gaza City. When he heard of the terrorist strike, he turned round and returned to Ramallah, where he rejoined Arafat.
The form of this atrocity also makes a mockery, whether by accident or design, of the deterrent measures against suicide bombers approved at Israel's security cabinet on the same morning. Their relatives, whose complicity can be proved, will be deported to the Gaza Strip, their homes blown up and, in the case of Israeli Arabs, their property impounded.
However, the cafeteria bombing was not carried out by a suicide bomber. It was the work of a terrorist who slipped away after depositing his deadly device, free to spread more murder and bloodshed without his relatives incurring punishment. In this case, the new deterrent package is left without an object.
The steady rise of Israel's death toll and the insidious integration of terror into the fabric of Israeli life demonstrate starkly that there is no watertight defense against terrorists and that no deterrents can avail. The Sharon government will eventually have to come to grips with the long-deferred assault on the Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip, and then deal with the men at the top of the pyramid of Palestinian terror, by meeting the rising demand to put Arafat and company on a plane to anywhere else.
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