WHAT PROFESSIONAL NON-PALESTINIAN HAND WAS BEHIND HOME INVASION ATTACKS?
by DEBKAfile 27 April 2002
"Saturday morning, April 27, two terrorists burst into the Jewish settlement of Adora, west of Hebron on the West Bank, shooting their way into one home after another. They killed four Israeli civilians, two of them young children, and wounded 13, 7 seriously.
Two hours later, Ms Anat Harari, 41, waiting at Barzilai hospital, Ashkelon,
for surgery on the bullet wounds that smashed her arm and shoulder, gave a
calm yet strange account of her experience.
From behind the window of her home, she saw a young man in Israeli military
fatigues and flak jacket approaching with an M-16 rifle. He looked just like
an Israeli soldier. When he was only a meter and a half away, he raised his
rifle and quite deliberately began shooting into the window at which she was
standing. He then went round the house, firing through more windows with the
same slow deliberation. Ms Harari was absolutely sure of his light skin and
non-Arab appearance.
A neighbor, a policeman from the Israeli station in Hebron, came running out
when he heard the gunfire. He was so certain the two gunmen he found were
Israelis that he addressed them in Hebrew. Only when they shot him did he
realize they were terrorists.
DEBKAfile s military sources add these fresh accounts to the evidence
gleaned from certain terrorist strikes in the last two months starting
with the Kharmiyeh roadblock attack north of Ramallah in early March, in which
10 Israelis were killed. The shadow of an active, experienced non-Palestinian
presence has been discerned at work in subsequent Palestinian attacks on Israeli
targets.
Although there are theories about this alien identity, Israeli military chiefs
do not know for sure who they are. An exhaustive investigation following the
Kharmiyeh attack defined the three expert marksmen who executed the deadly
assault as professional enough to wipe out every clue to their identity before
disappearing without trace. The meager clues discovered do not point to Palestinian
hit men.
In certain subsequent shooting and bombing attacks in other places, the execution
was Palestinian, but not the way they were organized, the types of explosives
and other features.
Ms Harari is the first close-up eyewitness to testify to a non-Palestinian
presence in the Palestinian terror machine.
Israels military and security authorities prefer to keep the issue low-key
so as not to frighten the public. They are also reluctant to tip their hand.
Two of the possibilities floated are Hizballah and al Qaeda. Another is European
mercenaries underworld contract killers, or European-trained commandos.
Some weeks ago, The London Daily Telegraph reported a request from the Israeli
Mossad to the British MI6 to find out if one of the marksmen at Wadi Kharmiyeh
was an Irish Republican Army operative. The question was put in light of the
tactics employed in the assault, including farsighted intelligence and efficient
escapes routes. The killers also had the foresight to strew at the scene misleading
evidence of weapons - other than those actually employed.
This calculated pre-planning is a far cry from slipshod, hotheaded Palestinian
tactics.
Saturdays Adora raid was carried out coolly and in broad daylight, the
settlement chosen is small and isolated, surrounded only by a plain mesh fence
with no Israeli military nearby and the killers made a clean escape - leaving
only the imprint of professional killers at work."