Israel Begins Planning For Post-Saddam, Post -Arafat Era
by DEBKAfile
3 August 2002
: Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has quietly assembled a new, trusted team to assist in the charting of Israels Middle East role in the post-Saddam, post-Arafat era. Sharons planning, a closely guarded secret not shared with his own ministers, is tightly woven into the design for the defeat of global terror which President George W. Bush began plotting after Americas September 11 shock.
The US president has kept his circle of confidants down to the bare minimum,
as the first, covert steps in realizing the design are taken.
Sharons task force is composed of both the new and retired chiefs of staff,
Lt. Gens. Moshe Yaalon and Shaul Mofaz, the incoming Mossad director Maj.Gen.
(ret.) Meir Dagan, the outgoing Mossad director Efraim Halevy, who is tapped
as head of the national security council, the Shin Beit Director Avi Dichter,
the military intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi, and the prime ministers
former military secretary, designated as OC Central Command, Maj. Gen. Moshe
Kaplinsky. This group will be entrusted with the details of Sharons plan
and its execution.
A second tier group, whose members will not be let into the overall political,
military and economic planning or Israels role in Washingtons scheme,
will be told only as much as necessary for them to carry out their assigned
tasks. It is made up of two ministers - Binyamin Ben Eliezer in defense and
the Sylvan Shalom in finance, as well as a flock of major generals: deputy chief
of staff Gaby Ashkenazi, air force commander Dan Halutz, navy commander Yedidya
Yaary, general staff planning chief Giora Eiland, head of operations division
Dan Harel and head of general staff manpower division Gil Regev.
Each member of this group will be restricted to the area of the general plan
that affects his own sphere of operation.
In the course of next week, DEBKAfile will report on the early stages of the
American special forces operations which have begun unfolding inside Iraq
despite the claims of some commentators that the White House has still not decided
on how and when to handle the campaign against Saddam Husseins Iraq. Our
most credible sources confirm that the campaign is secretly marching forward
- precisely according to the game plan Bush conceived and promised the American
people in the speeches he delivered in September, October and November 2001.
He said then that parts of the war on global terror would go forward in secret
and never be known.
Since Sharon has wholly embraced the Bush approach to the war on terror, DEBKAfile
can disclose no more than that proactive military initiatives are in progress
around Israels frontiers some of them dangerous, as in every war.
These steps are initial and risk-laden, but they are intended to culminate in
the construction of a new conceptual geo-strategic edifice for the Middle East
as a whole.
The reconstruction of Palestinian instruments of governance and security is
a key factor in this project. The importance the Bush administration attaches
to its Palestinian project goes far beyond the Palestinian arena; it is Americas
first experiment in building a modern democracy for a Middle East Muslim society.
If the experiment works, it may prove applicable for the autonomous Kurdish,
Shiite and Turkoman regions America hopes to set up in Iraq or
even, in the best case, radiate farther afield to transform the lives of additional
ethnic majorities in the region and affect even the most hidebound Arab regimes.
Secretary of state Colin Powells willingness to receive a Palestinian
delegation in Washington next week was misread by some Israeli media as a willingness
to resume the US dialogue with Yasser Arafats regime despite the
terrorist outrage that cost seven lives, five of them American, at the Hebrew
University Frank Sinatra Cafeteria last Wednesday, July 31. In fact, Powell
stipulated that he only wanted to see future Palestinian leaders,
namely Abdel Razek Yahya, interior, and Salam Fayyad, finance.
Washingtons new approach, as epitomized in Powells diplomatic refusal
to meet members of Yasser Arafats regime, has elicited a new stage in
the Palestinian campaign of terror. The remote-controlled bombing by cell phone
on Mount Scopus hit a building at the heart of an American enclave on the Hebrew
University campus; the Frank Sinatra Student Center abuts on the Barbra Streisand
Garden, the Harry S. Truman Institute of Peace and the Nancy Reagan Plaza.
The blast was meant to blow up a symbol of the deep strategic collaboration
and ideological affinity binding the United States and Israel.
The fine points of such targeting are beyond the capacity of a local Hamas terrorist
operative. DEBKAfiles counter-terror sources rather detect the mark of
the intelligence and military cooperation already reported in the past between
Yasser Arafat, Iraqi military intelligence agents operating in the West Bank
and the Hizballahs terror-cum-intelligence apparatus, which Arafat invoked
when his own terrorist cells were pinned down by Israeli military action. The
senior coordinator of this coalition for terror is Gen. Tawfiq Tirawi, founder
and commander of the Fatahs al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
The London Sunday Times reports in its August 4 issue that Saddam Hussein has
set up Palestinian terrorist cells and equipped them with mobile biological
weapons systems. Since mid-March 2002, we have reported that, some months ago,
Iraqi agents secreted these and other deadly mechanisms into the West Bank.
Now they are only waiting for Arafats signal to go into action.
With the cafeteria bombing, Saddam, Arafat and Nasrallah embarked on a course
of terror aimed at turning aside the political-ideological assault on their
regimes, as well as upsetting the early stages of US-led military action in
Iraq. The fact that five of the seven fatalities last Wednesday were Americans
was no accident. The close to 100,000 American nationals, Israelis and Palestinians,
living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, would do well to take notice.
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