"Tuesday, two days before Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was due to call on President George W. Bush in the White House, US Galaxy transports were seen landing at Ben Gurion international airport. DEBKAfile ’s military sources report that the giant planes carried in fresh supplies for US military units stationed in Israel and Jordan.
Another arrival Tuesday, February 5, was chief of Egyptian intelligence Gen. Omar Suleiman, with an urgent message from his worried president for Yasser Arafat, who has been confined by Israeli tanks in Ramallah for two months. Hosni Mubarak urgently demanded that Arafat call off his campaign of terror unconditionally and immediately.
In Washington, US secretary of state Colin Powell, addressing the Senate foreign affairs committee, called on Arafat to ensure that the arms smuggling attempt never recurred. He urged him to choose once and for all between violence and peace, because he can’t have both. Powell also advised Israel to ease the hardships of the Palestinian population and avoid escalation.
Arafat responded swiftly to those appeals. He repeated his rhythmic “millions of martyrs marching to Jerusalem” incantation, drawing cheers from an enthusiastic invited audience. Then, his Fatah-Tanzim unveiled its first homemade surface rockets, Aqsa-1 and Aqsa-2, a transparent attempt to vie with the Hamas’s Qasem-1 and still undeveloped Qasem-2.
Fatah spokesmen claimed proudly their new weapon had proved itself
in the field by firing at the Israeli village of Netzer Hazani in the Gaza
Strip. Its range, they claimed, was 15 km – an exaggeration of more than
double. Fatah is also believed have laid in stocks of 122-mm Katyusha rockets
– a much more dangerous weapon than the primitive Aqsa and Qasem. This
hardware must be added to the hundreds of 70km missiles Iran has given
the Lebanese Hizballah. Israel finds itself surrounded from north, south
and east, by a bristling array of surface rockets and missiles, the manifestation
of an intensifying partnership for terror between Tehran and Yasser Arafat.
In the Knesset Tuesday, February 5, Israeli chief of staff, Lt-Gen
Shaul Mofaz cautioned against what he saw as a clear and disturbing interrelationship
between the Palestinian Authority and Iran. In his briefing to the Knesset
Foreign Affairs and Security Committee in Jerusalem, Mofaz stated that
the Palestinians’ hostile intentions remained unchanged. As for Iran, he
said he did not see that country attacking Israel tomorrow, but its instigation,
guidance and arming of anti-Israel terrorists must be taken in conjunction
with its acclaimed ambition to wipe Israel off the map. The ayatollahs
must not be allowed to attain a foothold in Palestinian areas.
Asked if Israel was read for an Iraqi reprisal for an American offensive
against Baghdad, Mofaz reported the country prepared its self-defense “and
other” capabilities ...
In the Israeli general’s estimation, Tehran’s ’s efforts to achieve non-conventional weapons, together with its long-range missiles, represent an existential threat to Israel in the long term.
In London, the London-based Arabic paper a-Sharq al-Awsat quoted
revelations by Jordan’s King Abdullah II of Iranian-Palestinian efforts
to strike at Israel – also from the east. The Jordanian ruler, in the White
House last week, presented President Bush with evidence of an Iranian plot
to use Palestinian Hamas and Jihad terrorists to mount missile and mortar
attacks on Israel from his kingdom. Jordanian security had foiled seventy
such attempts.
Some of the weapons for these attacks were to have been smuggled
in through Aqaba port.
DEBKAfile, reporting on this development in DEBKA-Net-Weekly(No.
46 on January 25), elaborated on the smuggling route. From Aqaba, the weapons
were to be picked up by undercover Iraqi military intelligence agents and
passed on to Fatah and Hizballah militants hiding in the Palestinian refugee
camps around Jordanian towns.
Egypt and Jordan have now come out publicly against Arafat and his
plots with Tehran. They fear he is pushing the Palestinian flame across
the borders into their countries and threatening their stability. Aware
of the rising war tensions, America is making sure of ample military supplies.
Arafat, though under siege in Ramallah, has no intention of going quietly
and letting a successor take over."