ARAFAT USING "REFORMS" AS COVER FOR NEW, FRESH TERROR ASSAULT
by DEBKAfile 2002
"An impressive array of diplomats has taken over the overhaul of the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafats baton, claiming structural reforms are a cure-all for Palestinian terror. The most ardent advocates of this panacea are US secretary of state Colin Powell, European Union foreign affairs executive Javier Solana, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres, Arafats close financial adviser Muhammed Rashid and Ariel Sharons new chef de bureau Dov Weisglass.
All the Palestinian leader is required to do is to pick out the reform proposals
he likes. As long as he agrees to try them on for size, no one stops him from
sending suicide killers against Israelis. In the last two weeks, Arafat has
felt free to ignite a new cycle of violence, with the help this time of a new
breed of killer the super-terrorist.
These experts in violence Arafat kept in reserve for the low period following
Israels large-scale military operation to smash Palestinian terrorist
strongholds on the West Bank. DEBKAfile reports from Israel and US intelligence
sources that last weeks failed attempt to blow up Israels main fuel
depot at Pi Glilot was one of the first a series of strategic operations plotted
by these super-terrorists, with more to come. While bomb-belted Palestinian
youths strike at Israeli crowd centers, the super terrorist goes furtively about
his work armed with anti-tank rockets, M-16 assault guns, silenced pistols with
telescopic sights, and such gear as wire cutters.
DEBKAfile s intelligence sources report that these super-terror cells
have come to Arafats aid from overseas, sent by Iraqi military intelligence,
which maintains bases in the West Bank, and by Imad Mughniyeh, the Lebanese-Palestinian-Iranian
terror master, currently employed by al Qaeda. Mughniyehs operatives reach
Israel by sea or by smugglers route from Syria through the Golan Heights.
Their contact man on the West Bank on behalf of Arafat is Tawfiq Tirawi, chief
of Palestinian general intelligence and commander of the al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades.
The IDF is under constant fire from the Israeli media wanting to know why daily
counter-terror operations in Palestinian towns do not prevent the terrorists
from stealing out of those same towns to hit Israeli crowd centers.
According to DEBKAfiles terror experts, the answer is not to be found
with the generals, but the politicians and their wooly attitude to terror and
its instigators.
US president George W. Bush, for instance, admits quite frankly that he does
not like Yasser Arafat, yet he instructs his secretary of state to push ahead
with a reform program designed to empower Arafat anew as head of the Palestinian
Authority, a regime he has constructed so that the conduct of terrorism is its
be-all and end-all.
DEBKAfiles political and Palestinian sources report exclusively that a
secret American team this week began a quiet visit to Israel and Palestinian-controlled
areas, assigned by Powell to submit recommendations on the reforms required.
Made up of research aides to senior congressmen and state department officials,
the team is led by Alan Makovsky, aide to Tom Lantos of California, senior Democratic
member of the House foreign relations committee. The group is to perform the
spadework for visits to the region by Powell or CIA director George Tenet.
In case the cooks stirring the reform pot entertained any notion of boiling
the terrorist elements out of Arafats 22 security bodies,
the London Arabic newspaper Al Hayat Monday, May 27, put them wise as to the
only reform program acceptable to Arafat.
Chairman Yasser Arafat will retain control of the key post of Interior minister
in charge of Palestinian security services.
Deputy interior minister Muhamad Dahlan, Arafats faithful minion
in the Gaza Strip, who runs terrorist operation on his instructions.
Four new organs will be established:
1. Internal security, under Rashid Abu Shbak, Dahlans deputy and senior
terror axe man. The two preventive security services in Gaza and the West Bank
will be united under this pair.
2. External security Amin al Hindi, who was stripped of real authority
in the course of the Intifada because he was regarded as too pro-American.
3. Police Hajj Ismail, current West bank General Security chief, who
is completely under the thumb of Arafat and Dahlan.
4. General Security equivalent to the army. DEBKAfile notes that the
creation of a Palestinian army is blatantly in breach of the 1993 Oslo Peace
Accords, which calls for a demilitarized Palestinian state. Arafat is trying
to sneak this violation through in the guise of reforms. Two candidates
for 'chief of staff' are Gen. Nasser Yussef, possibly the only member of Arafats
regime not engaged in terror, and Gen. Abd Razzaq al-Yahya, a senior tactician
of Palestinian terrorism.
The infamous Force 17, a key element of the Palestinian terror machine, will
absorb Arafats two other private terrorist groups the Fatah suicide
killers arm known as the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Tanzim
militia. In this way, Arafat bypasses the demand to dismantle al Aqsa Brigades.
Most important, Al Hayat is the first publication, aside from DEBKAfile, to
openly name Tawfiq Tirawi commander of the al Aqsa Brigades and super-controller
of Fatah suicide killers. According to this London paper, Tirawi, whom Arafat
kept safe during his months of siege in Ramallah, is slated to command the new
consolidated 'security' organization.
Now that Al Hayat has given the game away, it is easier to see why president
Bush and Colin Powell talk about the Middle East dispute of late in abstruse,
equivocal language. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon seems to have mastered
the craft. With one hand, he launched Operation Defensive Shield in April to
punch a hole in the Palestinians terror strongholds; with the other, he
is deploying Weissglass to try and unlock the peace process, with the help of
former business dealings with Arafats financial sidekick Muhammed Rashid.
The Saudi rulers are in the same double game: This week, they shut down the
extremist Palestinian Hamass website, demanding a halt to suicide terrorism
against Israeli civilians; at the same time, millions of Saudi petrodollars
continue to flow into the Hamas terror coffer, while Riyadh actively cultivates
its ties with Baghdad, which has planted its own terrorist arm in the West Bank
and Israel.
Arafat, behind his act as a broken man hard hit by Israeli military might, could
well be laughing up his sleeve at the efforts of Bush, Sharon, Powell, Peres
and the Saudi crown prince Abdullah, to throw him a life belt labeled 'reforms',
without holding him back from - or even accountable for - the suicidal massacres
he is engineering against Israelis in a brutal spiral."