U.S. PREPARES DIPLOMATICALLY FOR IRAQI INVASION, BRANDS KEY PALESTINIAN GROUPS AS TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
by DEBKAfile, 27 July 2002
"The speech delivered Friday night, July 26, by US ambassador John Negroponte at the UN Security Council in New York, snapped Washingtons last ties to some critical historical conventions on 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.
Not surprisingly, the Arabs, who called the council meeting to condemn Israel
for last weeks air raid on Gaza City, put off further debate on their
draft until Monday.
Just hours before the council session, Friday afternoon, Palestinian gunmen
killed from ambush four Israelis driving on a road south of Hebron.
DEBKAfiles political analysts view the American UN ambassadors landmark
statement as strikingly significant in terms of the Bush administrations
war on global terror and its relations with the Arab and Muslim world, as well
as its perception of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Jewish states
future in the Middle East.
The Al Aqsa Intifada Yasser Arafat declared in September 2000 is
denied acceptance as a war of liberation or the uprising of an oppressed people
against a brutal occupier. The American speaker, by the conditions he posed
for any Security Council resolution, clearly branded the armed Palestinian campaign
a war of terror, which Israel has every right to combat and defeat with diplomatic
and military assistance from the United States. The conditions he laid down
effectively negated the legitimacy of the uprising the Palestinians launched
22 months ago and precluded them from gaining any political capital from their
resort to violence.
DEBKAfile s Washington and Middle East sources examine the motives behind
this dramatic departure.
A. The approach of D-Day for the US assault on Iraq and its reliance on Israel
as a rear base.
For the upcoming military campaign, the United States needs clear road links
from the Mediterranean to the Jordanian-Iraqi frontier, as well as safe access
to the vital jumping off and rear bases the US command has positioned in Israel
- ranging from air bases at its disposal to military stores and medical facilities,
including hospitals for the swift intake of casualties from the front. US war
planners rely on the Israeli militarys iron grip on terrorist strongholds
in Palestinian towns for holding the Palestinians in check and keeping West
Bank road links and US military installations safe from terrorists.
B. The American military rear is equally open to threat from the Lebanese Hizballah.
The Shiite extremists have built three fortified lines running from the Mediterranean
in the west to Mt. Hermon in the east, parallel to the Lebanese-Israeli frontier.
Those lines bristle with 10,000 missiles and rockets. Thanks to supplies from
Iran and Syria, the Hizballah can field the third largest missile arsenal in
the Middle East. While most of those lines menace Israel, some of the batteries
face west from points along the Lebanese Mediterranean coast. They are aimed
at preventing US warships and carriers from approaching the Lebanese coast and
bringing northern Iraqi military targets on the Syrian border within range.
The Hizballah may well regard the branding of the al Aqsa Brigades, Jihad Islami
and Hamas as terrorist groups by the US ambassador as a call to arms, a challenge
to make good on its political and military pact with Yasser Arafat, by heating
up the Lebanese-Israel border.
This could provoke 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 Syrias 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 shakiness of some key Arab regimes, notably Saudi Arabia, and what is
seen in Washington as their unreliability as American allies. The stand taken
by the United States at the UN Security Council is a frank brush-off of Arab
concerns and wishes regarding to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The Saudi de facto ruler Abdullah, in particular, has accumulated several black
marks in Washington, aside even from the al Qaeda issue, thereby driving a rift
in the royal house. Not only has he refused to take part in the American campaign
against Iraq or permit American use of its territory as bases for attack (as
reported repeatedly in DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly), but he and his faction
in Riyadh are the sole source, aside from Iran, of the monetary aid funneled
to the terror groups named in ambassador Negropontes Security Council
statement.
D. The American stand as articulated at the Security Council aims a snub at
the European Union, rejecting 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) .
In recent weeks, a concerted effort was launched by the 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. Rather than approaching the groups
top men, the European emissaries met the heads of local cells, mainly in Jenin
and Ramallah.
DEBKAfiles Palestinian sources insist, despite the many claims to the
contrary, that this initiative got nowhere. The European messengers failed to
reach the groups ringleaders and were systematically misled by their Palestinian
interlocutors.
Rejecting the broad European perception of Palestinian violence as a legitimate
liberation struggle, the Bush administration resents the EUs latest maneuver,
regarding it as an EU attempt to rescue the three Palestinian terrorist groups
the al Aqsa brigades, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami and, by association,
their ally, the Hizballah - from the consequences of their terrorist campaign.
Solanas efforts are treated in Washington as an impediment to the comprehensive
US assault on global terror. Naming the very Palestinian groups fostered by
the EU, the United States was meant to cut the ground from under the Solana
initiative.
American strategy at the UN Security Council is echoed in the Middle East by
tangible advances in Washingtons program for building a new Palestinian
administration, as DEBKAfiles sources report.
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. The Sharon government
is making the transfer, apparently acting under American pressure, to a Palestinian
official who is an American citizen and enjoys the trust of the Bush administration
and the International Monetary Fund. The payment is designated first for urgent
humanitarian needs, but a portion will also be earmarked for the creation of
a new US-Palestinian-Israel mechanism to keep track of all incoming funds and
make sure not a cent or shekel reaches Arafats tottering Palestinian Authority
or its still dangerous terrorist arms.
2. On Tuesday, July 23, an important letter went out from Fayyad to Arafats
Ramallah office. It contained a dry request to hand over, in the interests of
regular accounting, the ledgers, bills, receipts and other documentation pertaining
to the financial activities of the chairmans bureau of the Palestinian
Authority. The request also covered Palestinian-Israeli partnerships in onopolies
for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The new Palestinian finance minister is evidently determined to find out not
only what Arafats men got up to with public funds, but also the extent
to which some Israelis were involved. One way or another, Fayyad will eventually
lay hands on this information and when he does, he will certainly relay it to
Washington. He has thus laid a time bomb for high Palestinian Authority officials,
but also created a potential source of embarrassment for some of the Israelis
who contracted business with Arafat and his henchmen after the 1993 Oslo Peace
Accords."