Wednesday, October 06, 2004

  • Wednesday, October 06, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

A joint security forum between Israel and the U.S. builds on mutual strategic interests.


A delegation of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has just returned from Washington after a week-long series of meetings of the joint security forum of the U.S. Congress and the Knesset. One of the meetings on Iran's nuclear capabilities shocked some Congressmen, and a bill proposing sanctions against Tehran has been proposed.

The forum, revived last year by MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) and Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, serves as an unofficial channel of communication between Israel and the United States. Originally founded by Minister Uzi Landau when he served on the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense committee (1996-1999), the forum allows an exchange of ideas on strategic issues in which Israel and the U.S. have a common interest.

"We managed to assist in the salvaging of the Arrow project," Steinitz says proudly. "Last year, Congress agreed to allocate $75-80 million for accelerated production of the Arrow missile, but as we were about to leave for the first joint meeting, in September 2003, the decision was revoked. Congress didn't approve the bill because of the huge costs of the war in Iraq. We asked our friends in the forum to call a meeting with the House Armed Services Committee, which was in charge of these issues. At the breakfast table we were told why Congress could not allocate any funds for the Arrow, but within an hour their team asked to consult among themselves [and] then came back promising to reconsider the issues. Two weeks later we were informed that Congress decided to allocate $88 million for the Arrow project."

Israeli representatives in the joint forum also succeeded in persuading Congress to allocate tens of millions of dollars this year for further development of the Nautilus project - the interception of missiles, rockets, and Qassams with laser technology. Trials have proven the effectiveness of the joint American-Israeli project, currently under development. "The defense establishment attaches great importance to pushing the project forward, because of its potential for revolutionizing tomorrow's battlefield," says Steinitz.

The MKs invested huge efforts in educating their counterparts in Congress about the potential threat of Iran's nuclear capabilities. During their first visit in Washington, and at the forum's initiative, the Senate held a special hearing on the subject with senior government representatives. Steinitz reveals that U.S. government experts predicted at the hearings that as soon Iran overcomes the technological challenges involved in building a nuclear bomb, it would be able to produce as many as 20 nuclear warheads every year. According to this scenario, Iran would likely become a world nuclear superpower.

The members of Congress were so shocked by the forecasts, forum members reported, that Senators Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein (Dem.-CA) responded by drafting a resolution calling on Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program. The resolution was approved by the House and the Senate and is awaiting President George W. Bush's signature.

The resolution won't solve the problem of the Iranian threat, Steinitz says, but it has a declarative value, by stating that not only Israel's security is at stake, but also American interests. The resolution proposes sanctions against Iran and declares that "the United States will reconsider its military and economic cooperation with countries that assist Iran in developing its nuclear program."

In their discussions with their American colleagues, the MKs broached Israel's concerns about the sale of various weapon systems to Arab countries, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia. At issue are anti-missile systems, sophisticated fighter pilot electronic control systems, and missile-bearing ships and tanks. Members of Congress promised the MKs that they would oppose the sales.

The MKs' pitch against the sale of 50 advanced sea-to-sea missiles to Egypt was also partially successful. These missiles have a range of 150 km, and there is concern they could threaten Israel. U.S. government officials promised that the missiles would be blocked by technological means from hitting Israeli land targets and only be allowed to fire on targets at sea.
  • Wednesday, October 06, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

TEL AVIV, Israel (Reuters) - Israel has arrested 13 U.N. employees and plans to indict them for 'suspected links to terrorism,' an Israeli army officer said Tuesday.


Maj.-Gen. Yisrael Ziv, speaking to reporters, did not say when they were arrested.

His comments came after Israel backed away from an accusation that Palestinian militants had used a U.N. ambulance in Gaza to transport a rocket to be fired at Israel.

'We have in our hands a list of 13 detainees who are to be indicted, they are U.N. people with suspected links to terrorism,' Ziv said.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

One consequence of the recent upsurge in jihadi snuff films has been that a whole new group of mainstream media reporters have suddenly "discovered" that jihadis are using the internet. The format of these reports is pretty consistent:


* The "militants" are using the internet to spread their message and share videos of their gruesome achievements, one severed head at a time.

* The internet is "anonymous" and the "militants" can use it with impunity from anywhere in the world, and even when they use a pseudonym the "authorities" can't catch them.

* The "experts" all agree that nothing can be done, so we should just sit and watch. Not only that, but trying to do something is probably a bad idea, so we should just sit and watch.

Mind you, I've been interviewed for a number of these stories, but you know, it's a funny thing - my comments, which suggest that the situation is far from hopeless, rarely make it into the report. So, for the record:

* The internet is being used by Islamist terrorists to great effect. Not only are their websites useful for achieving specific objectives, but they are also central to creating and maintaining a culture of jihad and reinforcing each terrorist's identification with the jihad. When you disrupt the smooth operation of the websites of Islamist terrorists you have a very real and very negative impact on each and every administrator and user of a given site.

* The internet is not nearly as anonymous as people think. To paraphrase something a terrorist once said: They have to be successful every time - I only have to catch them making a mistake one time. Even the most technically adept Islamist terrorist will make a mistake from time to time, and the more one pressures them, makes them move, makes them spend time online moving sites, rebuilding sites, finding sites that have moved, registering and re-registering for access to sites, the more opportunities one creates for identifying and locating the Islamist terrorist in question.

* Those experts and authorities who think that the rest of us should just sit on our hands and wait for our turn to become dhimmis or be beheaded are guilty of replacing the common good with their own parochial self-interest. There is no concensus among experts regarding how best to deal with internet use by Islamist terrorists, and the authorities, frankly, need all the help they can get.

* Many things can be done, have been done, have been proven effective, and will continue to be done to fight Islamist terrorists online. Those 545 Little Blue AKs™ I've posted over the last two years represent sites that have ceased operation at least temporarily, and in dozens of cases, permanently. Get a website removed from a server at a time when the webmaster has been lazy and doesn't have a backup, and the effect on that site can be lethal. Force them to keep a good current backup and you have that much more evidence that can be seized, and if they keep that backup offline, you have more locations where that evidence can be seized, and if they try harder to be anonymous, or to operate more sites, or to be better prepared for the next time a site gets taken down, all those things translate into more activity online that can be intercepted and analyzed to the purpose of finding, capturing and/or killing the Islamist terrorist in question. To the extent to which we have done this, the result is that there are now fewer high-quality sites online, meaning that there are fewer sites to monitor, allowing us to more effectively monitor those sites which we choose to monitor.

* This leads us to the final point: we can do much, have done much, and will continue to do much that makes the internet a less-than-friendly environment for Islamist terrorists to operate in. That said, the problem is not, for example, the film of some poor man having his head hacked off. Nor is the problem the websites that host such movies. No, the problem is the jihad, and the jihadists. So, how do you stop "Abu Maysara al Iraqi" from issuing communiqués in the name of Zarqawi's Tahid wal Jihad group? You find out where he is likely to be sleeping in Fallujah, and you turn that "safe-house" upside and inside out with a couple of hundred pounds of precision-guided death, like so:


Remember, you only have to kill him once.

Hat tip to interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who recently said

  • When political leaders sound the sirens of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence.

  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon


Kibbutz Nir'am, a little closer to the Gaza Strip than Sderot, seems dead this morning. The air is hot, harsh and still – hamsin weather. Hardly anybody is outdoors.


Ofer Lieberman, who runs Nir'am's farm and handles the kibbutz's media relations, has shown us the meter-wide, 10cm.-deep crater in a road near the fields where the Kassam landed the previous morning.

Sitting in his cramped office upstairs in the kibbutz garage, the laconic, goateed Lieberman complains how Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz visited Sderot the previous day but, typically for an Israeli politician, cancelled his scheduled stop to the kibbutz.

It is the day before Succot, two days before Dorit Aniso, two, and her cousin Yuval Abebeh, four, would be killed by a Kassam in Sderot. At 10:55, a muffled "boom" sounds in the near distance and rattles the windows.

"That," says Lieberman, pointing in the air, "was a Kassam."

As we hurry down to his van, he gets a call on his cellphone from the contractor building his new house that the Kassam has fallen nearby. But when Lieberman pulls up to the construction site, he finds no sign of a missile, so he calls the contractor.

"I don't see anything," he tells the contractor. But there has been a misunderstanding.
"It fell near the house I live in?" Lieberman exclaims, as he floors the van, cursing; nobody is at home, but three of his four daughters are in the school right near their house.

A crowd has already gathered, staring at the scorched Kassam sticking out of the dirt about 25 meters from Alon elementary school. The school has already started the holiday, but some 30 kids are there for activities. Another dozen preschoolers are in the Shikma kindergarten nearby. Shrapnel from the Kassam has flown through the windows of a cottage used as a sewing room, and over the head of seamstress Ruti Almog sitting inside, leaving her unharmed.

Many kids in Alon and Shikma are screaming and crying, but physically they are unharmed. Lieberman stands with his daughters and watches as soldiers trot past; police have cordoned off the missile site, parents hug their children and everyone is buzzing about where they'd been and what they'd been doing when that ugly metal thing crashed on the ground.

"We were playing right over there," says Aviv Revivo, 12, standing with two friends and pointing to a spot on the nearby lawn. "The Kassam from yesterday I saw in the air before it landed. I heard the whistle and I looked up and I saw it flying over my house."

SINCE THE Kassams started coming out of Gaza nearly two years ago, more than 100 have landed on Kibbutz Nir'am – almost as many as have fallen on Sderot. Nobody on the kibbutz has been physically injured, although one Kassam destroyed a trailer that, luckily, was unoccupied at the time; another landed near a preschool, and now there is this latest close call.

The psychological toll has been heavy on both parents and children, who total some 300. Kassams land in their midst and IDF helicopters blast away at Gaza from over the heads.

"Nobody knows what's going on here. The press and the politicians are only interested if there's blood. They all go running to Sderot, and not one single cabinet minister has visited Nir'am since the Kassams started," says Lieberman. (On Sunday, Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim made up for Mofaz's cancellation.)

"If that Kassam had fallen 30 meters away, and we'd had three dead children and 30 injured at the school," Lieberman adds, "the whole government would have shown up by now."

Inside the Alon school, the children are seated around Tali Simchi, who has come to class today – planning to lead a drama lesson – at the insistence of her daughter, Michal, nine, who is still scared from the Kassam attack yesterday.

"We're trying to make peace with the Palestinians," Simchi, 41, tells the children, "but everywhere there are extremists, and now we're facing Hamas, who think God gave them the right to all of the land and that's their goal, to take it all, and that's why they fire those missiles at Nir'am. And our job, as people who live on the border, is – that's right – to live with it, to live with the fear, which is natural, and to talk about how we're afraid, and to keep believing that all this will pass."

A middle-aged soldier in red boots with several "chocolate bars" and "felafels" on his uniform comes through the door.

"Look who's here!" Tali calls to the children, grinning extra widely for effect.

It is IDF Col. Itzik.

"What heroes you are," he tells the children with an equally large grin. "Everybody okay? I'm going to bring all my soldiers here to learn from you how to be heroes. Keep on protecting us and we'll keep on protecting you. Well, I came here to give encouragement, and I leave here encouraged," the colonel says and strides back out the door.

I asked Michal how she sleeps at night.

"Not so well," she says. "I'm afraid the Kassams will fall on me all the time."

When this latest Kassam fell, she says, "All I saw was like gray in front of my eyes."

Completely unashamed, Tom Ben-Odiz says, "I cried. I'm 13, but I cried."

When the Kassam fell, a birthday party had been in progress. Or Rabin, nine, now has her arms around the birthday girl, Neta Amar, who is turning seven. Like the other children, Neta has spoken with her parents. She doesn't seem to want to talk to anyone else.

"She was in shock at first," says Or, "but now she's started to cry."

OTHER KIBBUTZIM near Gaza have been hit by Kassams, but none so badly as Nir'am. The kibbutz is broke; it hasn't paid its bank debts for two years, and Mekorot has threatened to cut off its water. Like most kibbutzim, it has been struggling financially for many years, and now the Kassams have driven away its weekend bed-and-breakfast trade and summer campers, as well as many of its outside pupils and cutlery works customers.

Yet Nir'am has not been granted "confrontation line" status as Sderot was in July, which means it gets none of the financial breaks, such as a 13 percent income tax reduction, that is granted residents in that town, a few hundred meters away.

Following the Kassam deaths of the two little cousins, the Prime Minister's Office announced an aid package for Sderot neighborhoods, schools and businesses. Nir'am wasn't mentioned.

"Everybody talks about Sderot, Sderot. I live in the 'Mem 3' neighborhood, the Kiryat Shmona of Sderot, but the Kassams haven't fallen here any less," says Arianna Amar, 33, an assistant teacher at Shikma kindergarten.

When this last one fell so close by and the kids started screaming and crying, Amar put on a brave face, hugged them and said that even though the floor had shaken, the missile had actually landed far away in the fields. But she was shaking and tears were falling.

"I wanted to go home, but it's no better there," she says, adding that if there was any way of selling their apartment, she and her family would already have moved far away from the Gazan border.

THIS HAS also been on the mind of Emma Segev. Now 31, she came to Nir'am as an 18-year-old volunteer from Brighton, met a young kibbutznik named Gil and married him. Now he's an agronomist on the farm, she's head of purchasing at the cutlery factory, they have two sons – Yuval, five and Ben, two – and today, she says, was "too much already."

Standing outside the cow shed near the factory, Segev reflects on the day and the days before.

"I saw the [factory] manager go white while he was on the phone. 'Where?' 'It was next to the kindergarten.' My knees buckled, my eyes welled up. I phoned the kindergarten teacher, whose voice was shaking with fear. I heard the kids' voices. Yuval said it had made him jump.

"Today," she continues, "it went way beyond saying everything's okay now, and going back to normal. It became so clear to me that I really feel quite irresponsible for being here with my kids. I couldn't concentrate anymore, I couldn't get any work done. I was thinking about what we're going to do, because I don't think we can go on like this.

"And it absolutely breaks my heart when we hear the helicopters firing into Gaza. I can't imagine what a mother there is going through," she goes on. "I'd go back to England tomorrow, but my husband's an Israeli – he'd agree to live in England if it weren't for the weather. So I think the thing to do is find a quieter, more peaceful place somewhere in Israel. Tonight we're going to stay with Gil's brother in Ashkelon.

"Enough," she says, "enough for one day."

During the nearly two-year Kassam onslaught, none of Kibbutz Nir'am's families moved out. But on Friday, after the Kassam landed right by Alon school, after another Kassam killed those two small cousins in Sderot, the Segevs informed the kibbutz that they had leased a house on a desert moshav and would be moving in a week or so. They were taking a year's leave of absence; after a year, they'd see if it was safe to go home.
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
Iran:
Iran has increased the range of its missiles to 1,250 miles, a senior official was quoted as saying Tuesday.


The range would puts parts of Europe within reach for the first time. Military experts had earlier put Iran's missile range at 810 miles, which would allow it to strike anywhere in Israel.

'Now we have the power to launch a missile with a 2,000 km (1,250 mile) range,' the news agency IRNA quoted influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as saying. 'Iran is determined to improve its military capabilities.'

'If the Americans attack Iran, the world will change ... they will not dare to make such a mistake,' Rafsanjani was quoted as saying in a speech at an exhibition on Space and Stable National Security. "
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

The United Nations should disband its main Palestinian aid organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA).
The agency was conceived almost six decades ago to help Palestinians displaced after Israel's 1948 War of Independence. But it has since become intertwined with some of the most radical elements in Palestinian society. Indeed, UNWRA may in fact be worsening the Palestinian plight by facilitating the four-year-old terrorist war that has so devastated life in the West Bank and Gaza. At the very least, UNWRA's affiliation with terrorists is bringing shame upon the United Nations.

This disgrace has been acute of late. This past weekend, Peter Hansen, UNWRA's commissioner-general, disclosed in a CBC interview that members of Hamas are on the agency's payroll. In May, after Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli soldiers in the Gaza strip, UNWRA ambulances were caught on tape smuggling terrorists out of the area. Late that same month, an Israeli newscast broadcast footage showing armed terrorists using UNWRA ambulances to flee. And last week, the Israeli army released additional footage that depicts more incidents in which UNWRA relief vehicles have been used to ferry terrorists throughout the disputed territories.

UNWRA's complicity goes beyond terrorist ground transportation. On several occasions, UNWRA-administered schools in Palestinian camps have been found to be teaching anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Israeli troops searching Palestinian schools in Ramallah in September, 2002, found classrooms plastered with posters glorifying suicide attacks. The Israeli government and some aid agencies have also concluded that UNWRA turns a blind eye to Palestinian theft of food and medicine destined for refugees from UN warehouses, for sale on the black market.

Mr. Hansen's reaction to such allegations exemplifies the agency's see-no-evil approach: UNWRA may employ Hamas members, he says, but they are not actually terrorists. Rather, they are supposedly from the organization's medical, educational or political wings. It's similar to the line Ottawa used to offer for not outlawing Hezbollah and its fundraisers in Canada: Yes, Hezbollah employs terrorists, the Department of Foreign Affairs would concede, but what Canada is permitting is only fundraising for Hezbollah' 'humanitarian' operations, such as its hospitals and schools.

Canada's government eventually disabused itself of such nonsense, and so should the world community in regard to UNWRA: Though Hamas may operate community services to help build support and spread propaganda, its raison-d'etre has nothing do with healing people, but rather killing them. Hamas observes no hard and fast internal distinctions in its operations, and the organization's ultimate goal -- the destruction of Israel -- remains constant. Every Hamas member drawing an UNWRA salary frees up money in Hamas's budget for terror operations.

In the short term, eliminating UNWRA would pose logistical challenges: Other agencies and nations would have to step in to deliver the humanitarian assistance the agency provides. But in the long term, it would be in the Palestinians' own best interests. When the refugee camps were originally established, the world community imagined they would be temporary -- and that neighbouring countries would soon find a permanent home for their occupants. But Arab nations refused to co-operate, preferring instead to keep the Palestinians locked up as an ongoing diorama of Arab victimization. Thus are Palestinians kept in an endless state of dependency and transience, with many still entertaining delusions that they will someday be allowed to return to their ancestral homes in Israel.

It has long been believed that UNWRA would keep operating until Palestinians and Jews made peace. But given the organization's role in abetting terror, the world cannot wait that long.
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

Another important battle against terrorism is unfolding as Israeli troops fight Palestinians in Gaza to stop them from firing rockets into Israel.
The offensive began after an attack killed two Israeli toddlers on Wednesday. In five days of fighting, more than 60 Palestinians, most of them believed to be terrorists, died as the Israelis carved out a security zone.

One of the things that sets this incursion apart from similar Israeli military campaigns in the past is Europe's rather muted reaction. While normally jumping on every opportunity to criticize the Jewish state for trying to protect its citizens, most European capitals have so far remained unusually silent. 'The international response did not rise to the anticipated minimum level of expectations,' Arafat adviser Saeb Erekat complained.

Many Europeans though still make an artificial distinction between Hamas and the global threat of Islamic terrorism. 'It's the occupation, stupid,' is the catch phrase of a worldview that pretends Hamas's quarrel is with Israel's size rather than its existence - even though Hamas has never concealed that its ultimate goal is to destroy Israel.

The decision by Prime Minister Sharon to withdraw all settlements from Gaza - unilaterally and without waiting for a Palestinian partner to emerge to sign a deal - was a further blow to the charade that Hamas's terror was in any way a legitimate resistance to end the occupation. If that were the case, Hamas would stop its attacks now, at least from Gaza.

Hamas's murderous ideology means the oft-repeated mantra that there is no 'military solution' to this conflict is plain wrong. The opposite is true - just as al-Qaeda and its global networks must be defeated, only a military solution can end the Palestinian terror. And thanks to improved intelligence, targeted assassinations, and the security barrier, the Israelis are saying that it can be done.

Just as the Iraqi and American troops in Samarra and Fallujah must be allowed to fight until victory, so must Israel be allowed to finish off Hamas. Without these 'military solutions' there is no hope for peace, neither in Iraq nor between Israelis and Palestinians.
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

www.spa.gov.sa/newsview.php?extend.207842

[IMRA: Israeli security analysts raise serious concerns about this project:


1. It would facilitate the movement of military equipment between Saudi
Arabia and Egypt. While in time of war the causeway could be closed down via
military action, such a move by Israel would be itself an act of war, thus
it could be expected that the route could be used to move considerable
quantities of equipment before Israel would act against it.

2. It would facilitate the movement of WMD between Saudi Arabia and Egypt -
until now such movement was limited to air and sea transport.

3. The causeway itself could be used to restrict access to the Israeli Port
of Eilat since movement of vessels over a certain height will require
coordination with those operating the causeway.

4. The presence of the heavy equipment that would be required for such a
project could itself be a security issue for Israel.

One security analyst was pessimistic about Israel's ability to protect its
security concerns associated with the proposed project, noting that when
Egypt installed an extensive radar installation on the tip of
Sharam-al-sheikh in late 2002 (that can closely monitor all Israeli traffic)
and Israel protested to Egypt and to the United States that its protests and
concerns were essentially ignored.]

Cairo, Oct 4, SPA [Saudi Press Agency]-- Egyptian Minister of Transport
Essam Sharaf said the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are planning to set
up a causeway across the Red Sea for linking the Saudi Port of Diba with the
Egyptian Port of Sharam-al-sheikh.

In a press statement here today, he said the implementation of the project
would depend on the technical studies which are already in a progressive sta
ge.

He added that the cost of the project is estimated to be nearly $3 billion.

On completion of the project, it will facilitate transportation of pilgrims,
Umrah (minor pilgrimage) performers, tourists and commodities.
--SPA"
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

But last night, in the wake of media pressure, the IDF had updated its assessment: The officers said the object in the ambulance was a weapon, but nonetheless 'it's impossible to swear' that it wasn't a stretcher.


UNRWA claims it is difficult for one man to carry a Qassam; the IDF experts say the weight of a Qassam-1 is no more than five kilograms.

It seems that analysis of the image relies more on what was going on at the time the images were recorded than on what exactly can be seen in the frame in question.

The series of images, recorded in Jabalya on October 1, shows militants placing an explosive device in a pit under the road, in an attempt to attack IDF soldiers. The UN ambulance is seen nearby. People accompanying the militants who placed the explosive are seen entering the ambulance, carrying the object in question.

The military logic is this: There was no stretcher involved here, and the object displayed in the images is, apparently, a weapon.

The problem facing the IDF is that the eye of the professional and the eye of the average news watcher differ greatly. What appeared obvious to the IDF analyst seemed to the civilian to be an UNRWA man carrying a stretcher into the van.
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon

JERUSALEM -- After four years of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, Israel has established dominance on the battlefield, sharply reduced loss of life among its soldiers and civilians, and advanced its own agenda for the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the absence of negotiations to bring peace, according to officials and analysts from both sides.


In a pivotal shift in the conflict, Israel has crippled the effectiveness of the Palestinian militants' primary strategic weapon -- the suicide bomber -- with frequent military operations in the Palestinian territories, assassinations of dozens of militant leaders, improved intelligence, and construction of a massive barrier through and around the West Bank. At the same time, however, Israel's reliance on military options also has killed Palestinian civilians and inflicted hardships on Palestinian communities."
  • Tuesday, October 05, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon


GAZA (Reuters) - Israel killed the military chief of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad in a Gaza City air strike on Tuesday
that drew vows of revenge and could complicate efforts to end a huge Israeli offensive. Awww... - EoZ

Another helicopter missile hours later killed two militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, and wounded four, two critically, in the nearby refugee camp of Jabalya.

Monday, October 04, 2004

  • Monday, October 04, 2004
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the Jerusalem Post, April 1, 2003:

Terrorist organizations in Palestinian-controlled areas, as well as in Syria and Lebanon, take advantage of UNRWA workers and their vehicles to transport arms and terrorists, according to a document drawn up by defense establishment officials.


The document notes that Palestinian terrorists in Israeli custody admitted using UNRWA facilities, equipment, and vehicles to assist in carrying out terror attacks, knowing that UNRWA personnel are able to travel in Israel and Palestinian Authority-controlled areas, as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, without being subjected to security checks.

The report focuses on UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah, 38, a resident of Jabaliyah in the Gaza Strip, who was arrested last August by security forces as he returned from Egypt.

Attalah first began working for UNRWA in 1987 as a director of food supplies for Gaza Strip refugees. He was provided with a UN vehicle and issued a UN laissez-passer that entitled him to unrestricted travel in the region. According to the report Attalah admitted to investigators that he used his car to transport terrorists and arms.

Attalah told investigators that he was repeatedly asked by officials of Fatah's Popular Resistance Committee to drive them in his UN car as it was never subjected to IDF inspections. He also made use of his laissez-passer to travel to Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria where he contacted officials of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, received funds, and transferred arms.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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