http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=961
New Palestinian Terrorist Coalition Pinions Abbas
DEBKAfile Special Military Report
January 5, 2005, 3:30 PM (GMT+02:00)
Transposing South Lebanon to Gaza and Gaza to West Bank
The Qassam missiles and mortar shells raining down on Israeli civilian
and military targets on both sides of the Gaza border in the last two
weeks are beginning to look like the opening shots of a major
Palestinian offensive across a broad front. It is clearly timed to
peak as the Palestinian election date of January 9 approaches.
DEBKAfile's military and Palestinian sources report that orchestration
is no longer in the hands of a single extremist group, Hamas. Seven
Palestinian terrorist groups have formed an ad hoc coalition with a
more far-sighted goal than drawing the Israeli army into an extreme
reprisal so as to sabotage the vote and Mahmoud Abbas's election.
Their eye is on the election's aftermath. Taking Abbas's win for
granted, they are playing on his weakness to keep him running scared
and make him too dependent to raise a finger against them.
These groups are Abbas's own Fatah, its suicide arm, the al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, the Abu Rish Martyrs Brigades, the Popular
Resistance Committee's Battalions, Hamas's Ezzadin al-Qassam, Jihad
Islami and, a newcomer making its first appearance, the Abu Masoud Squads.
Claims of responsibility for attacks on Israeli targets are therefore
meaningless. Planning and execution are in the hands of a joint
command. Early Wednesday, January 5, Palestinian gunmen carried out a
guerrilla-type assault on the Israeli military post guarding the Gaza
Strip's Erez outlet to Israel. Explosives blew a hole in the post's
wall, through which the assailants stormed, shooting automatic weapon
and lobbing grenades, while mortar-men outside shelled the
installation. The incident was cut short by an Israeli officer rushing
the assailants. He killed one. Three Palestinians in adjoining
facility were injured. A few hours later, a rare, well-aimed Qassam
missile struck a military post at Kibbutz Nahal Oz outside the Gaza
Strip injuring ten Israeli soldiers, two seriously.
These attacks on Israeli military facilities were punctuated with the
daily dose of missile and mortar fire on Israeli civilian targets on
both sides of the Gazan border.
The communiqués issued by this new alliance clearly refrain from
limiting its operations to the Gaza Strip. Just they reverse; some of
the groups are based in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Therefore, the escalating terrorist violence may be expected to spill
over to the West Bank too – only there, the terrorists and suicide
killers will be next door to the most densely-inhabited Israeli cities
rather than the sparsely populated Negev adjoining the Gaza Strip.
This peril was clearly enunciated Tuesday, January 4, by Israel's
domestic intelligence and counter-terror combat ace Avi Dichter in his
annual report to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee.
He said bluntly that the northern West Bank would become a second Gaza
Strip if given into Palestinian hands. He also disclosed that 5-6
shoulder-launched anti-air missiles had been smuggled into the Gaza
Strip from Egypt.
Israeli security agencies are not just keeping a careful eye on the
new weapons, but also on the recently formed Abu Masoud Squads made up
of Fatah elements in the Gaza Strip and Hizballah. This group is
viewed as a dangerous new increment for anti-Israel terrorist ranks.
The late Abu Masoud was a Force 17 colonel called Masoud Iyad, whom
Yasser Arafat sent to Lebanon in April 2000 (six months before the
current Palestinian-Israel war erupted). His mission was to collect
and bring back to the Gaza Strip a group of Hizballah experts in
guerrilla warfare, assembly and manufacture of explosives and the
production of mortars, missiles and Katyusha rockets.
In January 2001, Iyad personally took part in the first Palestinian
mortar shelling of an Israeli location. The test was staged to impress
on the Palestinian leadership how shocked the Israelis would be when
they realized that (in contravention of the 1993 Oslo peace accords)
the Palestinians had armed themselves with new types of arms and heavy
weaponry.
Ehud Barak, who was then prime minister, ordered a targeted
assassination of Col. Iyad to abort the Arafat-Hizballah alliance. It
had the opposite effect: the operational links between the Hizballah
and the Palestinian terrorists were strengthened. Iyad's place was
soon filled by Arafat's close aide Sahar Habas and Mohammed Dahlan,
still then engaged in orchestrating terrorist operations in the Gaza
Strip at Arafat's behest.
After four and-a-half years of warfare, with Abbas running scared and
Sharon committed not to make waves before his election, Fatah and
Hizballah feel safe enough to come out in the open and run their
combined terrorist cells in broad daylight – first in the Gaza Strip
and next in the West Bank. Hopes of Abbas being able or willing to
deal with the terrorists fade day by day. His embraces with notorious
Palestinian terrorist chiefs, which US secretary of state Colin Powell
found "disturbing," are not just a stratagem to boost his majority.
They are in fact embracing him to remind him he is largely in their
power both before and after January 9.
As one senior security source put it to DEBKAfile: The terrorists
carried him on their shoulders – not as a sign of affection and
respect, but as a warning to keep his feet and hands off their
territory if he wants to survive.
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