Mideast News
(Signs of the Time - July/August 2003)
Gaza strip
Retaliating for a terrorist bombing, Israeli rockets targeted a
jeep transporting Dr. Abdel Rantisi. A pediatrician by trade and a strident
leader of the radical Hamas organization, Rantisi threatened, “We will
continue with our holy war and resistance until every last criminal Zionist
is evicted from this land.” Another Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, joined
in declaring, “This crime won’t pass without punishment against the
Zionists. It’s time for Palestinian society to throw the road map into the
garbage.” He added that “the Hamas response will be like an
earthquake.” Asked whether this would include targeting Israeli
politicians, Zahar said, “An eye for an eye . . . a politician for a
politician."
By targeting Rantisi, the Israelis created a large wedge between the Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by their new Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas. Further complicating the process is the fact that Rantisi enjoys strong popularity among Palestinians, and the attack clearly undermines efforts by Abbas to resume a dialogue with Hamas and other militant groups.
Proposed intervention by NATO
United States Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested that NATO forces might be needed to stop the bloodshed. “The situation is beyond the control of both the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Mr. Warner said on CNN. “We could see a lessening of the combat situation” if both sides would agree to have the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and American troops serve as peacekeepers, Mr. Warner said. Warner added, “I know people of NATO have considered this.”
Hizballah
According to the DEBKAfile Internet news service, “A senior US official has
been in secret negotiations with the group’s leaders for its voluntary
disarmament, its withdrawal from the Israeli frontier and parts of southern
Lebanon and a pledge to stay out of Iraqi Shiite affairs. That’s for
starters. Next, the Bush administration’s emissaries will demand guarantees
from Hizballah leaders to desist from supporting Yasser Arafat and his
Fatah-Tanzim and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as the Hamas and the Jihad
Islami, and to break off operational interchanges with those Palestinian
terror groups. The Americans also want an assurance that in the event of an
outbreak of hostilities with Iran, the Hizballah will stand aside and not
open a second anti-American front. Accession to these demands would end the
Hizballah’s life as a fire-eating radical terrorist organization and remake
it as a Lebanese Shiite political movement, safe from the threat of American
assault. US officialdom is talking directly to Hizballah secretary general
Hassan Nasrallah, head of a group branded a terrorist organization and
widely associated with the design and setting up of the 9/11 suicide attacks
on New York and Washington. The middleman is the Lebanese Shiite religious
leader Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Hizballah’s spiritual guide who
is also esteemed by Iraqi Shiites. Given the dramatis personae, the talks,
still at an early stage, are extremely delicate, depending heavily on the
course of events in Iraq and the state of US-Iranian relations.”
Syria
According to the DEBKAfile news report, “The ground in Damascus is shaking
hard in the face of the decision by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s decision
to finally get rid of General Mustafa Tlas, the veteran fixture of both
Assad regimes from the days of the Soviet-Syrian military alliance. Apart
from considerations of age, he has to go because his son, Firas Tlas, was
the Syrian government’s point man for its oil and weapons smuggling
transactions with the Saddam regime. He also arranged for the clandestine
transfer of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction from Baghdad, Tikrit and al
Qaim, into Syria and Lebanon. Parts of this arsenal have since been
destroyed; the rest buried under an army base in northern Syria and in huge
pits dug by Syrian engineering units in the Beqaa valley. “As DEBKAfile was
first to reveal on April 3, Syria also set up a secure escape route across
its territory for high-ranking members of the Saddam regime.”
To distance himself from his Saddam associations in Washington’s eyes, the Syrian president needs to remove anyone named Tlas from his government. Those charging the Bush and Blair governments with exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction need look no further than Firas Tlas for their facts. He has them at his fingertips. In fact, the Tlases, father and son, are now rich men, paid handsomely for their services by the deposed Iraqi ruler.
George Rayner