Former US ambassador warns Israel not to
‘rejoice at Arafat’s discomfort’
With the arrest of an Israeli citizen accused of spying for Hizbullah, the
mass-circulation tabloid Maariv leads with the banner: “The Jewish ‘Hizbullah
spy’ gathered information for a terror attack in Israel.” The Tel Aviv daily
says that according to the charge sheet, “Nissim,” an immigrant from Lebanon,
“was recruited by his brother who lives across the border.”
Yediot Ahronot leads with the more dramatic: “An Israeli in the Service of
Hizbullah.” It says “a man by the name of ‘Nissim,’ who lives in Holon
and immigrated to Israel 10 years ago, relayed security information and photographed
electricity and gas installations in preparation for a terror attack.”
Yediot Ahronot quotes the man’s wife as saying: “We were married for six years
and I knew nothing about him.”
Maariv writes that another Hizbullah man was arrested in Hebron.
Also on its front page, Maariv quotes a senior US official as telling an unnamed Israeli
Cabinet minister: “We won’t shed a tear if you get rid of (Palestinian leader
Yasser) Arafat.” It adds that in the Palestinian Authority (PA) itself
“criticism of Arafat is growing,” and it quotes Italian Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi as saying that “the time has come for Arafat to step down as leader.”
Yediot Ahronot highlights an American intelligence report published in
the Italian weekly Panorama, which claims that “Arafat is sick and confused.”
In a front-page commentary on the Hizbullah spy story, Yediot Ahronot military analyst
Alex Fishman says that “the Israeli security services should not be surprised at the
capture of the agent, perhaps only at the fact that he is a Jew and an Israeli citizen.
Nor should the discovery of the Hizbullah ‘postman’ in Hebron surprise anyone.
Both cases reflect a trend that has been gathering pace ever since the (Israeli Army)
withdrawal from Lebanon two years ago the intensification of Hizbullah activity in
Israel and the Palestinian territories.”
What characterizes Hizbullah activities, Fishman explains, is long-term investment in
intelligence gathering. “Not for nothing was ‘Nissim’ ordered to gather
material on infrastructure targets in Tel Aviv, like gas and electricity
installations.” But, writes Fishman, “according to what has been published, it
seems Hizbullah did not gain much … it seems he did not manage to penetrate any
security body, despite his efforts to cultivate army personnel.”
In an article in Yediot Ahronot’s Sabbath supplement, Fishman writes that
Israel’s new chief of staff, General Moshe Yaalon, believes Hizbullah’s
operations will almost certainly lead to war in the north. “In his talks with the
defense elite in the US, during a visit last May, they say he told them that confrontation
in the north is inevitable.”
Moreover, Fishman continues, “the military flare-up that almost occurred there during
‘Operation Rampart’ would have been bigger than anything we have seen so far.
The strengthening of Hizbullah … and Damascus’s growing dependence on Iran led
the army top brass to support the offensive, which, according to American sources,
included striking at Syrian territory.”
In its leader, Maariv maintains that “the Hizbullah threat should not only be seen in
the Israeli context. Between the international terror networks, headed by Osama bin
Laden’s Al-Qaeda, and local Palestinian terror, Hizbullah is a dangerously lethal
player. Hizbullah’s terrorist tentacles have in the past reached distant continents,
even South America, where it was behind the terror attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the
Jewish communal center in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s. Its cooperation with other terror
groups, which also draw their sordid inspiration from Islamic fundamentalism, is growing.
“With the eyes of the world focused on Arafat’s contribution to the rivers of
blood now washing Israel and the territories, and his responsibility for the dangerous
erosion of stability in the entire region, we should not forget the senior partner from
Beirut, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” Maariv writes.
Arafat’s direct involvement in Palestinian terror, according to Yediot Ahronot
diplomatic analyst Shimon Schiffer, led to US President George W. Bush’s call in his
Middle East policy speech this week for Arafat’s removal.
Schiffer says the Arafat era is over, and he reports that a few weeks ago, “for
nearly three hours, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice discussed a detailed plan for a settlement with the Palestinians,”
after Arafat goes.
“In general, the American source says, the Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi secret
services are deeply involved in preparing the way forward for the PA after the Arafat
era.”
Schiffer says that Rice presented to Sharon “a new governmental structure for the
Palestinians in which Arafat
has only a symbolic role: president under whom there would be a senior chief executive, a
prime minister with sweeping powers. Names were even mentioned.”
In his weekly column for Yediot Ahronot, Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to the
Jewish state, writes that “Israel would be well advised not to rejoice at
Arafat’s discomfort” after the Bush speech.
“The speech,” Indyk says, “was so one-sided in Israel’s favor that the
pendulum is bound to swing back in the other direction. The US has too much to lose in the
Arab world and can’t afford not to balance the scales. As Secretary of State Colin
Powell warned, ‘toughness is like a windshield wiper; it moves from side to
side.’”
And Indyk warns: “If Sharon decides to exploit Bush’s call for a new Palestinian
leadership by expelling the old leaders from Palestine, Bush would have no choice but to
respond with a balancing move, especially if Arafat’s expulsion draws negative Arab
responses.
“The US would then be forced to intervene with a demand for Israeli withdrawal from
the Palestinian territories, and the Palestinian security services, under international
supervision, would take over the evacuated territory. From there, it is a short step to a
US-led trusteeship in Palestine, which would supersede the Israeli occupation.”
Indyk contends that there was “a clear pointer in that direction” in Bush’s
speech when he talked about the role of the international community under the US in
“all aspects” of institution-building for the Palestinian state.
“If Sharon topples Arafat’s regime, the US and the international community will
have no choice but to bolster the successor regime, perhaps even with ground forces that
will back up the Palestinian security services in their bid to control the terrorist
organizations,” Indyk concludes.
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