Mideast News Digest
Sharon Planning Gaza Onslaught
by Jeffrey Steinberg, Courtesy of New Federalist
Sept. 24 (EIRNS)Highly placed Mideast sources have warned Executive Intelligence Review that the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is planning a massive military raid into the Gaza Strip in early October, as the latest effort to crush the Road Map and all related peace efforts. The sources say that the Sharon Cabinet has decided on a Gaza bloodbath, as an alternative to the assassination of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, and that Israeli Defense Force reservists are already being called up, in preparation for the October offensive.
The same sources contend that the United States' recent veto of the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli threats to expel or assassinate Arafat, was part of a deal with the Sharon government, that involved a personal pledge by the Prime Minister that Arafat would not be assassinated. According to one senior U.S. intelligence source, the U.S. had pressed Israel to keep Arafat's status unchangedi.e., remaining in Ramallah at the Palestinian Authority headquartersbut Israel refused that demand, and only pledged that Arafat would not be killed.
According to one Israeli source, Sharon and the IDF are considering an "Eichmann-style" kidnapping of Arafat, and his jailing at an isolated facility inside Israel.
Kill the Peace Process
Sharon's goal is to destroy the Road Map and stall, for years to come, any progress towards what President Bush has called the "two-state solution" to the Israel-Palestine conflict. By launching a massive military incursion into the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated areas of the world, Sharon would certainly trigger an enormous amount of bloodshed and destruction, making it impossible for any Palestinian leader to even be seen in the presence of an Israeli official for years to come. This, the sources say, is Sharon's and the Israeli rightwing's objective.
On Sept. 19, Lyndon LaRouche, the tenth candidate for the 2004 Democratic Party Presidential nomination, reacted strongly to President Bush's comments, made during a Sept. 18 press availability with Jordan's King Abdullah II at Camp David, in which the President condemned Arafat as an obstacle to peace. LaRouche asked: Doesn't Bush understand that any Israeli action against President Arafat would blow up the entire Middle East region, creating an even more impossible situation for the 150,000 American troops inside Iraq?
LaRouche similarly responded to the source reports on the planned Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, and reiterated his call, from Sept. 15, for President Bush to sign an Executive Order freezing all American funds to Israel, should Sharon persist in even threatening the expulsion or killing of Arafat. The same approach should be taken, he demanded, if Sharon goes ahead with the planned Gaza invasion: the instant shut-off of all financial flows, including loan guarantees, to Israel.
LaRouche added that the President must take these actions "without DeLay," referring to the fact that the House Republican Whip, Tom DeLay (R-Texas), is waging a blackmail campaign against the Administration, on behalf of Sharon and those who are promoting the "Clash of Civilizations" perpetual war in Eurasia (see article, p. 2). LaRouche denounced DeLay as a thoroughly corrupt kook, whose continuing influence inside the Republican Party represents one of the gravest threats to the national security of the United States and the world.
LaRouche also reiterated his Sept. 15 call for President Bush, and all Presidential candidates, to join him in sponsoring an immediate full probe into the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the U.S.S. Liberty, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Other Peace Initiatives
Israeli sources have also told this news service that, at the same time that Sharon is putting the finishing touches on his planned Gaza onslaught, there are new efforts to force a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestiniansagainst all odds.
The sources reported that, during the weekend of Sept. 20-21, former President Bill Clinton was in Israel, along with many other world leaders, to celebrate the birthday of Shimon Peres, and proposals were discussed for a one-shot "final solution" agreement. Authors of the peace plan, according to the sources, argued that all efforts at "step-by-step" diplomacy, from the Oslo Accords, to the Mitchell Plan, to the Tenet Plan, to the most recent Road Map, have been easily subverted by extremists on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide. Given that all of the key features of a just solution were already hammered out at the Taba peace talks, led by President Clinton in December 2000-January 2001, the key to success is to get the U.S. to sponsor, forcefully, such a comprehensive, one-shot solutionincluding with the deployment of American or international troop contingents to secure the compliance.
In a Sept. 23 op ed in the Washington Post, former President Jimmy Carter weighed in for an emergency American initiative to avoid a regional catastrophe. Carter wrote that the biggest problem in reaching a peace agreement has always been Israeli settlementswhich are the reason that Israel claims it will not return to the 1967 pre-Six Day War borders.
Carter said there is only one choice for Israel: permanent peace with neighbors, or retaining settlements in occupied territories. America's worst betrayal of Israel would be to support the second choice and destroy the chances for a regional peace.
So far there is no indication that President Bush is prepared to take the kinds of bold steps that will be required to preempt Sharon's planned Nazi-like invasion of Gaza.
Army Training Document: Mossad Might "Target U.S. Forces And Make It Look Like A Palestinian Arab Act."
A U.S. Army report received by EIR on Sept. 22 under the Freedom of Information Act describes the Israeli Mossad as a "wildcard, ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian Arab act." This is a verbatim quote from a section of a report from a training scenario of the School of Advanced Military Studies in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. The FOIA request was filed more than a year ago, after a report in the Washington Times of April 2, 2002 indicated that a U.S. Army training exercise concerning the deployment of U.S. peacekeeping forces in the Palestinian Territories after a hypothetical "Austin Peace Agreement" would face hostilities from Israeli military posing as Palestinians.
The report that was released under the FOIA was "produced by the SAMS students as a result of a SAMS curriculum exercise." The characterization of the Mossad comes from a section that defines "The Players" in the area, including Palestinian entities and what the report labels "The Arab Terrorists" (Hizbollah, Hamas, PFLP, PFLP-GC, and DFLP), about which the American forces will have to be concerned. It defines the Israeli Defense Forces as: "500 pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza-WB. Known to disregard International Law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."
In a discussion with EIR at the time the Washington Times report appeared, an officer at SAMS confirmed that an exercise had taken place as described in which the Israelis were depicted as posing as Palestinian terrorists. But the officer would not say whether it was a paper exercise, or something out in the field.
One "Branch One" part of the scenario involves the complete disintegration of the Palestinian Authority, after extremists in Israel and the Palestinian side refuse to accept the "Austin Peace Agreement."
The Real Obstacle To Peace Is Sharon, Not Arafat
Oxford professor and author Avi Shlaim authors a commentary in the Sept. 24 International Herald Tribune, exposing the fact that it is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, not Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who is the obstacle to peace.
Shlaim warns that the American veto of the United Nations resolution demanding Israel withdraw its intention to kill Arafat, has created a situation where Israeli leaders will interpret the veto as a tacit approval for their killing of Arafat. He then writes that Arafat is the one who accepted the Oslo peace accords, and continued to be a reliable partner until the assassination of Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Then it was Benjamin Netanyahu who became prime minister and began to derail the Oslo accords. Shlaim writes, "Israel has a remarkable record of accepting peace plans in theory and subverting them in practice." The latest victim is the road map to a Middle East peace.
Shlaim writes that the road Sharon is following is the expansion of settlements, a security wall that bites deep into Palestinian territory, and targetted assassinations of Palestinian leaders. "The real obstacle to peace ... is Ariel Sharon, not Yasser Arafat. Killing Arafat would not bring peace but ring the death knell of Palestinian moderation...."
He then reminds people: "In 1948, Yitzhak Shamir, who later became leader of Likud and prime minister, conspired with his colleagues in the Stern gang to assassinate Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator ... Likud thus has the dubious distinction of counting among its leaders a man who assassinated a UN peace envoy. It can now build on this reputation by assassinating the only democratically-elected leader in the Arab world."
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