JERUSALEM Ñ Israel has accused the Palestinian Authority of staging
counter-insurgency operations in an effort to impress the United States.
An Israeli government report asserted that PA Security Affairs Minister
Mohammed Dahlan has approved several operations that sought to prove that
Palestinian security services have been battling Palestinian insurgents. The
report, prepared by Israel's intelligence community, said the operations
staged the confiscation of weapons and explosives as well as the arrest of
suspected insurgents.
In several cases, the report said, the PA's Preventive Security
Apparatus assembled suicide belts and placed them in unspecified locations
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Then, the PSA invited television news
crews, staged a raid on the these locations and displayed the suicide belts,
attributed to insurgency groups. The PSA is under the direct control of
Dahlan and is part of the Interior Ministry.
The report, submitted to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the PA is
also suspected of staging arrests of suspected suicide
bombers and seizing insurgency assets. In at least one case, the PA was said
to have relayed information to Israel on a purported suicide bomber who
might have been sent by the PA's Military Intelligence.
Assuming the unassumable
Those who believe that an unplanned, random "Big Bang" explosion of unknown matter caused the formation of the numberless bodies of the cosmos have more faith that fanatics. They also conveniently ignore some obvious points of information:
Read on . . .
The PA staged counter-insurgency operations in an attempt to demonstrate
its commitment to the United States to battle Palestinian insurgency groups,
the report said. A U.S. team led by presidential envoy John Wolf has been
monitoring the Israeli and PA commitment to the so-called roadmap, which
calls for an end
to the Israeli-Palestinian war and the establishment of a Palestinian state
with interim borders by the end of 2003.
The government study, first reported on Tuesday by Israel's state radio,
came less than two days after Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the
Cabinet that the PA has undertaken more intensive security efforts against
Palestinian insurgents. Mofaz did not elaborate.
"It's the first I ever heard of this [report]," Israeli minister Gideon
Ezra, who deals with Palestinian security officers, said.
But other ministers said the Cabinet has been briefed by senior
intelligence officials that the PA had staged counter-insurgency operations.
They said
the PA has allowed insurgency groups to accelerate the production of rockets
and mortars while urging them to cease suicide attacks inside Israel.
Officials said that Hamas gunners fired 20 Kassam-class missiles toward
Israel and Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip since Palestinian
insurgency groups declared a three-month truce on June 29. On Monday, a
Kassam missile fired toward an Israeli community fell in an area controlled
by the PA.
On Tuesday, Sharon convened military and security chiefs to discuss an
Israeli agreement to withdraw from four cities in the West Bank. Officials
said the
withdrawal was expected to begin on Wednesday.
