Arafat deploys militia while saving military for full-scale war
Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Thursday, November 16, 2000
TEL AVIV — Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is saving
his security forces for an all-out war with Israel, a report says.
Arafat has restrained his security forces and instead has sent his
20,000-member Fatah militia to battle Israeli troops in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. The result, the report says, has been a high Palestinian
casualty count.
"Arafat seems to have chosen to keep the lion's share of his security
forces disengaged from the fighting and put them into action only if and
when an all-out war with Israel broke out," the report by [Res.] Lt. Col.
Gal Luft says.
At one point, Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli casualties by
12-fold. Palestinian snipers were ineffective in many cases during the first
month of the miniwar with Israel.
Luft, regarded as an expert on PA security forces, said Arafat does not
want to lose international support by converting the uprising in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip into a war between two militaries. His report said
Arafat has spared his uniformed forces from fighting or deploying much of
the PA weapons arsenal.
This includes Palestinian armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft
missiles and anti-tank missiles. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on
Wednesday that three days earlier a PA fighter fired a rocket-propelled
grenade toward an Israeli tank near Nablus. The grenade exploded in the
barrel and the Palestinian was seriously injured.
Another factor, the report says, is that Arafat wants to conceal the
dimensions of his secret military, which has posed as a police force. The
report says exposing the Palestinian forces would leave Arafat open to
international demands that his territory undergo demilitarization.
"Exposing the PA's military capabilities at this stage would be
self-defeating because it would enforce the legitimacy of the Israeli
demands for Palestinian demilitarization as part of future negotiations,"
the report said.
The PA has at least 12 different services, including civil police,
national security forces, preventive security apparatus, general
intelligence, civil defense, military police, military intelligence and the
presidential security forces, known as Force 17. Arafat
directly controls all of the services.
The report says that since the 1996 clashes with Israel, the PA has
increased the size of combat units to battalion level. During the first half
of this year, the PA conducted six battalion exercises in the Gaza Strip.
The exercises included attacks on Israeli military posts and Jewish
settlements.
Meanwhile, Israeli manufacturers are working around the clock to meet
the demands of Israel's military for defensive equipment.
"The main production is protection for vehicles of different kinds,
including glass, and protection for the lower partitions of the vehicle and
personal protection equipment for the soldiers such as flak jackets,"
Director of the Kibbutz Industries Association Oded Barish said. "We work
around the clock in three shifts."
At least 1,000 employees work on each shift.
Thursday, November 16, 2000
|