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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



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