This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/535
" Ariel Sharon's Folly "
April 8, 2005
MIM: The government perpetrated myths that Arabs will grow to become loyal citizens of a Zionist state is going the way of the oxymoron " moderate terrorist'. The government is planning to uproot thousands of Jews from Gaza, under the guise of "peace' while allowing a deadly fifth column of ' Arab citizens of Israel' to stay put and aid and abet their Islamist 'comrades in arms'. It remains to be seen how any country can deal with the potential of thousands of it's own citizens taking up arms in every city and town . (see Dr.Daniel Pipes article below )
Israeli Arabs fully engaged in terrorism
April 8, 2005
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=79775
Israeli-Arabs played a major role in the Oslo War, with 236 involved in various terror attacks that killed 136 and wounded 790 since the beginning of the terror offensive in September 2001.
In 2004 alone, 50 Arabs with Israeli citizenship were part of 25 terror cells uncovered by Israeli security forces.
One of the most recent cases was that of Ashraf Kaisi, an Israeli-Arab from Baka al-Gharbiya who took a major role in the most recent attack. He transported the suicide terrorist bomber to the Stage Club on Tel Aviv's beachfront several weeks ago, after having helped him choose the location in which to blow himself up. Five Israelis were murdered in the attack that night.
A study by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, using data from the General Security Service (GSS ), shows that the percentage of Israeli-Arabs taking an active role in carrying out terror attacks - as opposed to merely handling logistics or reconnaissance - rose drastically in 2004. Thirteen such cases were discovered in 2004, as opposed to only five in 2003.
In 11 of the terror cells discovered in 2004, Israeli-Arabs assisted in the preparation of terror attacks emanating from the Palestinian Authority (PA). In addition to gathering information, they used their Israeli ID cards to travel freely on both sides of the Green Line to scout out potential targets, transport explosives and guns and recruit actual bombers.
Another trend in 2004 was an increase in the number of Israeli-Arabs under the age of 18 involved in terrorist attacks. Whereas only one such case was recorded in 2003, the nine Israeli-Arabs under the age of 18 involved in attacks in 2004 surpassed the total number from 2001-2003.
Seven of the Israeli-Arab cells were independent in their planning of kidnappings, shooting or stabbings, while the rest were directed by various PA terror groups and Lebanon's Hizbullah.
GSS head Avi Dichter warned earlier this year of increasing Israeli-Arab involvement in terrorism. He pointed specifically to the Arabs of Jerusalem, saying that four out of every 1,000 Jerusalem Arabs are involved in terrorist activities.
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http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2498
Ariel Sharon's Folly
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
April 5, 2005
[NY Sun title: "Israel's Folly"]
With the passage last week of a budget bill in Israel, the government of Ariel Sharon appears to be ready to remove more than 8,000 Israelis living in Gaza with force, if necessary.
In addition to the legal dubiousness of this step and its historical unprecedented nature (challenge to the reader: name another democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes), the planned withdrawal of all Israeli installations from Gaza amounts to an act of monumental political folly.
It also comes as an astounding surprise. After the Oslo round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1993-2001) ended in disaster, many Israelis looked back on Oslo's faulty assumptions, their own naïveté, and resolved not to repeat that bitter experience. Israelis awoke from the delusion that giving the Palestinians land, money, and arms in return for airy-fairy and fraudulent promises would lessen Palestinian hostility. They realized that, to the contrary, this imbalance enhanced Palestinian rejection of the very existence of the Jewish state.
By early 2001, a divided Israeli electorate had largely re-unified. When Mr. Sharon became prime minister in February 2001, a wiser leadership had apparently taken over in Jerusalem, one that recognized the need for Israel to return to toughness and deterrence.
These optimistic expectations were indeed fulfilled for nearly three years, 2001-03. Mr. Sharon engaged in a quite masterful double diplomacy in which he simultaneously showed a cheery face (toward the American government and his leftist coalition partners) and a tough one (toward his Likud constituents and the Palestinians). The purposefulness and underlying consistency of his premiership from the start impressed many observers, including this one; I assessed Sharon's record to be "a virtuoso performance of quietly tough actions mixed with voluble concessions."
Mr. Sharon decisively won re-election in January 2003 over Amram Mitzna, a Labor opponent who advocated an Oslo-style unilateral retreat from Gaza. Mr. Sharon unambiguously condemned this idea back then: "A unilateral withdrawal is not a recipe for peace. It is a recipe for war." After winning the election, his talks in February 2003 about forming a coalition government with Mr. Mitzna failed because Mr. Sharon so heavily emphasized the "strategic importance" of Israelis living in Gaza.
By December 2003, however, Mr. Sharon himself endorsed Mr. Mitzna's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. While he did so in a spirit very different from the prior Oslo diplomacy, his decision has the same two main characteristics.
First, because the decision to retreat from Gaza took place in the context of heightened violence against Israelis, it vindicates those Palestinian voices arguing for terrorism. The Gaza retreat is, in plain words, a military defeat. It follows on the ignominious Israeli abandonment of its positions and its allies in Lebanon in May 2000, a move which much eroded Arab respect for Israeli strength, with dire consequences. The Gaza withdrawal will almost certainly increase Palestinian reliance on terrorism.
Second, the retreat is heating up the political climate within Israel, bringing back the dangerous mood of exaggeration, incivility, hostility, and even lawlessness. The prospect of thousands of Israelis evicted from their homes under threat of force is rudely interrupting what had been a trend toward a healthier atmosphere during the relative calm of 2001-03.
Mr. Sharon's plans at least have a disillusioned quality to them, sparing Israel the wooly notions of a "new Middle East" that so harmed the country a decade ago. But in another way, Mr. Sharon's plans are worse than Oslo; at least that disaster was carried out by the clueless Left. A Right - led by Mr. Sharon – valiantly and staunchly opposed it. This time, it is the Right's hero who, allied with the far-Left, is himself leading the charge, reducing the opposition to marginality.
There are many theories for what reversed Mr. Sharon's views on the matter of a unilateral Gaza withdrawal in the 10 months between February and December 2003 – I have my own ideas about the hubris of elected Israeli prime ministers – but whatever the reason, its consequences are clear.
Mr. Sharon betrayed the voters who supported him, wounding Israeli democracy. He divided Israeli society in ways that may poison the body politic for decades hence. He aborted his own successful policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He delivered Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim rejectionists their greatest boost ever. And he failed his American ally by delivering a major victory to the forces of terrorism.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=79701
Hizbullah Cell Uncovered in ShechemWednesday, April 6, 2005
Released for publication: IDF troops and General Security Services (GSS) agents arrested members of a Hizbullah cell operating in Samaria on February 25th.
The terrorists in custody, from the Palestinian Authority-controlled city of Shechem, were involved in espionage and reconnaissance for the Lebanese terrorist organization. Among the activities cell members were found to have carried out, with Hizbullah financing, was the photographing of military checkpoints, IDF bases and settlements. The photos were sent via the Internet to handlers in Lebanon, while the exact locations of the potential targets were recorded using a GPS (global positioning satellite) device hidden in a tape player on the dashboard of a car.
One of the terrorists, Wassam Badoui Salah Nasser, 21, a student at An-Najah University, was recruited by Hizbullah with the aid of local relatives during a family visit to Lebanon. According to Nasser's confession, he underwent military and espionage training in Lebanon, including how to collect information ahead of an attack on a senior VIP.
A second cell member, Mouad Rateb Haj-Muhammad Aslim, 21, an upholsterer and barber, admitted to taking part in bomb attacks in the Shechem area even prior to establishing contact, through, Nasser, with Hizbullah. The third terrorist, Raad Aouni Hasni Bader, 21, also a student at An-Najah University, aided Nasser in collecting intelligence for the Hizbullah.
The phenomenon of recruiting PA residents into Hizbullah while they are on family visits to Lebanon is becoming increasingly widespread, security officials report. The Hizbullah recruits are generally instructed to establish local cells to perpetrate terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian and military targets in both Judea and Samaria, as well as inside pre-1967 Green Line Israel.
In March, Jordan's King Abdullah II warned Jewish leaders in Washington that Syria and the Hizbullah were encouraging terrorist attacks against Israel in an effort to divert international attention from the situation in Lebanon.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/535