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Iraq Says Syria Harbors Foreign Killers
Training Camps Cited; Most Suicide Bombers Are Saudis, Top Official Asserts

By John Ward Anderson and Hasan Shammari
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 14, 2005; A15



BAGHDAD, Nov. 13 -- Top Iraqi defense officials on Sunday accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to operate training camps on Syrian soil and sneak into Iraq to commit suicide bombings.

"We do not have the least doubt that nine out of 10 of the suicide bombers who carry out suicide bombing operations among Iraqi citizens . . . are Arabs who have crossed the border with Syria," the Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie, told journalists in Cairo, the Reuters news service reported.

"Most of those who blow themselves up in Iraq are Saudi nationals," he added.

Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi also criticized Syria.

"We have more than 450 detainees who came from different Arab and Muslim countries to train in Syria and enter with their booby-trapped vehicles into Iraq to bring destruction and killings," Dulaimi said after meeting with Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran in Amman, according to the Associated Press.

"Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes, no neighboring capital will be saved," Dulaimi said, warning that the aim of terrorists was "to kill tolerance and destroy coexistence in Arab and Muslim cities."

The charges came as Jordan blamed Iraqi suicide bombers for three blasts at hotels in Amman on Wednesday that killed 57 people. The allegations also echo complaints from U.S. military officials that Syria has done little to patrol its 376-mile border with Iraq.

In Iraq, meanwhile, two Marines were killed Saturday when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in Amiriyah, about 25 miles southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement Sunday. And a U.S. soldier died Saturday in a "non-hostile" traffic accident near Rawah, in western Iraq, about 50 miles from the Syrian border, the military said in a separate statement.

In Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi forces arrested 371 suspected terrorists on Saturday, including the town's mayor, the deputy chairman of the city council, the deputy chief of the appeals court and several police officers, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hasan Tamimi, a senior Interior Ministry official, said Sunday.

Local officials expressed outrage at the sweeping arrests, complaining that they were based on unsubstantiated tips. The mayor, Khaid Sanjari, said he was released Sunday without being questioned. Oaf Rahoomi, the deputy provincial governor, called the arrests "random" and charged that the operation had "sectarian goals" aimed at preventing Sunni Arabs from taking part in national elections scheduled for Dec. 15.

Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population, controlled the country under former president Saddam Hussein. Shiite Muslims, who account for 60 percent of the population, now dominate the country's security forces.

Confusion continued to surround the fate of a former top aide to Hussein, Izzat Ibrahim Douri, the country's most wanted man, after an obscure Arabic-language Web site reported Friday that he had died. Douri, who would be about 63 and reportedly has leukemia, is considered the highest-ranking member of Hussein's inner circle still at large.

Another Web site, the official site of the Arab Baath Socialist Party, reported Sunday that "the holy warrior Izzat Douri" was "fine," calling earlier reports of his death baseless.

"We apologize to our brothers and sisters for publishing a statement announcing the death of brother Izzat Douri, Abu Ahmed, may God extend his life," the brief message stated.

It was not possible to independently confirm the reports. Many reports of Douri's death appear to be based on Internet echoes from the Web site in Britain with Baathist ties that first reported his death on Friday -- interspersed with a variety of stories and pictures of such figures as Paul McCartney, Rosa Parks and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

There have been several reports that Douri might be spreading false rumors about himself, and a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, warned that the reports of Douri's death could be a hoax.

"Coalition officials question the validity of the Baath party claim that Douri has died," the U.S. military said in a statement Sunday night. A reward of up to $10 million would be paid "for information leading to al-Douri's capture or his gravesite," it said.

Shammari reported from Baqubah.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GK15Ak01.html
No escape from al-Qaeda for Jordan
By Kathleen Ridolfo

Jordan is one of the United States' staunchest allies in the region, and it is also the "new" Iraq's closest Arab ally, having done more than any other Arab state to help facilitate Iraq's transition in the post-Saddam Hussein era.

This and the global "war on terror" have left Jordan in a precarious position, highlighted by last week's bombing of three hotels in Amman, the capital, in which nearly 60 people died.

Fugitive Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying that his Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (Al-Qaeda Organization of Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers) was behind the deadly blasts.

Wedged between the Palestinian West Bank, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, the kingdom has tried to balance Arab loyalties and Western alliances - particularly with the US and Israel - that are not accepted in much of the Arab world.

Jordan quietly lent support to the US during the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom and King Abdallah II offered safe haven to two of Saddam's daughters, giving them and their children homes and monthly allowances on the stipulation that they did not become politically active in the kingdom.

In the post-war era, Jordan has played a crucial role in the rebuilding of Iraq, by facilitating everything from summits to workshops for various US and Iraqi government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Moreover, Iraq has become Jordan's second most important trading partner, accounting for 16%, or US$42.4 million, of Jordanian exports.

While Jordan has not been immune to terrorism, it has gone largely unscathed in recent years. But as an August 19 attack on a Jordanian naval ship docked in the port of Aqaba showed, the country is increasingly having to deal with the wrath of al-Qaeda. Insurgents purportedly linked to Zarqawi fired three Katyusha rockets at the ship but missed, though one Jordanian sailor was killed in the attack.

That attack and the subsequent discovery of an Iraqi criminal ring that produced counterfeit passports and documents operating in Amman, prompted the Jordanian government to announce that it would invest $85 million to improve security along its border with Iraq. At the time of the announcement, Jordanian officials said that the border authorities were working at 10 times their normal capacity, checking some 1,500 vehicles and 5,000 passengers daily.

In June, Jordanian Colonel Isam Hijazin, director of the al-Karamah border crossing between Jordan and Iraq, estimated that 150 forged Iraqi passports were discovered among travelers crossing into Jordan every day. Hijazin said that despite the large amount of traffic, people tended to pass through the border quickly, spending an average of five minutes to complete their transactions.

Zarqawi wanted for other attacks
Zarqawi served seven years in a Jordanian prison from 1992-99 on charges of trying to overthrow the monarchy. Soon after his release, he was charged with plotting to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman just before New Year's Day 2000. Zarqawi fled the country and Jordan has been pursuing him ever since.

The Jordanian government sentenced Zarqawi to death in absentia in early 2004 for his alleged involvement in the October 2002 murder of US diplomat Lawrence Foley in Amman.

In October 2004, he was indicted along with 12 others on charges related to a planned chemical attack against the Jordanian General Intelligence Department.

In October this year, the US National Intelligence Directorate released a translation of a letter intercepted in Iraq and dated July 9 from al-Qaeda mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri to Zarqawi, advising him to "extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq".

Jordan has no choice but to deal with al-Qaeda head on. The kingdom has a strong security apparatus, but it will also need to deal with the national mindset. A Pew Global Attitudes survey released in July found that support for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has risen over the past two years from 55% to 60%. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they had "a lot of confidence" in bin Laden. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said violence against civilian targets was "often/sometimes justified", up from 43% in the summer of 2002. Surprisingly, 87% of respondents said Islamic terrorism was not a threat to their country.

Zarqawi claims responsibility
In a November 10 Internet statement, Zarqawi said the organization's al-Bara' Ibn-Malik Brigade carried out the Amman hotel bombings, which the statement referred to as "a new conquest".

"It was decided to carry out the attacks against some hotels which were transformed by the tyrant of Jordan into a backyard for the enemies of the faith, from the Jews and the Crusaders, a dirty pasture for the traitors of the nation, the apostates, a safe haven for the intelligence of the infidels who run their plots against the Muslims ... and a center for whoredom and immorality, fighting against God," the statement claimed.

Addressing King Abdallah II, it added: "Let the tyrant of Amman know that the protection wall for the Jews, which was built in east Jordan, and the backup military camp to the armies of the Crusaders and [Iraq's Shi'ite-led government], is now a target for the mujahideen and their conquests."

In the attacks, at the Radisson SAS a bomb detonated in the hotel's ballroom, where a 300-guest wedding was under way. The bomb at the Grand Hyatt was detonated in the hotel lobby. Officials said they believed the Days Inn attack was the result of a car bomb.

Amman's al-Ghadd newspaper reported that the majority of the victims were Jordanian nationals. Three Iraqi nationals were also killed and five others were wounded. Bethlehem's Ma'an news agency reported that three Palestinian officials were among those killed at the Hyatt: Brigadier General Bashir Nafi, the head of Palestinian Intelligence in the West Bank; Jihad Fattuh, commercial attache at the Palestinian Embassy in Egypt; and Abed Allun, director general of the Palestinian Interior Ministry. The former director general of the Palestinian Communications Ministry, Musab Ahmad Khurma, was also killed.

In a dramatic development, millions of viewers across Jordan and the region watched as Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi made a televised confession hours after she was arrested on Sunday.

Al-Rishawi explained how her husband helped plan last Wednesday's attacks, fitted her suicide bomb belt and blew himself up with his own bomb at the Radisson SAS.

"My husband [Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari] detonated [his bomb] and I tried to explode [mine] but it wouldn't," said the 35-year-old Rishawi.

"People fled running and I left running with them," she said during a three-minute segment that showed her handling several pieces of the faulty trigger equipment that failed to set off about 22 pounds of explosives and hundreds of ball-bearings.

Rishawi's brother was once a deputy of Zarqawi.

Meanwhile, Jordan's state-run news agency Petra cited a source from the Jordanian Public Security Department as saying that a number of suspects had been apprehended and several vehicles seized in connection with the attacks. The source said that the suspects remained under interrogation.

Kathleen Ridolfo is the Iraq analyst for RFE/RL Online.

Copyright © 2005, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC 20036

Workers Strike At Top-Secret Israeli Nuclear Facility
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Rice Cements Deal on Gaza Borders

By Robin Wright

JERUSALEM, Nov. 15 -- After marathon all-night negotiations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday announced a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the Palestinians designed to open up the Gaza strip to Israel and the outside world.

The deal set terms for freedom of movement on three borders: traffic across the Rafah border into Egypt, Gaza's main link with the outside world; commercial trucks at the Karni crossing into Israel; and bus convoys between Gaza and the West Bank, the separated parts of the Palestinian Authority.

Just as important long-term, the deal allows the Palestinians to begin work on Gaza's airport and seaport, Rice said.

The deal is the most significant movement in the peace process since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza two months ago and the first broad agreement between the two sides in nine months, since talks at Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt.

For the first time since 1967, the Palestinians will gain access of the borders in the areas where they live, Rice said at an unusual press conference with international envoy James Wolfensohn and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana just for the press traveling with Rice, but no local journalists. The target date for the opening of Rafah is Nov. 25.

"The important thing here is that people have understood that there is an important balance between security on the one hand and on the other hand allowing the Palestinian people freedom of movement. The other important point is that everybody recognizes that if the Palestinians can move more freely and export their agriculture, that Gaza will be a much better place, where the institutions of democracy can begin to take hold," Rice said.

In an important boost for the stagnant economy in Gaza, where up to 70% of the labor force is unemployed, the Israelis will permit the export of all agricultural produces from the current harvest -- instead of rotting in warehouses. The number of trucks that will pass through the Karni crossing to Israel will reach 150 by year's end and 400 by the end of next year.

Bus convoys to move people between the West Bank and Gaza will begin by Dec. 15 and truck traffic by Jan. 15.

Both Israeli and Palestinian officials were upbeat after a long night of intense negotiations. "It's a document designed to organize the whole issue of the flow of people and goods in and out of Gaza. It's more ambitious than a lot of us thought at the beginning. Everyone wants to have a deal in the run up to both elections," said a senior Israeli foreign ministry official.

Later, he said a broader agreement was made possible when talks changed from a deal on Rafah to a comprehensive agreement on all crossing, which allowed for creative solutions."

The Palestinians are scheduled to hold elections Jan. 25, while the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is under pressure from the new Labor Party leadership to hold early elections, which now appear likely. Without a deal now, the diplomatic effort could get deferred for many months -- and potentially even become an election issue that would particularly help the Islamist movement Hamas.

The deal involves major compromises on both sides. "No one is happy with the deal but we have to do it," said Mohammed Dahlan, civil affairs minister.

The agreement is a major personal triumph for Rice, who has been dogged in not letting the long-illusive deal slip through her fingers during the last stop of her six-nation Middle East tour. "It was not a one woman show, but clearly nothing would have happened without her amazing combination of steel, charm and energy," said a senior U.S. official who was in the midst of the negotiations.

An agreement could have particular impact on the stagnant Palestinian economy and on security for the Israelis, who in the negotiations are pressing for security measures to prevent extremists and weapons from moving in and out of Gaza. An agreement would also help calm the generally tense atmosphere between the sides since Israel's withdrawal, U.S., Israeli and Palestinian, officials say.

The Bush administration is particularly eager to win agreement now to generate new momentum and prevent a further delay in the peace process, given increasing political turmoil in Israel that threatens to force Sharon's government into early elections and possibly further divert attention from talks with the Palestinians.


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Commentary: Time of testing for Jordan
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
UPI Editor at Large
Published November 14, 2005


WASHINGTON -- King Abdullah II of Jordan is popular and pro-American, as was his father, the late King Hussein. But 65 percent of the people are, for the most part, anti-U.S. Palestinians with Jordanian passports. And 80 percent of the people find Osama Bin Laden "more responsible" as a global leader than George W. Bush, according to the Pew Foundation on Global Attitudes toward the United States.

The suicide terrorist attack against three Amman hotels, ordered by Jordan's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, and carried out by Iraqis, elicited ambivalent reactions among the thousands who paraded with portraits of King Abdullah. Some tried to rationalize the latest acts of terrorism.


"They are reacting to Israeli terrorism," said one street worker.

The targeted hotels, where liquor is available, were used mostly by the privileged and wealthy and were not accessible to average Jordanians who could not afford their steep prices. The overwhelming majority of the country's 5.7 million (70 percent urban) is poor. The World Bank calls Jordan a "lower middle income country." Its 4- and 5-star hotels were also headquarters for scores of businessmen doing deals in Iraq with the U.S. military whose lives were constantly threatened in Baghdad.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, King Hussein lined up behind Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser - and lost the West Bank to the Israelis. Some 300,000 Palestinian refugees followed into Jordan, boosting the Palestinian population to well over a million almost four decades ago. Jordan's powers that be know that Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's grand design for a Palestinian state has long been the east bank of the Jordan River, or present day Jordan, which would leave the West Bank in Israeli hands.

In the 1990-91 Gulf War, Jordan was one of two Arab countries (the other was Yemen) that remained neutral. All the others fell in behind George H.W. Bush's coalition to turf the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Even Syria supplied a division to Bush 41's coalition. On the other hand, Jordan is one of only two Arab countries, with Egypt, that has signed a permanent peace treaty with Israel.

Yet Jordan could not afford to be perceived as anti-Saddam Hussein. A poor country, almost entirely dependent on foreign aid and tourism, Jordan met its oil needs with heavily discounted Iraqi oil. The quid pro quo was support for Saddam in his eight-year war (1980-88) against Iran. Jordan was also the key to Saddam's ability to overcome a tough sanctions regime after the 1991 war that liberated Kuwait. Jordanian banks greased the relays for the billions of dollars in the oil-for-food rackets recently exposed by the Volcker report.

Amman was also a privileged sanctuary for Saddam loyalists, both before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and since the downfall of the Iraqi regime. Some 400,000 Iraqis are now living in Jordan, including Saddam's two daughters, many of them former Saddam sycophants whose ill-gotten gains have driven up Amman's upscale real estate 100 percent.

The U.S.-educated King Abdullah, former head of his country's Special Forces, gave the Pentagon a green light for secret operations that were launched from Jordanian territory on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Several Jordanian Cabinet ministers told this reporter at the time their children were giving them "hell" for lending a hand to the U.S. against Saddam.

Following the Arab defeat in 1967, there was a dramatic upsurge in the power and importance of Palestinian resistance movements (fedayeen) in Jordan. In the summer of 1970, three airliners were hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Jordan where they were blown up after the passengers were released. King Hussein at first tried to appease extremist Palestinian movements. Thus, the army was kept out of Amman and the Palestine Liberation Organization gradually acquired control of the capital.

This reporter arrived in Amman Sept. 16, 1970, the night before Hussein ordered the army back into the capital with orders to wipe out the fedayeen. The civil war, known as Black September, lasted 10 days and cost 3,500 lives. A defeated PLO moved out of the country and took up residence in Lebanon where it was trounced yet again in 1982 by Israel Defense Forces units led by Gen. Sharon that invaded Israel's northern neighbor. This time the PLO moved back to the other end of the Mediterranean to lick its wounds in Tunisia.

In the October 1973 Arab-Israeli (Yom Kippur) war, Jordan sent a brigade to Syria to fight Israeli units on Syrian territory. But this did not deter the Arab League from betraying King Hussein a year later.

At a historic Arab summit in Rabat in 1974, the Arab League decreed the PLO was the "sole legitimate representative on the Palestinian people." Humiliated, Hussein embraced PLO leader Yasser Arafat and flew home, stripped of his mandate to "liberate" West Bank Palestinians.

In 1922, in an attempt to lenify Arab anger over the Balfour declaration that allowed the emergence of an Israeli state, the British created the semi-autonomous Arab Emirate of Transjordan in all Palestinian territory east of the Jordan River. It 1948, it went to war against the newly founded state of Israel, a conflict that left Jordan in control of the West Bank, which it annexed in 1950.

Invaded over the last 2,000 years by Hittites, Egyptians, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arab Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks and finally the British, what is now Jordan is a volatile mix of moderate Palestinians who are anti-Bush, and extremists who are anti-U.S.

Analysis: Can Syria and Iran be persuaded to fight terrorism?
By John P. Gramlich
UPI Correspondent
Published November 14, 2005


WASHINGTON -- With two Iraqi leaders paying separate visits to Washington last week and President Bush addressing the war on terrorism in a Veterans' Day speech on Friday, the question of Iraq's neighbors -- and their role in the war -- looms large.

The Bush administration has kept up its tough rhetoric against Syria and Iran. Speaking in Pennsylvania Friday, Bush said the two countries have "a long history of collaboration with terrorists" and called on Syria in particular to "stop exporting violence and start importing democracy."


But the position of the Iraqi leaders in Washington last week was softer. In his own speech at a think tank on Thursday, Iraqi deputy vice president Adel Abdul-Mahdi said the problem of terrorism does not rest with Syria and Iran, but with a wider culture in the Middle East of propaganda being spread through mosques. He said terrorism affects all states in the region -- citing the Nov. 9 hotel bombings in Jordan -- and called for "full cooperation" among countries in the Middle East to combat the problem.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi -- fresh from a visit to Tehran -- called Syria and Iran "somewhat problematic," but indicated that cooperation with both was possible. Chalabi said Iranian leaders shared his wish that Iraq and Iran form "good, wide-ranging, transparent relationships." On the issue of Syria, which the United States has accused of allowing terrorists to cross the border into Iraq, Chalabi was tougher, but indicated that Damascus could be persuaded to stop those terrorists. A major factor in Syrian-Iraqi relations is oil, he said, and opening a pipeline from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea through Syria would be of "enormous benefit" to Syria and could be used to negotiate help in the war on terrorism.

With different diplomatic signals coming from Bush and Iraqi leaders, the question remains: Is it realistic to expect Syria and Iran to help fight terrorism in Iraq?

Not with the current U.S. approach to the region, according to James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the nonprofit RAND Corp. That's because the Bush administration is pursuing its own objectives in the Middle East illogically and decreasing the likelihood of regional cooperation, said Dobbins, a former U.S. envoy in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia and Afghanistan. While the United States is calling for democracy in Syria and trying to halt nuclear proliferation in Iran, it has lost sight of the region's most immediate concern, Dobbins said -- Iraq's instability.

"The administration's problem is that it's trying to do too much in the greater Middle East," Dobbins said. "It's trying to stabilize Iraq, destabilize Syria and denuclearize Iran all at the same time. You can do any one of those [things] and maybe, eventually, over a very extended period of time, all three of them. But you can't possibly do all three at once. We don't prioritize."

Although Syria and Iran deserve U.S. attention, the Bush administration has focused too much on Iraq's neighbors, Dobbins said, noting Iran is still years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Current U.S. policy in the Middle East is counterproductive because Syria and Iran are unlikely to help stabilize Iraq as long as the United States is threatening them, he said.

By way of comparison, Dobbins said that stabilization efforts in Afghanistan have been far more successful than in Iraq because the United States has engaged Afghanistan's neighbors in a positive way.

"We went into Afghanistan not with the objective of making Afghanistan a model for central Asia and then democratizing every other country in central Asia as soon as we finished," Dobbins said. "As a result, we were able to engage all of its neighbors constructively in its stabilization. All of the neighbors have, in fact, continued to support [Afghani President] Karzai because we're not saying, 'As soon as we finish here, you're next.'"

One of the problems with Iran and Syria is their seemingly contradictory motivations in Iraq. A stable Iraq would be in both countries' interest, yet to date they have done little to help their neighbor, analysts said. That's probably the result of the war on terrorism's American face, and could change as the United States stands down, according to some experts.

Another way for the United States to stabilize Iraq and engage its neighbors constructively would be to encourage greater Arab League involvement, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The disenchanted Sunni minority that is leading the insurgency in Iraq are "the people who feel like their country's been taken away from right under their noses," Alterman said, and do not trust the United States at all. But calling for help in Iraq from the Arab League -- an organization of Arab states including Syria -- could protect the Sunni and "make them feel like their interests are being looked after," Alterman said.

"We can talk about how useless the Arab League has been for so much of its existence, but I think this is a task (in which) the Arab League can play a very constructive role," Alterman said. "I think because so many of the countries around Iraq are terrified this whole thing is going to turn into a disaster, they're poised to play a constructive role and I think we should seize on that."

But perhaps the last word goes to Abdul-Mahdi, the Iraqi deputy vice president, whose brother was assassinated Oct. 30 in Baghdad as he traveled to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's office, where he was an adviser.

Although the United States has reason to focus on the influence of Syria and Iran in Iraq, Abdul-Mahdi predicted that terrorism will start "shifting" away from Iraq as local security forces gain experience. Terrorism is not only an Iraqi problem, but will become a problem of the country's neighbors as well, he said.

"The responsibility ... is on all of us," Abdul-Mahdi said.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=92906

Islamic Radicals Plan World Revolution from Temple Mount
09:27 Nov 14, '05 / 12 Cheshvan 5766
By Scott Shiloh



Islamic radicals have been using the Temple Mount as a focal point for planning and preaching the establishment of a world Islamic state with Jerusalem as its capital.


One of the radical groups operating on the Temple Mount is Hizab Altahrir (The Islamic Liberation Party), which espouses an ideology similar to Al Qaeda. Hizab Altahrir’s network spans most Western European countries. The party puts Islamic revolution and an uncompromising form of Jihad (holly war) at the top of its political agenda.



Supporters of Hizab Altahrir on the Temple Mount


The group advocates subjecting the entire world to Islamic law (Shariya), and destroying non-believing nations and religions.

The party has targeted Europe, specifically Denmark, for spreading its ideology, and providing a springboard for renewing Islamic conquests in Europe. A senior party activist in Jerusalem, Sheikh Issam Amira, expressed this philosophy in a recent speech which he made on the Temple Mount:

“Listeners! The Moslems in Denmark make up three percent [of the population], yet constitute a threat to the future of the Danish kingdom. It’s no surprise that in Bitrab (the ancient name of Medina, a city in Arabia to which Mohammed immigrated) they were fewer than three percent of the general population, but succeeded changing the regime in Bitrab.

“It’s no surprise that our brothers in Denmark have succeeded in bringing Islam to every home in that country. Allah will grant us victory in their land to establish the [Islamic] revolution in Denmark.”

After Denmark, the Sheikh said, the party will carry the revolution to Oslo and change its name to Medina. “They will fight against their Scandinavian neighbors in order to bring the country into the territory of the revolution,” he said. “In the next stage, they will fight a holy jihad to spread Islam to the rest of Europe, until it spreads to the original city of Medina where the two cities will unite under the Islamic flag.”

Sheikh Riyad Salah, head of the Islamic movement in Israel has also been active teaching the tenets of “Islamic revolution.”

“We are at the gates of the Islamic revolution,” he proclaims in his sermons to Arab citizens of Israel. “The global forces of evil will be eliminated from the world and the Islamic nation will remain in place in order to bring about the world Islamic revolution, with its capital, Jerusalem.”

Salah, who until a few months ago was under arrest for allegedly assisting an organization connected to the Hamas terror group, has for a number of years been attempting to organize Israel’s Arab citizens into an “independent Palestinian society,” disconnected from the State of Israel and its institutions.

Salah’s organization contributed to efforts to repair Arab mosques on the Temple Mount, and also attempts to erase the remains of Jewish antiquities on the Mount.

In Israel, the Hizab Altahrir party is sending out charismatic Islamic preachers to spread its ideology to mosques in villages near Jerusalem, Hevron, Kalkilya, and Tulkarem.

When large numbers of Moslems visited mosques last October during the holy month of Ramadan, the party expanded its efforts to recruit new members and activists in the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Thousands of young Arabs living in the PA have been participating in the party’s youth movement under the slogan, “Campaigning to Preach Revolution.”

On the Temple Mount near the Dome of the Rock, Altahrir’s youth recently put up a giant banner declaring “Revolution is a Divine Command.” The party’s flag appears on the right and left hand side of the banner (See top photo). The youth were greeted by party members who shouted, “Next year in Jerusalem, under the rule of the Islamic revolution.”

Published: 17:07 November 13, 2005
Last Update: 09:27 November 14, 2005

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&...&category=World
Iran Backs Syria in Its Standoff With West
Dahi Hassan, Arab News

DAMASCUS, 15 November 2005 — Iran yesterday voiced strong support for Syria in its standoff with the West over a UN inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri as its foreign minister made his first official visit to Damascus.

“We discussed the matter of Hariri’s murder. Syrian officials are handling this issue in a satisfactory way,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters after talks with President Bashar Assad and Foreign Minister Farouk Shara.

“We want the UN commission of inquiry to continue its work on a legal basis and not politicize the case,” he said.

The Iranian minister hit out at US-led accusations that Syria was withholding its cooperation, saying they were one of a number of “suspect maneuverings by the United States in the region”.

“The United States is pursuing its own expansionist, hegemonic goals in several parts of the region,” he charged.

On Iraq, Mottaki said he had agreed with Shara that “the political process must continue and the Iraqi people be allowed to decide their own destiny”.

“We discussed the various options facing Iraq’s neighbors and we’re going to study them in the most serious way and support everything that’s in the interests of the Iraqi people,” he said.

— Additional input from agencies

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Copyright © 2005 The Daily Star

Thursday, November 17, 2005
Wolfensohn threatens to quit as Mideast envoy after being outdone by Rice


By Agence France Presse (AFP)




JERUSALEM: Former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn said Wednesday he may quit as as international envoy to the Middle East, frustrated at his inability to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to work together. Wolfensohn acknowledged that it needed the intervention of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to broker an agreement on Tuesday for the reopening of the Gaza Strip's borders which have been largely closed since Israel left the territory more than two months ago.

The Australian economist had been appointed by U.S. President George W. Bush to help coordinate the economic aspects of the Gaza pullout but he told Israeli public radio that his influence was not enough to bear fruit.

"If after 20 weeks, you cannot make up your mind up on the same issue [the borders] that we were talking around for 20 weeks there's probably not much more I can do," he said.

"The breakthrough came in the last couple of days and I think one should give credit to [Rice] because she happened to be here and she is a woman who has greater power and greater influence than I do."

"The United States has, as I think you know, a very strong influence on Israel and a pretty strong influence on the Palestinians and you know they could maybe ignore me but it's very difficult to ignore the secretary of state." A clearly disillusioned Wolfensohn said he would now consider his position and decide whether he felt he could still make a contribution to the peace process or step aside for someone else.

"I am just going to see in the next quarter of this year what my own plans are and see whether I can still make a contribution or maybe there will be others who can do better than me." Under the deal announced by Rice, the main Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt should reopen on November 25 with security overseen by EU monitors.

Wolfensohn has previously voiced his frustration at what he saw as Israeli foot-dragging over the borders, accusing the government of being "loath to relinquish control, almost acting as though there has been no withdrawal." - AFP



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Sex, shopping and the death of a regime
By Mark LeVine

When and if President Bashar Assad and his Ba'athist regime collapse, chances are it won't be because of a US invasion, or even a small contingent of special ops forces fomenting chaos at the center of Syrian power. Rather, sex, shopping and expensive real estate will likely be the principal culprits.

In a recent edition of the semi-official Syria-Today, the following ad
was placed right next to the text of an address by Assad:
Emaar Properties, a Dubai-based joint stock development company, unveiled plans for two major Damascus real estate development projects on October 17. The two developments, "Eighth Gate" and "Damascus Hills", will be the city's first fully planned communities and are together valued at US$3.9 billion. They will be constructed in the countryside near Damascus and will comprise residential, commercial and real estate compounds ... The projects are a joint venture between Emaar and the Syrian-based Invest Group Overseas, an offshore investment and property development company owned by a group of Syrian expatriate investors. Emaar chairman Mohamed Ali al-Abbar said that Syria was an emerging market for Emaar. "Syria has great potential for future development and is a remarkable location for Emaar to develop high quality real estate projects," Mr al-Abbar said.
And so begins the inexorable march towards another neo-liberal paradise in the Middle East. If Lebanese journalist Rami Khoury argues that the joint goal of President George W Bush, French President Jacques Chirac and through them the United Nations is to "whittle away Syrian sovereignty", such an enterprise won't be accomplished by Security Council resolutions and border intrusions alone.

Prying open the Syrian economy to the neo-liberal, globalized economy is both a core strategy and one of the primary goals of this process. And it is shared by the United States, France and a fair number of Arab and Syrian entrepreneurs as well.

Indeed, against Emaar's drive to "build a global property-related brand", the Ba'ath Party's "Unity, Freedom, Socialism" doesn't stand much of a chance. The best Assad can offer his people, as he explained in a March 5 speech, is "the protection of national and pan-Arab interests through adherence to our identity, independence, loyalty to our principles and beliefs ... [while] dealing realistically with emergent challenges and developments".

But while Assad offers to "protect our political and social stability", Emaar offers luxury, service and profits. We don't need to guess who will win here, especially when the price for Assad's stability is an authoritarian regime, an economy that is in a shambles - near negative growth, key industries losing more than a quarter of their income in the past year alone - and increasing political and economic ostracization.

In fact, a year ago, the chief of the State Planning Commission announced that Syria would adopt the principles of a market economy by 2010, although a subsequent announcement at the Ba'ath regional conference qualified this (at least rhetorically) by adding "social" before "market economy". And Syria has been struggling over how to liberalize its economy since the early 1990s, if not earlier.

The argument over language reflects, as Syria expert Bassem Haddad explains, a larger debate around "the future of the national economy, the role of the state, the importance of competition and the dangers of being engulfed by global capitalism", all of which could seemingly be put off as long as Syria could drink from the Lebanese well.

In this context, what is saddest about the intersection of Assad's speech and Emaar's newest project is that they suggest that the ostensible reasons behind the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri - to preserve Syria's massive racketeering operation in Lebanon (without which an otherwise destitute Syrian government would have a hard time functioning) - were seriously misplaced.

More than one commentator has described the contest between Assad and Hariri as one between an old-style mafia family and a savvier and increasingly globalized former associate (and now competitor). Viewed this way, the belief that getting rid of Hariri would help the Assad "family" preserve the status quo is betrayed by the presence of Emaar, which reveals that the old order is already slipping away, one Damascene hillside at a time.

As important, it's Syria's "brotherly" Arabs, not the Americans and French imperialists, who are leading the way.

Of course, few Syrians will be able to afford the luxury living of Damascus Hill in the foreseeable future, regardless of who's living in the presidential palace. Nor does the political opposition seem able to offer an alternative to the status quo. Yet if Syrian author Ammar Abdoulhamid argues that the largely supine Syrian opposition "is in desperate need of a Cialis treatment if it is to rise up to the challenges ahead", a generation of young Syrian men, with bleak prospects for obtaining the kind of livelihood that would allow them to marry and establish families, has a less metaphorical dysfunction for which Cialis or even Viagra will do little good: the difficulty of having sex in the present socio-economic circumstances.

According to Syrian journalist Abdjullah Ta'i, his interviews with young Syrians who went to Iraq to join the insurgency reveals that one of the more common reasons given for doing so was not religious or nationalistic. Rather, as one returnee put it, "My friends and I went to fight in Iraq because we thought we would find lots of sex there. People said that sex and prostitution are available in streets because of the poverty and disorder. We wanted to exploit that situation."

Sadly for the largely Sunni sex-jihadis, there wasn't much sex to be had in Iraq, largely because prostitutes, like most women, have been driven from the public space they used to occupy by the violence of the insurgency. (If they were Shi'ite, they might have been able to avail themselves of the innumerable Iranian-run "temporary marriage" hotels that have sprung up in Baghdad and the cities of the south).

But while many went home disappointed, others stayed and were hired by Islamist militias - and here the 72 virgins available to newly martyred jihadis is a particularly useful hiring incentive; although a few have actually married Iraqi women, thereby solving the problem that led them to Iraq in the first place.

Most, it seems, have not been that lucky. And if the majority who left Syria (at least partly) for sex come back with little else beyond increased religious enthusiasm, to an economy that shows little signs of offering them prospects for a better future - politically, economically, or sexually - the tenuous balance between the Syrian regime and its people will be increasingly threatened.

Along with sex and real estate, shopping - or the lack of it - constitutes the third major problem facing the Assad regime. Until the oppressive economic regime of the French Mandate and the statist economic policies of socialist and Ba'athist governments, Syria had for centuries been famed for its merchants, small-scale industries and trade-based economy. A new, private bourgeoisie began emerging in the 1980s; together with the old Damascene merchant class it threatened the cohesion of interests between the Alawi-dominated military and the Sunni merchants, putting increasing pressure on the regime slowly to liberalize the economy.

The problem that has evolved, however, is that while the largely Sunni economic elite increasingly desires market reforms and political liberalization, the Alawi military does not. What we are likely to see in Syria in the near future, particularly with the growing impact of the Mehlis investigation into the killing of Hariri on the country's political dynamics, is the exacerbation of cleavages within Syria's "military-merchant complex" that were manageable as long as Lebanon remained under Syrian control, but which will be increasingly out in the open in the near future.

After decades of a now-failed authoritarian bargain, and with a government that will have an increasingly hard time providing a basic level of "social justice" that once gave Syria one of the lowest rates of income poverty and inequality in the developing world, Syrians will increasingly look to the market for solutions to their myriad problems.

What kind of market is there to meet their needs, and how well the world community cushions the country's inexorable incorporation into a globalized world economy, will likely determine if the regime's warning of "After Iraq, us" turns out to be hyperbole, prophecy, or something in between.

Mark LeVine, professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Culture and Islamic Studies, UC Irvine. Author of Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld Publications, 2005)

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More at stake than regime change
By Conn Hallinan

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)

In wake of a United Nations investigation implicating a number of Syrian and Lebanese officials in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the Bush administration is calling for international sanctions and leaking dark hints of war.

But the United States is already unofficially at war with Syria. For the past six months, US Army Rangers and the Special Operations Delta Force have been crossing the border into Syria, supposedly to "interdict" terrorists coming into Iraq. Several Syrian soldiers have been killed.

The analogy the administration is using for this invasion?

Cambodia, which the Richard Nixon administration accused of harboring North Vietnamese troops during the war in Southeast Asia. On April 30, 1970, American and South Vietnamese army units stormed across the border, igniting one of the great disasters of all time. The invasion was not only a military debacle; it led to the rise of Pol Pot, who systematically butchered some 2 million Cambodians.

As in Vietnam, the American and British line in Iraq is that the war is fueled by foreign fanatics infiltrating from Syria and Iran. In an October talk to the National Endowment for Democracy, President George W Bush told the audience that "Iran and Syria" have allied themselves with Islamic terrorist groups; he warned that the "United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them."

According to the Financial Times newspaper, the Bush administration is already discussing who should replace Syrian President Bashar Assad, with the White House leaning toward sponsoring an internal military coup. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley - the fellow who brought us the Niger-Iraq uranium fairy tale - is in charge of the operation.

Flynt Leverett of the Brookings Institution says the cross-border raids are aimed at encouraging the Syrian military to "dump" Assad. A military coup was how the US helped put Saddam Hussein in power so he could liquidate the Iraqi left.

The White House, in fact, knows that foreign fighters have very little to do with the insurgency in Iraq. The conservative London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that the number of foreign fighters is "well below 10%, and may be closer to 4 or 6%". American intelligence estimates that 95% of the insurgents are Iraqi.

The Bush administration has long had its sights on Iran, which Bush calls "the world's primary state sponsor of terrorism". These are sentiments recently echoed in London, where Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Tehran of smuggling weapons and explosives into Iraq to attack British troops in Basra. In one of history's great irony-challenged moments, Blair said, "There is no justification for Iran or any country interfering in Iraq."

Provocations
The US has been provocatively sending unmanned Predator aircraft into Iran, supposedly looking for nuclear weapons, but most likely mapping Iranian radar systems, information the US would need before launching an attack. According to Irish journalist Gordon Thomas, the US has already targeted missiles at Iranian power plants at Natanz and Arak.

Some 4,000 fighters of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an armed organization that seeks to overthrow the current regime in Tehran, have a base north of Baghdad near the Iranian border. The US has thrown a protective umbrella over the MEK's soldiers and equipment, although the State Department classifies the organization as "terrorist".

Most of the information on Iran's nuclear weapons programs comes from the MEK, which has an uneven track record for accuracy. In any case, there is a disturbing parallel between the role the MEK is playing in developing information on Iran's weapons of mass destruction and the pre-war intelligence on Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction programs cooked up by Ahmad Chalabi and the group of Iraqi expatriates gathered around the Pentagon.

A major player in all this is Israel, where the Likud and its US supporters have long lobbied for a US attack on Iran and Syria. In a speech in May to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Richard Perle, a Likud adviser and former Bush official, said the US should attack Iran if it is "on the verge of [developing] a nuclear weapon". Along with David Frum of the Weekly Standard, Perle co-authored An End to Evil, which calls for the overthrow of "the terrorist mullahs of Iran".

An Israeli proxy?
Vice President Dick Cheney has even suggested that Israel might do the job. According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the US recently sold Tel Aviv 500 GBU-27 and 28 "bunker buster" guided bombs (although Syria would be a more likely target for such weapons).

The Israeli right has been spoiling for a fight with Syria for some time. The Israelis bombed near Damascus last year, and one cabinet minister, Gideon Ezra, threatened to assassinate Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a similar threat about Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasallah.

The Sharon government is just as belligerent about Iran. When he was Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon said he hoped international pressure on Iran would halt its development of nuclear weapons, adding ominously, "If that is not the case we would consider our options."

One Israeli intelligence official told the Financial Times, "It could be a race who pushes the button first - us or the Americans."

What that official meant by "the button" is not clear, but the logical candidate is a nuclear strike. In 1981, the Israelis used conventional aircraft and weapons to destroy the Iraqi nuclear power plant at Osirak, but an attack on Iran's facilities would be another matter.

Following the 1981 attack, the Iranians hardened and dispersed their nuclear infrastructure. Israel's newly purchased "bunker busters" might do the job, but distance is a problem. Iran is a lot farther from Israel than Iraq, and Israeli aircraft would have difficulties making a round trip to Iran without mid-air refueling. Israel has missiles, however, plus several hundred nuclear weapons, and there are at least some in Tel Aviv who wouldn't flinch from using them.

Last month senior Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin, admitted passing classified information on Iran to Israel through two AIPAC employees. Franklin used to work for former under secretary of defense Douglas Feith, and has close ties to neo-conservative Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, who said, "Tehran is a city just waiting for us."

If all these names sound familiar it is because they are the ones who brought us the war in Iraq.

Prospects for invasion: Cambodia redux?
Would the United States (possibly allied with Britain and Israel) actually attack Iran and/or Syria?

Iran seems a stretch. The country has three times the population of Iraq, almost four times the land area, plus many mountains in which one really does not want to fight.

Iran also has considerable international support, and while a number of nations are nervous about its nuclear activities, the country is not seen as a regional threat. Its military budget is only one-third what it was in 1980 and, according to Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes, Iran actually has fewer tanks and planes than it did 20 years ago.

Some of that support is based on the fact that Iran has the second-largest oil and gas reserves on the planet, reserves that Europe, China and India simply cannot do without.

Syria is an easier target than Iran. With the exception of its northern border, the country is a flat plain, less than half the size of Iraq and with a population of only 16.7 million. It is also reeling from the UN investigation into the death of Hariri.

This may make Syria look like fruit ripe for the picking, and an invasion would certainly divert attention from the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also be a logical extension of the Bush administration's mythology that all its troubles in the Middle East are caused by foreign Islamic terrorists.

For the outcome of such a strategy, see the war in Southeast Asia.

Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus )

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Moscow plans main hubs in Turkey and Israel for Russian and Azerbaijani oil and gas exports to southern Europe and China

November 18, 2005, 1:55 PM (GMT+02:00)

Russian president Vladimir Putin discussed the plan with Turkish prime minister Tayyep Erdogan and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy at the inauguration Thursday of the Blue Stream pipeline network laid on the Black Sea bed by the Russian Gazprom and Italian Eni oil giants.

DEBKAfile adds: Putin spoke of extending this pipe network to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. A new underwater branch would then be built to connect Ceyhan with Israel’s Ashkelon oil port, from which an existing pipe wouldl carry the oil from the Mediterranean to Eilat. Facilities at this Red Sea port would need to be expanded to accommodate Russian oil and gas tankers bound for China through the Indian Ocean. As a main regional transit hub for Russian oil exports, Israel can look forward to stronger trade ties with Russia and Turkey, thousands of new jobs and royalty revenues running into hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

Our sources add that Israel’s infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer on a recent visit to Cairo proposed to President Hosni Mubarak that Egypt link an underwater pipe planned to carry natural gas to the Gaza Strip with the Israeli transit station at Ashkelon. Egypt would thus hook up to the projected Russian-Turkish-Israel pipeline scheme.

Copyright 2000-2005 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

SYRIA: That Iraq Feeling Comes
Ferry Biedermann
DAMASCUS - The Rawda cafe is reputed to be an opposition hang-out, and not many patrons are given to defending the Syrian government. But the increasing international pressure from the UN investigation into the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri has brought dismay to the tea-sipping and backgammon playing crowd. "It will hurt Syria," is the consensus.
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Amid US Troop Debate, Iraq's Neighbors Fear Wave of Terrorism
By Sonja Pace
Washington
23 November 2005

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Amid unrelenting violence in Iraq, debate over the future withdrawal of American forces from the country is increasing - among Iraqi political factions as well as in the United States. At the same time, there is growing concern among Iraq's neighbors about the broader regional implications of that violence and instability.


Main entrance of Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman after explosion
For many Jordanians the triple suicide bombings in their capital, Amman, earlier this month confirmed what they had feared for the past few years - the war in neighboring Iraq was spilling across its borders.

The attacks on three hotels in the city were carried out by Iraqis on the orders of Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has become the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, and with the explicit support from al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Some fear the Amman bombings could mark a new wave of exported terror attacks by al-Qaida.

"We are aware of the new strategy of al-Qaida to spread terrorism from Iraq," says Jordanian political analyst Oraib al-Rantawi of the al-Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman. "You remember the message from Ayman Zawahiri to Zarqawi a few weeks before when he suggested to him to concentrate on Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia - other countries, not only Iraq."

The Amman bombings were the first attacks of that magnitude in Jordan, but al-Qaida and its supporters have carried out bombings and other attempted attacks in Jordan as well as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And, al-Qaida leaders make no secret of their aim to overthrow existing Muslim governments and establish a caliphate based on what they view as pure Islamic principles.


Dick Cheney speaks at American Enterprise Institute in Washington
In a speech in Washington this week, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, said there should be no doubts about what al-Qaida's is trying to do.

"Iraq is part of a larger plan of imposing Islamic radicalism across the broader Middle East, making Iraq a terrorist haven and staging ground for attacks against other nations," he said.

Mr. Cheney and other supporters of the Iraq war say these terrorist attacks show the threat is real and must be confronted. He rejects the notion that the situation created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq is a root cause of the violence.

"Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein we have simply stirred up a hornet's nest," he said. "They overlook a fundamental fact. We were not in Iraq on September 11, 2001 and the terrorists hit us anyway. The reality is that the terrorists were at war with our country long before the liberation of Iraq and long before the attacks of 9/11."

But many in the Middle East and other critics of the Iraq war say, by invading Iraq, the United States opened up another front," he said. "Some say it created another Afghanistan where Islamic radicals, jihadis, have found a new base and cause to rally around.

The Middle East director of the independent International Crisis Group, Jost Hiltermann, told VOA from his office in Amman the fear that violence will spread from Iraq is real.

"There is a serious risk that Iraq is going to export jihadis that have been fighting in Iraq over the last couple of years, especially if instability in Iraq continues as is now the prognosis," he said. "And, so they may go back to their home countries and carry out attacks against the regimes here in the Middle East or in Europe."

But Mr. Hiltermann says there is another danger lurking - namely that the unrelenting violence in Iraq might draw other nations into a bigger conflict.

"If sectarian fighting cannot be contained in Iraq in the immediate coming period, it may well be that Iraq can no longer be held together and if that happens then the neighboring states, which have had a strategic interest in the territorial integrity of Iraq, may have no choice but to intervene," he said.

And that sort of intervention, according to Mr. Hiltermann, could lead to a broader Middle East war and include several of Iraq's neighbors, among them Iran, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The Bush administration argues that is precisely why American troops cannot leave Iraq too soon. Mr. Hiltermann agrees. A precipitous withdrawal would likely ignite civil war, he says, but he also says that a timetable for withdrawal should be put in place to give Iraqis an incentive to take over and to reassure others in the region that the U.S. has no ulterior motives to stay around.

Israelis Hand Off Gaza Crossing

By Scott Wilson

JERUSALEM, Nov. 25 -- Palestinians celebrated a step toward independence from Israel on Friday with a jubilant ceremony opening the Rafah border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, their first self-governed passage to the outside world.

The event marked a milestone in the long Palestinian-Israeli conflict by giving a Palestinian government control over an international border crossing for the first time. The opening is the most tangible benefit the Palestinian Authority has gained since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza a little over two months ago, an evacuation that ended a 38-year Israeli presence in the strip but left its borders under Israel's control.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who stands to benefit politically from Rafah's opening, told roughly 1,200 Palestinians, European diplomats and Egyptian officials who will help monitor the border that the measure of autonomy was "a dream that has come true for us." But he said the opening was a modest step and pledged further progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel that would include the more populous West Bank.

"Our sovereignty is not yet complete," Abbas said during his speech inside a tent on a day of brilliant blue skies and a light breeze. "Sovereignty cannot be divided. It has to include both parts of the homeland and make them one territory."

The Rafah crossing has tremendous social importance for the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have family on the far side of the heavily fortified frontier that Israel had patrolled since occupying the strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

Before its evacuation of 8,500 Jewish settlers and the soldiers who protected them, Israel regulated traffic through Rafah. But the crossing was frequently closed for long periods, disrupting people's lives and sometimes leaving Palestinians on the wrong side of the border for weeks at a time.

In the days following Israel's departure, thousands of Palestinians stormed through the barrier in a chaotic demonstration of newfound freedom. But several days of unchecked crossings, marked by family reunions, smuggling and afternoons at the beach along the Sinai coast, ended when embarrassed Egyptian and Palestinian security forces restored the barrier.

The display of exuberance infuriated Israeli officials, who had withdrawn from the frontier after Egyptian and Palestinian security forces pledged to maintain the closure until a new crossing could be established in six months.

Since then, the crossing has remained sealed while Israeli and Palestinian delegations negotiated an agreement to open Rafah and the cargo terminal at Karni between Gaza and Israel, a passage of far greater economic importance to Palestinian farmers and factory owners who sell most of their goods outside of the impoverished strip. Under pressure from special Middle East envoy James D. Wolfensohn and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Israel agreed on Nov. 15 to open Rafah and increase cargo traffic at Karni in time for the winter harvest.

Under the Rafah agreement, a team from the European Union will monitor people using the crossing from a control room at the site. Israeli officials, meanwhile, will be allowed to watch people crossing on a live video feed at a terminal several miles away. But for the first time Israeli officials will not be allowed a veto over who is allowed in or out of the strip, a right they sought during weeks of talks. Egyptian officials will control passage on the other side.

"Hopefully, this is the beginning of creating a situation in which there will be a constant flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "Israel understands that such a flow of goods and people is an integral aspect of making Palestinian-controlled Gaza a success. The fundamental truth is that a successful Gaza is key to moving forward on the peace process."

But Regev warned that Palestinian extremist groups might attempt to use the Rafah crossing as a smuggling route for explosives, weapons and cash to fund suicide bombing missions. He said, however, that he was "cautiously optimistic" any such efforts would be detected.

"Everyone is very cognizant of the threat," Regev said. "The reason that this can work is that these groups are enemies to all of the parties, not just to Israel but also the Palestinian Authority as it seeks to govern Gaza."

The ceremony Friday was a symbolic opening. Abbas, who said that "the magic key that can give us everything is security," became the first Palestinian to have his passport symbolically stamped after touring the once-shabby Rafah terminal, which had been painted for the event. The crossing, draped Friday with a banner declaring "Crossing to Freedom," opens Saturday to general Palestinian traffic.

The crossing will be open four hours a day until the full complement of roughly 70 European monitors are in place. Diplomats say they hope this will happen within a month to handle travelers heading to Mecca on the annual Muslim pilgrimage known as the hajj. It will then operate around the clock.

Only foot traffic will be allowed through Rafah until new vehicle scanners are installed. Gaza exports will be allowed out through Rafah, but incoming cargo will pass through the Kerem Shalom terminal a few miles to the southeast where the Israeli, Gaza and Egyptian borders converge. It will remain subject to Israeli-Palestinian customs protocols.

Marc Otte, the European Union's Middle East envoy, said the day was one of "happiness." In a brief speech, Otte told the Palestinians that Rafah's opening was a step toward "transforming your borders into bridges with your neighbors and with Israel."

The opening could improve Abbas's standing with the Palestinian public, which is now preparing for Jan. 25 parliamentary elections. Those will be the first national elections in which the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, plans to compete against the secular Fatah movement, which Abbas heads.

The radical Palestinian group has claimed credit for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying its attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians by suicide bombers forced the evacuation. Hamas -- whose leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, attended Friday's ceremony -- has yet to recognize Israel's right to exist.

"Two moments in my life have been full of joy," Zahar said. "The first was when I entered the evacuated settlements in Gaza, and the second was when I came here today to see the crossing empty of Israelis. They were here, and now we are here. Tomorrow we're going to be in the West Bank and the next day in Jerusalem."

As head of Fatah -- which supports a peace process with Israel -- Abbas has had difficulty in recent months explaining to potential Palestinian voters why a negotiated settlement of the conflict is a favorable alternative to Hamas's brand of armed resistance. Palestinian officials have complained that Israel's apparent reluctance to ease passage at Gaza's border crossings and continuing occupation of the West Bank have weakened moderate Palestinians such as Abbas, who has long asserted that the armed uprising undermined Palestinian interests.

Standing at Rafah, Abbas said, "The achievement we're celebrating today belongs first and foremost to the martyrs, wounded, prisoners and all Palestinians who have sacrificed in this struggle.

"I think every Palestinian now has his passport ready in his pocket," Abbas said. "Let them come to cross at this terminal whenever they want."

Special correspondent Islam Abdel Kareem in Rafah contributed to this report.




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Syria Will Let U.N. Question 5 Officials

By Rhonda Roumani

DAMASCUS, Syria, Nov. 25 -- Syria said Friday it would allow five officials to be questioned at U.N. offices in Vienna about the February assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. The deal ends a month-long stalemate in which Syria faced possible U.N. sanctions.

The date for the interviews will be determined in consultation with chief U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis, Syria's deputy foreign minister, Walid Mouallem, told reporters in the capital, Damascus. The agreement "aborts any justification for economic sanctions against Syria," Mouallem said.

The five will include Syria's chief of military intelligence, Brig. Gen. Asef Shawkat, brother-in-law of President Bashar Assad, according to a U.N. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mehlis is scheduled to meet with Syria's top legal adviser over the weekend to prepare for the interviews.

John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, welcomed the Syrian move and attributed it to pressure from the Security Council. "We hope this Syrian cooperation continues and grows," Bolton said in a statement.

Mehlis had given the Syrian government a deadline of Friday to agree to the questioning. Failure to do so could have led him to report Syria to the Security Council for lack of cooperation, a step toward the imposition of punitive sanctions.

Syria sent army units into Lebanon in 1976 during the civil war there. They remained, and for 29 years Syria dominated many aspects of Lebanese politics. Hariri, who had become increasingly critical of Syria's role in Lebanon toward the end of his career, was killed along with 22 other people by a car bomb in Beirut on Feb. 14. Outrage in Lebanon and abroad prompted a U.N. investigation of the killing and forced Syria to withdraw its troops.

The U.N. probe headed by Mehlis concluded in a preliminary report in October that the bombing could not have been carried out "without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials." The report also accused Syrian officials of failing to fully cooperate and of lying to the commission.

A leaked version of the report implicated high-level Syrian officials by name, including Shawkat and the president's younger brother, Maher Assad.

On Oct. 31, the Security Council passed Resolution 1636, demanding that Syria cooperate fully with the investigation or face further action.

In recent weeks, questions about which Syrian government figures would be interviewed and where emerged as the main sticking points. Syria refused to send officials to Beirut, citing fear for their safety and concern that they would be arrested. It pushed instead for the questioning to take place in the Syrian-controlled area of the Golan Heights or in the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo.

Earlier this week, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa sent letters to the Security Council and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan asking for a "cooperation protocol" between the investigation committee and Syria to lay out the ground rules for the questioning. Mehlis rejected the request, apparently wanting to conduct the questioning on his own terms.

Over the last two days, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt and Jordan all mounted diplomatic efforts to break the deadlock.

Under the deal reached Friday, Shawkat will be the last to face questioning, the U.N. official said.

According to Mouallem, the five officials will be questioned in the presence of their attorneys and will then return to Damascus. He said the government had received assurances that Syrian sovereignty would be protected, as would the individual rights of those being questioned. He declined to elaborate on what those assurances were.

Mehlis had asked for the questioning of six Syrian officials. It was not clear Friday why the parties agreed to five. Mouallem declined to name any of the five, saying it was a "secretive" matter of the committee.

"The last time Mehlis asked to interview Syrians, the government allowed them all to be interviewed," said Joshua Landis, a University of Oklahoma political scientist who is based in Damascus. "But Mehlis was unhappy and said they had lied and stonewalled and not said the truth. Mehlis could still come to that same conclusion after he interviews these five people in Vienna. Syria is not off the hook."

On the streets of Damascus on Friday, many people said they were relieved at the news. "Up until this morning, everybody felt that a decision like this would not be taken," said Adnan Habbab, 27, a travel agent. "I felt very relieved. . . . This will be much better for our businesses. Hopefully things will now go back to normal."

Khaled Khalifeh, 41, a film director, called the deal "a good thing and a step toward our safety." But, he said, referring to the Syrian government: "I don't know if they will cooperate afterward."

Staff writer Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.


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November 28, 2005
Under Duress, Egypt's Islamist Party Still Surges at Polls
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
CAIRO, Nov. 27 - The Muslim Brotherhood may be banned, but it has demonstrated in the latest parliamentary elections that it is by far the strongest Egyptian opposition group, trouncing the secular political opposition and weakening the governing party's power monopoly.

Results released by the government on Sunday showed the Brotherhood winning 29 more seats in the runoff on Saturday for the second round of parliamentary voting. It won 47 seats in the first round this month, meaning that with just one more round of elections to go, the Brotherhood already has 76 seats - more than five times its total in the departing Parliament.

Because of the group's outlaw status, its candidates run as independents.

The group's most recent gains have come despite the efforts of government security forces to block supporters from getting to the polls on Saturday, independent election monitors said. And it is now the only opposition group likely to qualify to nominate a candidate to run against President Hosni Mubarak in future elections.

"They are a parallel power to the government," said Abu el-Ezz el-Hariri, deputy chairman of the leftist Tagamoa Party, whose leader was defeated by a Brotherhood candidate.

Mr. Mubarak's governing National Democratic Party will apparently continue to control a vast majority of the seats in Parliament, having already won 195. But the new makeup of the chamber, which has 444 elected positions, may mean that the party will find itself forced to publicly defend its record and its actions against the increasingly empowered Brotherhood, which wants to make Egypt a religious state governed by Islamic law.

The shift may also force the Bush administration to decide whether to stick to its policy of shunning all contact with the group, as reiterated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her trip through the Middle East in June.

Despite its successes, it is hard to gauge the depth of support for the Brotherhood, as turnout in individual races was low, often in the neighborhood of 10 percent to 25 percent. Political analysts said the group's success was at least partly a function of the absence of any other organized political opposition.

"None of the observers or analysts predicted the results we achieved so far in these elections," said Muhammad Habib, deputy to the supreme guide, as the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood is called. "We had long prepared for this, but the voter turnout exceeded our predictions."

The Brotherhood has been outlawed since the early 1950's, when some of its members tried to assassinate Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, who went on to become president. In the years since, while the government has arrested its members and its supporters, the Brotherhood has organized grass-roots support around the country and has more recently rejected the use of violence.

It has used its network of supporters and contributors to provide much-needed social services in many impoverished neighborhoods, and it managed to provide the only effective alternative to the governing party, in part by melding a political platform with the appeal of religion. The group's slogan, "Islam Is the Solution," has become a rallying point for many people who reject the N.D.P.'s monopoly on power and who are dissatisfied with the glacial pace of economic and political change in the country.

"It means that people are frustrated and people are not happy," said Hossam Badrawi, one of the leading N.D.P. members to push for democratic changes. He lost his seat in Parliament to a candidate backed by the old guard of the N.D.P. "A large percentage of people have chosen a slogan, which means they do not trust enough what we are saying."

The parliamentary elections were supposed to be a chance for the N.D.P.'s younger leaders, led by Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, to push forward an agenda aimed at opening the political process - however slightly - and at retiring the old-guard leaders and their more heavy-handed practices.

Instead, some of the leaders of the new guard lost their seats, and before the elections were over, it was clear who was in charge. The tough tactics of past elections appeared again, with the police blocking access to the polls and arresting hundreds of Brotherhood supporters.

"The results of the elections so far show that there is a frightening state of polarization in Egypt, and it is not in the interest of anybody," said Hassan Nafaa, a political science professor at Cairo University. "We have a religious current on the one hand and a party that has lost its legitimacy and credibility and is desperately clinging onto power on the other."

Abdel Moneim Said, an N.D.P. member and the director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Egypt's top research organization, said the parliamentary elections had proved to be a positive force, because they had been more open and democratic than in the past and because they showed what he called a more realistic face of the power structure here.

"The power of the N.D.P. was highly exaggerated, so it is now down to size," he said. "The power of the Muslim Brothers is appearing as expected because we know that they are there. Now we see them in the flesh and the blood."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting for this article.




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Five Ideologies, One Middle East
Rami G. Khouri
November 28, 2005


Rami G. Khouri is editor at large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

If there is such a scholarly discipline as political anthropology, one of its most fascinating case studies would be the current confrontation between the United States and Syria. It tells us much about the instinctive behavior of the United States, the Syrian leadership and the wider Arab world, and how change might happen during this era of uncertain transformation throughout the region and the world.

The telling moment in this dynamic came earlier this month when Syrian President Bashar Assad made a strong, defiant speech at Damascus University announcing that Syria would resist to the death the American-led international plan to bring it and the entire Arab world to its knees, or send it into violent chaos like next door Iraq. After three years of mixed signals to the United States on whether it would cooperate on issues like Iraq, the global anti-terror war, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Hezbollah and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Syria has again offered mixed signals, but this time with a dramatic flourish, more rhetorical fist-waving and loud patriotic music in the background.

Political anthropology is useful here because it tells us about how political organisms behave, not necessarily about what they feel or believe. In behavioral terms, the Syrian president said essentially that he would continue to defy the United States and the United Nations' demands to cooperate with the investigation of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, while also cooperating with them on the key issues of concern to them. He made a ringing call for steadfastness, sacrifice and resistance to American-led plans to control this region and reconfigure its sovereignties, saying that Syria would pay the price of resistance and defiance, and would not fear or bow its head to anyone but God. At the same time, his government talks with the UN investigators on where to meet the top Syrian officials who are requested for questioning.

I find the Syrian position significant mainly because it allows us finally—15 years after the end of the Cold War—to identify the broad lines of the main ideological forces that define the Middle East today and compete within it for the allegiance of some 300 million Arabs.

I see five of them, of very unequal strength:

1) Mainstream Islamists This is the largest single constituency in the region, comprising relatively moderate, mostly nonviolent, Islamist movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. They use armed violence to repel foreign (mostly Israeli) occupations, and in the past sometimes violently challenged their own regimes in Syria, Egypt, Algeria and other lands. Most of them now focus on sharing or gaining political power peacefully, through local and national elections. Their significant gains in the ongoing Egyptian parliamentary elections are an important signal that they would fare well if free and fair elections were held in Arab countries.

2) Terrorist Groups A small number of Arabs, Pakistanis, Afghans and citizens of other lands have broken away from mainstream political Islamism and adopted terror as a vehicle for their political expression, a la Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. They draw on the same mass resentment and sense of marginalization that plague most Arab citizenries and feed the mainstream, nonviolent Islamist parties, but instead they use terror against Arab and foreign targets as an instrument of their political expression and aims.

3) American-led Western Hegemony This is the ideological force in the Middle East that has been recently articulated in more distinct terms, following the end of the Cold War around 1990 and then more emphatically after the attacks of 9/11. This movement aims to transform the Middle East into a series of Washington-compliant societies that are free to spend their money and run their internal affairs as they wish (e.g., family-run monarchies, tribal-run police states, security-run oligarchies, father-and-son kleptocracies) as long as they stay out of the business of terror, WMD proliferation and pestering Israel. Democracy is optional, and a free-market, globalized, free-trade economy preferred.

4) Anti-American, Anti-imperial Defiance This is the oldest running ideological current in the region, dating from a century ago when various Arabs rebelled against European, Ottoman and, to a limited extent, Zionist power in the region. Assad has now raised this banner high once again, targeting the U.S., and it will be important to see how many people follow his emotional and political lead. He couches his stance in pan-Arab and anti-imperial rhetoric and principles that still ring credibly to many ears in this battered region that suffers long-running Israeli, and more recent Anglo-American, military invasions and occupations.

5) Homegrown Arab Democracy And The Rule of Law This is the most recent and weakest ideology in the region, represented by civil society activists and others who demand more participatory, accountable Arab governance systems. This fledgling movement rears its head in important ways in many lands, by citizens who have grown weary and humiliated by their own national stagnation, autocracy, police states, corruption, mismanagement and deference to foreign dictates. They do not hold much hope for better things to come from the four other primary ideological forces swirling around them, and work instead for governance that respects the rule of law and pluralism. In terms of political anthropology, they are like algae that starts to grow slowly, in small clusters in dark corners, but has the potential to take root and ultimately overwhelm its immediate environment.

President Assad's defiant speech catering to a market of pan-Arab, anti-imperial sensibilities, defiance and resistance will let us see how large and deep that constituency really is—if it exists any more. His position completes the five forces I mentioned above as the protagonist beasts in the political jungle of the contemporary Arab world. If I were a betting man, I would say that after the current period of some turmoil and violent change, the triumphant trend to emerge will combine the peaceful Islamists with the homegrown democrats. That's the optimistic scenario. The worst-case scenario would see the American hegemony perpetually fighting the combined forces of the homegrown terrorists and the exasperated, radicalized pan-Arab nationalists, amidst an expanding global terror and anti-terror war.

Copyright ©2005 Rami G. Khouri

Syrian witness says Hariri's son forced him to lie

By Reuters

A man has appeared on Syrian state television saying Lebanese officials, including the son of Rafik al-Hariri, had forced him to testify falsely to a U.N. inquiry into the former Lebanese prime minister's assassination.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11163.htm

Report says Israel should dismantle nuclear weapons :

This, according to a recent report, entitled “Getting Ready for a Nuclear— Ready Iran,” published by the US Army War College, commissioned and partially funded by the Pentagon, argues that Iran’s nuclear weapon development cannot be stopped by any current military or diplomatic options.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11164.htm

haron: Iran nukes may require military response
By Joshua Brilliant
UPI Israel Correspondent
Published December 1, 2005

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday Israel and other countries couldn't accept an Iran with a nuclear bomb, adding Tehran's program could be stopped by military means.

Iran has been Israel's main foe since 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deposed the Shah. Iran has vowed to eradicate the Jewish state.

The nuclear issue came up Thursday at an annual meeting with the Israel Editors' Committee in Tel Aviv.

Sharon stressed Israel and other countries "cannot accept a situation in which Iran will have a nuclear weapon. That is clear to us, known to us and we are also making all the preparations necessary in order to be ready for such situations."

The meeting with the editors is an annual event held around the anniversary of the Nov. 29, 1947, United Nations decision to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Shortly before the meeting, the Maariv newspaper ran a red banner headline quoting a "senior security source" as saying Israel by itself couldn't cope with Teheran.

"We shall have to put up with a nuclear Iran," the unnamed source said.

"I do not see any force in the world, today, that could reverse the situation -- namely Iran becoming nuclear ... and there will be no alternative but to put up with the emerging situation," he added.

Sharon suggested the editors be skeptical over reports by anonymous sources, though the context indicated the source was, indeed, high.

"Israel is not helpless and it is taking all the necessary steps," the prime minister asserted.

He did not go into detail, but in recent years Israel has acquired long-range F-15I aircraft, developed its Arrow anti ballistic missile system mainly to intercept missiles with nuclear warheads and has recently ordered two more Dolphin Class submarines from Germany. Foreign reports suggest the three German made submarines Israel already has give it a second-strike capability. That is, the ability to destroy the enemy even after absorbing his first strike. It launched spy satellites into space, indicating it has powerful missiles.

However, Sharon reiterated Israel's long-standing policy that stresses Israel is not at the forefront of the struggle with Iran.

"The danger is not only to Israel but to the Middle East and many other countries in the world," he said.

Israeli security sources have often noted that Iran is developing missiles that can reach Europe.

"That is why the effort underway today, with the U.S. leadership, is an effort that all the free states who understand the terrible danger (of a nuclear Iran) must share," Sharon said.

Israel is "in very close contact with other countries leading this struggle," he added.

Asked whether the international community has a military option, should all the diplomatic efforts fail to stop Iran, Sharon said: "Yes, definitely."

He said he was "sure that before anyone goes for such (military) steps, every effort would be made to pressure Iran to stop this activity."

In 1981 Israel destroyed Iraq's Osiraq reactor and thereby prevented Saddam Hussein from developing an Iraqi nuclear bomb, but Iran has learnt the lesson and reportedly dispersed and fortified its facilities.

Israel is particularly vulnerable to a nuclear attack because it is a small country (it is slightly smaller than New Jersey) and its population is concentrated in the center.

In a paper the Institute for Contemporary Affairs published in Jerusalem Thursday, professor Gerald Steinberg wrote, "There is no basis for accepting the Iranian claim that it is not seeking nuclear weapons or the assertion that a nuclear Iran is not dangerous."

Iran's leaders have repeatedly declared they aim to destroy Israel, he noted.

Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly repeated that threat in October 2005. "A few weeks earlier, the streets of Teheran were filled by missiles on parade, decorated with posters declaring the intention to "wipe Israel off the map," Steinberg wrote.

The diplomatic option is still a serious one largely because Iran "seeks to be part of the international community and not (be) a rogue state or a member of the 'axis of evil,'" he wrote.

International pressure has increased as India, whom Teheran considered a supporter, backed the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision in September, which said Iran has not complied with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia and China, who had traditionally been Iran's allies, suddenly ceased to support it, Steinberg noted.

"The Iranian leadership has taken some measures and engaged in negotiations that only make sense when seen as efforts to avoid sanctions. It is also dependent to a degree on foreign technology for its nuclear weapons and missile development programs," Steinberg wrote.

Technically Iran's nuclear program includes developing a nuclear fuel cycle, and it seeks an ability to produce highly enriched uranium that is primarily useful for producing bombs, Steinberg wrote.

"In the Iranian case we have clear and detailed evidence of nuclear weapons efforts, not speculation or extrapolation. IAEA inspectors have samples of enriched uranium and other materials," Steinberg stressed.

"It could take two years, five years, or even 10," until Iran is seen as a de facto nuclear weapons state. It has reportedly been facing technical difficulties.

Nevertheless, Chief of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, Wednesday reportedly told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Iran has already produced 45 tons of gas needed to make enriched uranium. The time for diplomatic efforts to bloc Iran's nuclear program is running out. In his address to the Cabinet Sunday, he reportedly spoke of few months before Iran makes a critical decision on how to move on with its research and development program.

WHY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT?
Yemen 'dissuaded' U.S. from occupying Aden after Cole attack

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Friday, December 02, 2005

SANAA: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Thursday that only his personal intervention had dissuaded the United States from occupying the southern port city of Aden after the bombing of the destroyer USS Cole there in October 2000. "There was a plan to occupy Aden," Saleh said in a speech to mark the anniversary of the former south Yemen's independence from Britain in 1967.

"By chance, I happened to be down there. If I hadn't been, Aden would have been occupied as there were eight U.S. warships at the entrance to the port," he said.

"The tension was enormous but we succeeded through our diplomatic efforts and firmness in preventing what was about to unfold and had been planned."

Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed in the suicide attack by militants aboard a small boat packed with explosives, which was later claimed by Al-Qaeda.

Saleh lashed out at the Islamist network whose leader Osama bin Laden counts Yemen as his ancestral homeland.

"These terrorists are causing their country great misfortune; they're damaging the economy and tourism," the president said.

"They chant: 'Death to America,' 'Death to Israel,' but these slogans are misplaced, because they are really chanting: 'Death to the Homeland.'" - AFP

Israel Test Fires Anti Missile Missile
http://www.spacewar.com/news/abm-05zzc.html

Gulf Presses NATO For Nuclear Free Zone
http://www.spacewar.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-05zzz.html

Doha (AFP) Dec 02, 2005 - The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council called on NATO Friday to press for the elimination of nuclear arms in Gulf region so that it does not become a "sandwich" between Israel and Iran.

USrael and Armageddon:

“The Israelis are supported and egged on in their expansionism and intransigence by the "Armageddon Lobby," thirty million "Christian Zionists" who believe Israel must expand to its Biblical borders in order to bring on Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ."
http://www.batr.org/gulag/120505.html

Saying "No" to King Herod: The Forgotten Christmas Story:

There is a forgotten Christmas story. A story rarely dwelled on in Christian churches. A story often drowned out by a "multitude of the heavenly hosts" singing Christmas carols.

Netanyahu: Israel should take out Iranian nuclear facilities: Israel should undertake an operation to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme similar to the airstrike it launched against the nuclear reactor built by Saddam Hussein, leading opposition legislator and prime ministerial candidate Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
http://www.counterpunch.com/alberts12032005.html

Netanyahu: Bold action needed to stop nuclear Iran :

MK Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) said Sunday that Israel should take "bold and daring" action to thwart Iran's plans for nuclear armament, citing Israel's 1981 air strike on an Iraqi nuclear facility.
http://tinyurl.com/9ay4t

Israel voices worry over Iran-Russia missile deal:

Israel has lambasted Russia over the sale of anti-missile systems to arch-enemy Iran, the latest round of what the local press has dubbed the "Iranian-Israeli arms race."
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=82507

Israelis killed Zia, suspects ex-US ambassador:

The Israeli secret agency Mossad most probably killed Gen Ziaul Haq, suspects John Gunther Dean, who was the American ambassador to India in 1988, according to an article in the latest issue of World Policy Journal by Barbara Crossette, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the New York Times from 1988 to 1991.
http://tinyurl.com/c8ofq

Suicide bomber kills 5 in central Israel
Mon Dec 5, 2005 6:19 AM ET



By Steven Scheer

NETANYA, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian suicide bomber killed at least five people and wounded dozens outside a shopping mall in an Israeli coastal town on Monday in the first attack on its kind in six weeks.

Lebanon's Hizbollah television said the Islamic Jihad group's military wing, the Jerusalem Brigades, claimed responsibility for attack in a telephone call to the station.

Earlier, a Gaza radio station said Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for bombing in Netanya.

"There was a boom and there was a flash. Seconds later, people were lying on the ground, some wounded and some dead," witness Yisrael Klein told Channel Two television. "The most horrific sight was the severed head of the terrorist."

Emergency officials put the death toll at five and said at least 40 people were wounded, seven of them seriously.

Bodies lay covered with blankets at the entrance to the Sharon mall in Netanya, the frequent target of suicide bombings during a five-year-old Palestinian uprising.

It was the first such bombing since October 26, when a suicide bomber killed six people in the coastal city of Hadera, just north of Netanya.

The latest attack dealt another blow to a shaky ceasefire Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared in February.

"A suicide bomber who tried to enter the Sharon mall in Netanya was spotted by passersby after he raised their suspicions," said Avi Sasson, deputy police chief in the area.

"Two policemen at the scene pulled out their guns and ordered him to halt and to take his hands out of his pockets. At that stage, he blew himself up," he said.

The bombing could complicate the run-up to Israeli and Palestinian elections in coming months.

POLITICAL FALLOUT?

Palestinian officials quickly denounced the bombing.

"The Palestinian Authority condemns the attack, and says this harms Palestinian interests and aims at sabotaging efforts exerted to revive the peace process," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Abbas is struggling to instil order in Palestinian areas ahead of a January parliamentary election whose preliminary stages have already been marred by internal violence.

Sharon is seeking re-election as head of a new centrist party he founded after carrying out an Israeli pullout from Gaza in September. He has refused to resume peace talks with the Palestinians until they rein in militants.

"The whole process of reconciliation between us and the Palestinians is based on the principle that terrorist groups will be disarmed," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "Unfortunately, things like what happened today happen because terrorist groups remain armed."

"So long as extremists remain armed, they will act to kill innocent civilians and the chance for peace," said.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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At least five dead, 55 injured – 6 critically - in Palestinian suicide bombing attack Monday at entrance to Netanya’s Sharon shopping mall

December 5, 2005, 11:39 AM (GMT+02:00)

Jihad Islami has released videotape of suicide killer Lutfi Amin Abu Sami, 21, from Rai Village near Jenin, on the West Bank. Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades deny earlier claim of responsibility broadcast by Al Arabiya TV.

The bomber was prevented from entering the mall by suspicious security guards and bystanders. When police told him to take his hand out of his pocket, the terrorist blew himself up in the crowd at the mall’s entrance, which has become known as the Cursed Gate. Three policemen are among the wounded.

Netanya, which lies on the Mediterranean between Tel Aviv and Haifa, has been attacked by Palestinian bombers several times in the last five years for multiple casualty strikes. A suicide bomber killed five Israelis near the same spot outside the mall in summer.

Suicide Bombing in Israel Kills 5
By Jim Teeple
Jerusalem
05 December 2005

Teeple report - Download 295k
Listen to Teeple report


At least five people were killed and more than 35 others wounded - many of them critically - in a suicide bombing in the Israeli town, Netanya, Monday. Israel's prime minister has called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss how to respond to the attack.


Ambulances are on stand by, as rescue workers and police inspect the site of a suicide bomb attack in Netanya
The suicide bomber detonated his bomb just outside the entrance to a shopping mall in the Israeli seaside city, Netanya, about 25 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, killing and wounding security guards and people waiting in line to enter the complex.

It was the second such attack in Netanya this year and the first suicide bombing in Israel since October 26, when six people were killed in a suicide bombing of Hadera.

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bomber came from a northern West Bank village. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the bombing, saying all those involved would be arrested. Speaking outside Israel's Foreign Ministry, spokesman Mark Regev told journalists that Mr. Abbas needs to do more to control militants.

"The Palestinian Authority has promised, not just Israel, but the entire International community, that it will start to disarm these groups and take the guns away from extremist elements, and unfortunately little has been achieved," he said. "We urge the Palestinian Authority to follow through on its commitment to disarm these killers."

It is not clear what impact Monday's bombing will have on a shaky truce between Israel and Palestinian groups that has been in effect for most of this year. Palestinian Authority spokesman Saeb Erekat told reporters in Ramallah in the West Bank, that he hoped the truce, or "hudna" will remain in effect.

"We still believe that exerting the maximum effort to maintain the "hudna" [truce] between the two sides mutually, serves both sides interests," he said.

Israel's military responded to the October bombing with air and missile strikes that killed several senior Palestinian militants. Israeli authorities have also arrested hundreds of suspected militants in the West Bank in recent weeks.

Monday's bombing followed rising tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, in recent days. In the past few days, Palestinian militants launched rocket strikes against Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip border and Israel responded with air and artillery strikes against Palestinian positions inside Gaza. Speaking Monday, before the Netanya bombing, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said he had given approval to resume targeted killings of Palestinian militants in response to attacks against Israeli territory.

Palestinian Suicide Bombing Catches Israel’s Electioneering Leaders Unawares

DEBKAfile Special Report

December 5, 2005, 10:28 PM (GMT+02:00)





The Palestinian Jihad Islami suicide bombing that left 5 Israelis dead and 55 injured outside Netanya’s Sharon shopping mall caught the Sharon government and Israel’s security chiefs by surprise. DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources reveal that Israeli security forces guided by the Shin Beit believed they had wiped out a dangerous Jihad Islami cell in Jenin in weeks of raids and roundups. However, they missed one last bomb team, a dispatcher and a suicide bomber equipped with a explosive device, who eluded the dragnet. Netanya was therefore not alerted to the danger and the local police were just carrying out routine patrols.

Caught napping, the Israeli government responded predictably by imposing a closure on the northern West Bank’s villages, including the killer’s village of Ilar north east of Tulkarm, and shut down the Gaza Strip’s exits to Israel, barring the Karni goods crossing. A comprehensive offensive to hunt down the Jihad Islami’s operatives and leaders was promised, a repeat of the pledge given after the Oct. 26 suicide attack on the open-air market of Hadera, just south of the coastal town of Netanya, which killed six Israelis.

Gideon Ezra, minister of internal security, up to his ears preparing prime minister Ariel Sharon’s campaign for reelection in March at the head of the new Kadima party, was caught in an unfortunate slip of the tongue. He said: “We know that the terrorists are concentrated in northern Samaria.”

Israeli bases and civilians were withdrawn from Northern Samaria three months ago together with the Gaza Strip. As he fights an election, Sharon does not need this reminder, which can only raise questions about the timeliness and wisdom of pulling Israel counter-terror forces out of a region admittedly teeming with terrorists.

The same question is being asked insistently about the Gaza Strip - especially by the missile-battered Israelis who live within range of Palestinian launch-crews in the Western Negev. Day by day, they see Israeli airplanes and artillery bombing empty sand dunes and buildings while the missiles keeping coming. It has also not escaped the notice of Israel’s intelligence chiefs that al Qaeda has moved from Sinai into the gaping security vacuum of Gaza. Even party leaders expect their campaign to occasion a terrorist spectacular at some point.

Yet a flock of American and European officials are due in Jerusalem in the next few days to force Israel to open a land link between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, without bothering about security measures. They also want the Gaza crossings to Israeli kept open in all circumstances. The Palestinians may therefore count on getting a convenient passage safe from Israel’s scrutiny to link the Palestinian and Islamic terrorist bases in Gaza to their strongholds in northern Samaria.

Defense minister Shaul Mofaz, himself fighting in a leadership primary to fill Sharon’s evacuated shoes as head of Likud, has meanwhile declared that targeted assassinations would be resumed in the Gaza Strip against terrorist leaders and Qassam missile crews.

For the umpteenth time, Abu Mazen was put on notice to crack down on Palestinian terrorists - notwithstanding his automatic refusal to do any such thing. This time, the chorus was joined by a new voice: election hopeful, Labor’s new broom Amir Peretz, collected all the party’s retired generals and defense chiefs for their first photo op as a “shadow’ administration. All posed eagerly on the mark.

In this atmosphere, it was not surprising to find the security forces responding sluggishly to the unexpected emergency of a deadly explosion in Netanya. The Magen David emergency service was as fast and efficient as ever. But an inquiry has been launched to find out whether the local police were justified in refraining from shooting the bomber when he was in their sights.

When a police patrol was alerted by a bystander to a shifty-looking character heading for the Sharon mall with his hand in a big bag, a policewoman jumped out of the vehicle and gave chase. She saw that the bomber had been grabbed by the mall’s security guard, Haim Amram, 26, from Netanya, to keep him away from the entrance. She shouted to Amram to pull the Palestinian’s hand out of the bag and screamed to the crowd to stand back. She was too late. The killer detonated his bomb. Amram took the full force of the blast and, with four bystanders, died on the spot.

The policewoman’s gun was out and so were the weapons of two more policemen at the scene, but none were fired.

Israeli Army Ordered To Hit Islamic Jihad
Move Follows Suicide Bombing at Mall

By Samuel Sockol and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 6, 2005; A22



NETANYA, Israel, Dec. 5 -- Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered the military Monday to intensify operations against Islamic Jihad and approved the assassination of the radical Palestinian group's senior leaders after one of its operatives blew himself up outside a crowded Israeli shopping mall.

The attack in the coastal city of Netanya killed at least five Israelis as well as the bomber, who was identified as Lutfi Amin Abu Saadeh, 21, a factory worker from the West Bank village of Kfar Rai. More than 30 people were wounded in the suicide attack, the first in Israel since late October and the second attack at the Netanya Hasharon Mall this year.

The huge blast was set off about 11:30 a.m. local time and left bodies scattered outside the mall, at the eastern entrance to the city, about 10 miles from the West Bank. Its glass-and-marble facade was shattered in places and stained with swirls of blood as far as 60 feet from the site of the explosion. Body parts were found as far as 300 feet away.

Among the dead was a mall security guard, who had approached the bomber at the entrance. Witnesses said a female police officer had tipped him off to the bomber, screaming, "Terrorist, terrorist!"

The policewoman, Shoshi Attia, who was wounded in the blast, said she had been looking the bomber "in the eye" when he pressed the button "and blew up."

"I flew, and all I remember is that I was looking in his eye, I saw his gaze," she said, speaking to Israeli reporters from her hospital bed.

Israeli officials praised the guard and Attia for saving lives by preventing the man from entering the mall.

The attack came as Israel and the Palestinian Authority are preparing for national elections, and officials on both sides said the attack was intended to shape the emerging campaigns and undermine progress toward reviving peace efforts.

"Those who are responsible should be hunted down by the Palestinian police," Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement. "The Palestinian Authority will have no tolerance for such actions."

The attack further threatened an informal cease-fire that Abbas arranged in March with a dozen armed Palestinian factions. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has demanded that Abbas disarm the Palestinian groups as a prerequisite for progress on the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map." Sharon has also warned that Israel might not cooperate in allowing the Palestinian parliamentary elections, scheduled for Jan. 25, unless the groups are disarmed.

Abbas has sought to improve security by bringing the groups into the political process, allowing them to participate in municipal elections and, soon, the national voting for parliament.

Islamic Jihad, however, has declined to participate in elections. The relatively small group, whose military operation has far more influence inside the organization than its political wing, does not recognize Israel's right to exist.

At a