The pace of events is escalating out of control. A cataclysm of destruction and recriminations draws closer. And it will in turn lead to still more hatreds and devastations in future years.

[World Tribune - Tuesday, July 10, 2001] JERUSALEM - Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is said to be facing opposition from several of his key aides.

Israeli and Palestinian sources said the policy differences - aired in talks with U.S. officials - caused Arafat to break off communications with his leading aide, PLO Executive Committee secretary Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian intelligence chief Amin Hindi and PA security chief Jibril Rajoub.

The sources said the dispute between the two Palestinian figures began in April when Abbas - in the United States for medical treatment - was invited to Washington to meet senior Bush administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Abbas was said to have criticized Arafat's handling of the Palestinian war against Israel and voiced his belief that the violence has turned counterproductive.

The discussion was leaked to both Israel as well as Arafat, Middle East Newsline reported. Arafat, the sources said, confronted Abbas on his return to Ramallah and the two men engaged in a heated argument. Since then, the sources said, Arafat has stopped talking to Abbas.

The result, the sources said, is that Arafat refuses to invite the PLO secretary to key meetings. Arafat's boycott has extended for at least two months and he has rejected Abbas's appeals for a reconciliation.

The Arafat-Abbas rift comes as Israeli sources report of Palestinian plans to resume bombing attacks in Israeli cities. On Monday, Palestinian gunners renewed mortar attacks in the Gaza Strip and a deputy company commander was killed by a Palestinian bomb.

The sources said Hindi and Rajoub share the criticism of Arafat. As a result, Arafat has voiced his concern that Washington and Israel are planning to unseat him.

Palestinian sources said Arafat is planning to reshuffle his Cabinet to bolster his support. They said up to six ministers could be replaced and some of them could be replaced by Hamas members.

The reports of his capture were seen in Israel as a sign that Iran was stepping up its activities with the Hizbollah guerrillas with a view to launching military strikes against Israel.

According to media reports, he initially told his interrogators that he had defected to Israel because he was being persecuted in Iran for criticising its religious leaders.

However, Israeli security officials say the man, who told his questioners that he was sent to Lebanon with five other Iranians, was a senior official in the Revolutionary Guard. The Israeli authorities say the guard has begun recently to operate in several areas of southern Lebanon.

The man, named in the Israeli press as Fas Houdari, an "assistant" to President Khatami's 14-year-old son, was reported to have been seized at the Fatma Pass on the frontier.

The reports of his detention came as a Hamas suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at an entrance to the Gaza Strip. No one else was hurt.

The radical Islamic group has vowed that several "human bombs" would be deployed against Israeli targets to avenge the killing at the weekend of an 11-year-old Gazan boy.

The Palestinian Authority said it had arrested one of the suicide bomber's accomplices. Gideon Sa'ar, the Israeli government secretary, said Israel had given the authority intelligence information before the attack detailing the intentions of Hamas and the name of the perpetrators.

Mr Sa'ar claimed: "If they had taken action, it would have been possible to prevent the incident."

In another incident, an Israeli army officer was killed in a Palestinian attack on the West Bank in a further blow to the fragile ceasefire.

Israel is also involved in a growing row with the United Nations over disputed video material relating to the abduction of three of its soldiers by Hizbollah guerrillas last year.

Israeli officials are talking about a serious breakdown of trust after UN officials denied the existence of the tapes and then only agreed to return them after blurring out the faces of guerrillas who were captured on film.

Indian peacekeeping troops were stationed close to where the soldiers were abducted and two Israeli newspapers reported yesterday that they were bribed by Hizbollah not to interfere with the kidnapping.

An Israeli military official said: "We are having trouble from the Hizbollah, trouble from the Iranians and the UN is doing nothing. It seems we cannot trust anyone except ourselves."

The Iranians established the Hizbollah movement, which claims to have driven the Israelis from southern Lebanon in May last year after a 22-year struggle.

Since the withdrawal the guerrillas have launched sporadic attacks against Israeli troops in the border zone.

Shlomo Dror, a Defence Ministry spokesman, said: "We know there are several hundred Iranians in southern Lebanon equipping and training Hizbollah guerrillas.

"Most have been based inside Lebanon in the Bekaa valley, but now they appear to be moving into the border area and they are clearly taking more risks.

[World Tribune - Tuesday, July 10, 2001] TEL AVIV - Israel has placed its international airport under siege amid an alert of a terrorist attack.

Police and security forces have blocked all entrances to Ben-Gurion Airport. They inspected every car entering the facility as well as vehicles on the highways leading to the airport.

Officials refused to provide details on the terrorist alert. But they said the alert was received on late Sunday and concerned Palestinian plans to drive a car full of explosives into Ben-Gurion.

"We didn't shut down the airport because we felt like it, but because of information," Israeli Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh said.

The result was a huge traffic jam throughout Monday in the Tel Aviv area. Many travelers left their cars and walked to the airport with back packs.

Officials said the alert along with heightened security measures continued into Tuesday.

A terror alert was declared amid a threat by the Islamic opposition Hamas movement to launch 10 bombings in Israel. On Monday, tension rose in Jerusalem when the municipality destroyed 14 Palestinian structures built without licenses at the northern edge of the city.

At the same time, Israeli authorities ordered all residents in the Tel Aviv area to stop drinking tap water. Authorities said the key pipe to the city was polluted by water located near the Arab town of Tira. Officials have so far ruled out the prospect of sabotage but said a guard was found dead at his post at a water facility near Ben-Gurion Airport.

In the Gaza Strip, three Israeli soldiers were injured in a battle with Palestinian forces near the Egyptian border. The Palestinians fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli positions on early Tuesday and troops damaged more than 20 buildings in the exchange of fire.

Israeli military sources said many of the buildings were used by Palestinian snipers.

[The Scotsman - Tuesday, July 20, 2001] PALESTINIAN refugees fought a losing battle yesterday as Israeli bulldozers, guarded by hundreds of border police, wrecked 14 structures they hoped to turn into proper homes in Arab East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians scuffled with police in a brief attempt to block bulldozers which strained to squeeze into the narrow unpaved alleys of the Shuafat refugee camp.

Five Palestinians were hurt and several others arrested in the latest faceoff between Israeli authorities who maintain the structures were built illegally and Palestinians who say Israel discriminates against their rights to live in Jerusalem.

Lafi Eid's family decided to build the new home to give breathing space to 30 relatives now living in a crowded building given to his parents by the United Nations after they were driven from their West Bank village in the 1967 Middle East War.

"If I want to have some sort of privacy with my wife, I have to make sure that half of the people are asleep," Mr Eid said.

All but two of the buildings were partially built structures. The stone-faced homes of the Jewish settlement Pisgat Zeev gleamed in the sunlight just yards from the camp.

Camp residents said they believed their future homes fell at the expense of the settlement's growth.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are considered illegal by the international community.

"If I didn't have five children, I would have killed one or two of the [police] and then wouldn't have cared if I was killed," said Mr Eid.

Jerusalem's mayor, Ehud Olmert, said the buildings were not inhabited and that the municipality levels all homes built without permits, whether owned by Arabs or Jews. "These are not any sort of poor souls who had no place to live," Mr Olmert told Israel Radio.

But Palestinians and human rights groups say Israel issues Palestinians only a minimal number of construction permits despite a fast-growing population in order to weaken their demographic presence in Jerusalem.

Israel captured Jerusalem's eastern sector in 1967 and both sides claim their capital in the city.

Meir Margalit, a member of the Israeli municipality council, said that more than 100 additional houses in Arab East Jerusalem are slated to be demolished later.

"I don't have another word. It's a crime against humanity that destroys any possibility towards dialogue," Mr Margalit said at the demolition site.

The Palestinian cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the demolition was a new example of Israeli policies under its occupation in the West Bank and Gaza which have fuelled enmity for decades and fanned a nine-month-old Palestinian uprising.

"Is there any violence in the whole world more than demolishing houses of refugees who were barred from their original homes more than 50 years ago?" Mr Abed Rabbo said, alluding to the 1948 Middle East war surrounding the creation of the state of Israel.

[The Associated Press - Monday, July 9, 2001]: JERUSALEM -- Two million Israelis in the Tel Aviv area received a stern warning Monday - don't drink the water.

Breaking into a prime-time TV newscast with the sudden announcement, the Health Ministry said the water had turned murky, and boiling it would not purify it. Therefore, officials said, people should not drink tap water until further notice.

Dr. Alex Leventhal, head of the ministry's public health service, said the ban was a precaution. He told Israel television that the source of the discoloration was unknown, and it was not certain that it was dangerous to health.

Asked if it might have been an attempt by militants to poison the water supply, Leventhal said, "In my humble professional opinion it's impossible to sabotage the water over such a wide area. It's something to do with the water itself and the management of the water."

This comes as Israel faces one of its worst water shortages because of a three-year drought. The Sea of Galilee, Israel's main freshwater reservoir, is far below what scientists regard as the danger level, and the coastal aquifer is fast becoming polluted with sea water.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/274.htm