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"Security has been bolstered around the house of Arafat (in Gaza)."
MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 7/24: Those who have read MER for some time know that we have long indicated that one of the Israeli goals was to foment a Palestinian civil war. Some of the Israelis, dubbed the "peace camp", preferred to twist Arafat into totally succumbing and signing some kind of "end of conflict" agreement along with creation of a rump and everywhere-controlled Palestinian State. The Israeli "right wing" was never convinced Arafat could or would do so, and that even if he did it wouldn't actually "end the conflict" anyway once it became clear what Arafat has been coerced and bribed into doing. Led by General Ariel Sharon these forces have now created the conditions either for a Palestinian civil war (their preference with the Americans at least willing to risk it) or alternatively for their own military quashing of the so-called "Oslo Peace Process" it having served its purpose and failed to achieve its ultimate goals.
Furthermore, make no mistake about it, the Arafat regime is not acting on its own. Though of course these deeper realities are masked in layers of subterfuge, the reality is that there is now a combination of powerful forces working with and buttressing the Arafat camp -- the American CIA and the Israeli Shinbet foremost among them each for their own reasons. The goal is to end the Intifada, reassert control of the Arafat regime, and thus in fact to prevent the alternative which is Israeli quashing of the regime for not doing the job intended and substituting more direct Israeli military control for the time being. The Egyptians, Jordanians and to a lesser extent the Saudis and also the Europeans (mainly for their money) are also involved in this increasingly desperate attempt to prevent total collapse of the disingenuous "peace process" they have all conspired to create and to head off a possible regional conflagration that could seriously threaten all of their interests, possibly even shaking the regime in Amman from power.
GAZA (Reuters - 7/24) - Palestinians battled each other in night-time fighting in the Gaza Strip, in a new twist to a 10-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.
About 20 Palestinian gunmen, including members of President Yasser Arafat Fatah faction and the Islamic militant group Hamas, shot at the Gaza City home of military intelligence chief Moussa Arafat, triggering a clash with his bodyguards on Monday.
There were no immediate reports on injuries in the violence which erupted a day after Palestinian security forces shot and wounded three masked Palestinian gunmen at a checkpoint in the Gaza Strip.
An official of the ``Popular Resistance Committees,'' a Fatah-dominated group that has spearheaded the anti-Israeli uprising, said Moussa Arafat's house was attacked because the Palestinian High Security Council had begun arresting militants.
At least five members of the resistance committees have been detained by security personnel of the Palestinian Authority, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
Palestinian Authority officials were not available to comment. But the Authority has said that since a cease-fire was brokered by U.S. CIA Director George Tenet last month, its forces had arrested seven Palestinians who violated the truce.
Israel, however, has said that Arafat has not done enough to detain militants who plan or carry out attacks against Israelis.
Palestinians say Israel is to blame for violence in which more than 600 people, mainly Palestinians, have been killed.
The United States said on Monday it was discussing with Israel and the Palestinians the possibility of increasing the number of CIA personnel assigned to help monitor the truce, but no decision has been made.
``It's a subject that we're discussing, an issue we're discussing with the parties in general, and I just don't have any details to share at this time,'' State Department spokesman Phillip Reeker told reporters.
U.S. officials privately seemed to play down the possibility that such CIA personnel could fill the role of international monitors as called for last week by foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrial nations.
Israel publicly rejected any such deployment, although U.S. officials said Washington's ally might go along with an American monitoring presence.
Palestinians have appealed for international protection against what they describe as the Israeli army's disproportionate response to the uprising.
A U.S. official said CIA involvement with Israelis and Palestinians in trying to stabilize the security situation in the Middle East over the past several years has been important in building trust and confidence between the two parties.
As a result, it would be normal to consider expanding that role and ``it's something they are talking about as one part of our continuing dialogue,'' he said.
But the official said it seemed that some Israeli media had tried to promote the idea of an expanded CIA personnel presence as an answer to the call for international monitors.
``That seemed to be a little overplayed...It's probably more Israeli trial balloons or dodging the monitoring question,'' he said.
In Gaza, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian teenager after stones were thrown at them in Rafah, along the border with Egypt, Palestinian witnesses said.
The army did not comment directly on the death of the 15-year-old at the frontier strip, but said in a separate statement that grenades were thrown at its troops, who then fired at the attackers.
Israel said its forces shot dead a Palestinian militant in the West Bank on Monday in an operation linked to the arrest of a would-be bomber a day earlier in a northern Israeli city.
A spokeswoman for Israel's paramilitary border police said the questioning of a Palestinian arrested on Sunday in the northern city of Haifa before he could commit a planned bombing led one of its units to an accomplice in the West Bank.
``The (Haifa) terrorist admitted that he had been prepared by a number of Islamic Jihad militant activists from (the West Bank city of) Jenin, among them Mustapha Yassin, a resident of (the village of) Anin in the territories,'' the spokeswoman said.
``In the midst of the attempt of an undercover border police unit to arrest Yassin today in Anin, he tried to escape. The policemen followed procedure, and after calling for him to stop and issuing a warning, shot and killed him.''
Yassin's family told Reuters that Israeli security forces entered his house and shot him inside.
At least 492 Palestinians, 128 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed since the bloodshed began in the wake of stalled peace talks.
GAZA CITY, July 24 (AFP) - A high-ranking Palestinian official accused the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, of looking to test the self-rule Palestinian Authority after clashes broke out over night in Gaza City between civilians and Palestinian police.
"What happened in Gaza is a political provocation by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will not permit this type of thing in the future," the official said on condition of anonymity.
"Hamas is looking to test the Authority and its strength," he added.
"The Palestinian Authority will not permit a government inside the government and will not accept the pursuit of disorder inside the Palestinian territories," he said.
He dismissed Hamas' assertion that the clashes had been a mass protest as "without foundation."
Several hundred Palestinians clashed with police near the Gaza City home of a top military intelligence official overnight in protest at at a crackdown by the Palestinian Authority on militants, witnesses said Tuesday.
Demonstrators from Hamas, which has carried out the majority of anti-Israeli attacks since 1993, and a group known as the Popular Resistance Committee had hurled stones at guards outside the home of Gaza military intelligence chief Mussa Arafat.
Shots were fired in the air by both armed Palestinian demonstrators and police, but no-one was injured, they said.
The violence flared as demonstrators who had been at a protest rally against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, joined by some 3,000 Palestinians in the Jabalia refugee camp, spilled out into the streets of Gaza City after midnight.
Palestinian police have since arrested several people they suspect were involved and security has been bolstered around the house of Arafat.
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| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/299.htm |