US Intelligence Takeover of Palestinian Authority

[Guest guest]

US Intelligence Takeover of Palestinian Authority

 

DEBKAfile's Exclusive Report and Analysis

 

March 14, 2005, 11:29 AM (GMT+02:00)

 

 

Lt. Gen William Ward, US Security-Itelligence Coordinator

 

 

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon informed the weekly cabinet

meeting Sunday, March 13 that unauthorized West Bank outposts would

be dismantled "as part of Israel's commitment to the Middle East

roadmap." The roadmap demands that Israel destroy all outposts

erected after March 2001, though not in the first instance.

 

This is the first intimation that the Israeli prime minister has

launched into implementation of the "performance-based" roadmap, a

sharp policy change that is not on record as having obtained

government approval. Until now, Israel's leaders insisted on the

Palestinian side first meeting the roadmap's initial mandatory

demand "to undertake the immediate and unconditional cessation of

violence and armed activity against Israelis everywhere"

and "effective operations aimed at dismantlement of terrorist

capabilities and infrastructure."

 

DEBKAfile's Washington sources interpret Sharon's statement as

meaning he is ready to move on to Stage B of his disengagement plan,

namely the removal of unauthorized outposts on the West Bank. What

President George W. Bush wants to hear when Sharon arrives for their

White House meeting on April 12 is a timetable for Stage B and then

Stage C for other parts of the West Bank, so as to clear the way for

progress towards "a viable, contiguous Palestinian state."

 

Bush has accepted the difficulty of accomplishing the destruction of

the outposts in conjunction with the daunting and divisive project

of evacuating 21 thriving Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip and

four in the northern West Bank. This project will strain every last

police, military, political and emotional national resource. But as

DEBKAfile revealed on December 17, 2004 (Sudden Discord between Bush

and Sharon), after the outposts are disposed of, the prime minister

will be confronted with demands for a timeline for the next stage,

including for example the Israeli West Bank town of Ariel and other

locations left unenclosed by the security fence.

 

The Sharon government and the country face more agonizing debate on

those far larger and more emotionally-charged olden Land of Israel

locations where at least 250,000 Jews live.

 

The first spark of controversy has been ignited, arising out of the

decision to build by July a temporary barrier to protect Jerusalem

against suicide bombing attempts from the West Bank, which though

thwarted till now have become an almost weekly occurrence. One

deputy minister, Likud's Ehud Olmert, reported the barrier would

enclose all parts of Jerusalem, including the eastern districts, as

well as the neighboring town of Maaleh Adummum to the east and

Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem to the south. It will have eleven police-

manned gateways. Olmert called the town and its 35,000

inhabitants "an integral part of Israel."

 

Sharon's other deputy, Labor's Shimon Peres, stepped in to claim the

fate of the town was still undecided. The arguments over more

evocative West Bank locations could be crippling.

 

Sunday's cabinet meeting thanked Talia Sasson, former member of the

state prosecution, for her report, without going so far as endorsing

it. She judged that 105 West Bank outposts had been illegally

licensed and funded by one Israeli government after another,

including two led by Labor as well as the incumbent administration.

A ministerial panel was appointed to set out approval procedures for

outposts and legal measures against wildcat activity. But the team

was denied authority to implement the Sasson recommendations. Such

decisions would have to be political because of the legal difficulty

of retroactively declaring unlawful actions that were duly

authorized at the time they were taken

 

Bush and his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice will not be

impressed by any legalistic quibbling or the national controversy

polarizing Israel. What the Bush administration is after is swift

action without further procrastination. Administration leaders seem

to be treating Israel's pull-back from the Gaza Strip and West Bank

in the same spirit as their insistence on complete Syrian military

withdrawal from Lebanon. It is possible to conjure up a grand design

charted by the Bush administration to simultaneously squeeze Israel

and Syria into sharply constricted molds sized by its perception of

the two nations' true dimensions.

 

This was not admitted by defense minister Shaul Mofaz when he

decided to compress the July disengagements into one month instead

of two, which he explained by the necessity of

curtailing "confrontation, emotional rhetoric and violence." He thus

implicitly stigmatized the settlers rather than disclosing the true

reason for his haste: an unequivocal American demand to get moving

on disengagement and get it over in no more than a month after the

July 17 Palestinian parliamentary vote, i.e. by August 20-25 – a

change that overrides a previous cabinet decision to carry out the

withdrawals in four well-spaced stages, each carefully considered

before implementation.

 

The prominence afforded the outpost report and the decision to

abbreviate the evacuation period paradoxically conceals their

rationale, namely, the unfolding new reality which produced them

both.

 

These are some of the facts of this reality:

 

Last week, Lt. Gen William Ward, the newly appointed US security

coordinator for Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, secretly

moved into heavily guarded offices in central Tel Aviv, according to

DEBKAfile's exclusive military sources - although Rice stated in

London last week that he would not relocate to the Middle East. The

general settled in with a large team of tens of American officers.

The four governments concerned were informed from Washington that

General Ward was to be their address for communications to the US

government.

 

This makes the new coordinator a kind of buffer or wall of

separation dividing the four governments involved in the Israeli-

Palestinian dispute from Washington. For Israel, this is tantamount

to downgrading the Jerusalem-Washington relationship.

 

DEBKAfile's Washington sources reveal that the American general was

sent post haste to Tel Aviv to take charge of the intelligence

pincer already at work on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 

The Gaza Strip Arm went into action several weeks ago in total hush.

An Egyptian military intelligence delegation led by the head of the

Palestinian desk at Egyptian intelligence, General Ibrahim Bakhri,

took up position in the territory. Operating in conjunction with the

Egyptians and from the same offices is a British MI6 Secret Service

mission of 25 agents. They share the task of bringing under control

the assorted Palestinian intelligence and security bodies. For

Palestinian liaison, they have been provided with Gaza strongman

Mohammad Dahlan. The fact that Israeli authorities have allowed the

two Gaza-based groups free rein without curbs or interference is the

true reason for the sudden blossoming of a warm friendship between

Cairo and Jerusalem and Israel's willingness to withdraw from the

flashpoint Philadelphi border strip.

 

Keeping this secret operation ticking over smoothly was discussed at

length between Hosni Mubarak and his visitor, Mofaz, last week in

Sharm al-Sheikh.

 

The West Bank Arm is run by a Jordanian military intelligence group

working with an American Central Intelligence Agency team. The

Jordanian group leader is General Abdallah Khayar who is based in

Amman. His Palestinian contact is Jibril Rajoub.

 

Now that the two structures are up and running, Washington wants

Israel to accelerate its withdrawal for three reasons:

 

1. Abu Mazen's durability as Palestinian leader is an open question

given his political and personal weakness.

 

2. When Sharon first came up with his disengagement plan, Arafat was

still in the driving seat and no one envisaged the Hamas terrorist

movement rising to power through the ballot box and replacing Abbas

with an unknown face. This development may well negate the plan and

other future withdrawals.

 

3. The White House is determined to prove its even-handedness to the

Arab world and is therefore simultaneously pressing Syrian president

Bashar Assad and Israeli prime minister Sharon for withdrawals.

 

To keep popular minds and discourse off these developments, Sharon

arranged for the Sasson outpost report and the evacuation decision

to come to light at this time.

 

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=999