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| Israel-Palestine |
| Debka sez : "Arafat Rides 3 Kidnappings Back to Domination of the Gaza Strip" |
| 2004-07-18 |
| Debka always sees Arafat as the terrorist mastermind; add in their alarmist view, and you have an interesting take on the Gaza mess Yasser Arafat waited until the Gaza Strip was relegated to the status of a write-off to be dumped by Israel, with the Egyptians and Britain maintaining an interim security presence until the Palestinians were deemed fit to rule a reformed, terror-free administration. Arafat himself was seen as a spent force. However, 48 hours before Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon launched coalition negotiations for a government lineup committed to evacuating the Gaza Strip, Arafat pounced. One, two, three abductions were staged in the Gaza Strip in a 10-hour period on Friday, July 16 — first the venal and hated Gaza police chief Ghazi Jebali, followed by the southern military coordinator, Khaled Abu Aloul, and lastly, four of five French aid workers, who were hauled out of a Khan Younes restaurant by masked, armed and locked in the town's Red Crescent center. They were all freed within hours and none hurt. The next day, as Sharon's office crowed that these events proved how necessary it was to speed up his unilateral evacuation, Arafat struck with lightning speed: he rid himself of Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, who had been forced on him in the first place, purged the top ranks of Gaza Strip national security and installed his own men. By nightfall Saturday, Arafat was in absolute command of the territory... It took Arafat 48 hours to rob Sharon of his fundamental political and security rationale for broadening his government, i.e. a timetable for the orderly withdrawal of settlements and troops from a leaderless Gaza Strip and willing outside hands to take over and install a democratic administration purged of terror. Therefore, the Likud-Labor negotiations due to begin Sunday, July 17, will be a futile exercise. Without a clear vista towards disengagement, Labor will not join the Sharon government; without a parliamentary boost, the government cannot survive much longer. Arafat will thus have forced another Israeli prime minister to foreshorten his term and call an early general election, a repeat of his successes against his predecessors, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. There is nothing personal about this tactic for Arafat; he has made it a strategic habit to topple Israeli prime ministers while subjecting Israelis to a campaign of murderous terror, thereby sowing anarchy in the Jewish state and weakening it internally and externally. EFL, rest at link |
| Posted by:Anonymous5089 |
| #2 Heh. That's putting it mildly, Fred! |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2004-07-18 1:30:18 PM |
| #1 Judging by what's going on in Gaza at the moment, it doesn't look like this is one of DEBKA's better analyses. |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-07-18 12:09:07 PM |