In this issue:

Has the IDF Completed a Dry Run for Palestinian 'Ethnic Cleansing'?

Arab Media Highlights LaRouche Leadership Against Iraq War

Arab Media Highlights LaRouche Leadership Against Iraq War

Egyptian Leaders and Legal Experts Discuss an Emergency Meeting of the UN Security Council

Shin Bet Employer Cleared of Charges Related to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's Assassination

How Long Can Israel Maintain Warsaw Ghetto Mobilization?

From Volume 2, Issue Number 14 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published April 7, 2003
Mideast News Digest

Has the IDF Completed a Dry Run for Palestinian 'Ethnic Cleansing'?

As EIW has frequently reported, one use Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might make of the U.S. war with Iraq, is to use it as cover for a mass Nazi-style transfer of the Palestinians to Jordan—for Sharon declares that, when it comes to a Palestinian state, "Jordan is Palestine." Former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officer Effie Eitam, now a Cabinet Minister, has even drawn up plans for seizing part of the West Bank of the Jordan River to create a Roman imperial-type Limes line.

On April 3, the IDF, supported by tanks and helicopters, marched into the Tulkarm refugee camp, home to 15,000 to 20,000 people, and rounded up all males between the ages of 15 and 40. They were forced onto trucks, and were brought to another village several kilometers away, which had been converted into a prison camp. There, they were systematically interrogated, while other IDF soldiers went house-to-house ostensibly looking for members of the Fatah-linked Tanzim militia.

A few hours before the operation began, on the anniversary of "Land Day" (when Palestinian Arabs were internally transferred), an Israeli Druze officer told a few hundred men in Tulkarm, "You are leaving the camp. Don't come back until it [the Iraq war] is all over."

Yossi Beilin, who joined the pro-peace Meretz Party, given the immoral failure of the Labor Party when it participated in a "National Unity Government" with Sharon's Likud, and who is one of the Israeli architects of the Oslo Accords, said that the operation "conjures up chilling memories." Beilin and other Meretz leaders demanded an immediate stop to this ethnic cleansing. At least this time, the Tulkarm men were allowed to return to their camp.

Meanwhile, in East Jerusalem, with the approval of Jabotinskyite fascist Sharon, right-wing Jewish extremists started moving into the apartments built and financed by Temple Mount fanatic and American bingo "czar" Irving Moscowitz. The building is in the middle of one of the inner-city Arab neighborhoods. Israeli Army Radio reported that the U.S. Consulate General in East Jerusalem asked the Jerusalem Mayor to impose a delay on the occupation of the apartments, but this was refused.

Arab Media Highlights LaRouche Leadership Against Iraq War

The historic conference of the Schiller Institute in Bad Schwalbach, Germany (see last week's EIW INDEPTH) has received extensive coverage in the Arabic media.

On April 1, Al-Arab International, from London, published a lengthy report on the conference by its economy editor Dr. Mustafa Ali, who followed the conference closely. The Al-Arab report is titled: "A call to convene an urgent conference to rebuild the international financial system through a 'New Bretton Woods' as proposed by LaRouche." Another headline reports, "Schiller Institute's international conference discusses 'How to Reconstruct a Bankrupt World.'" Importantly, the widely read Al-Arab newspaper also includes the full-text translation of the Bad Schwalbach Declaration to "Stop this war," so that LaRouche's "New Bretton Woods" could be implemented. "The Bad Schwalbach Declaration" is being widely circulated throughout Europe and the United States.

On April 2, Al-Bayan, that is published in Dubai, also featured an article by Qatar University Professor Dr. Ahmed Al-Kedidi, who had been unable to attend the Bad Schwalbach conference, but followed it with great interest. Al-Kedidi began his article with a report on the conference, stating that, among others, it brought "politicians, parliamentarians and scholars from 45 nations."

Al-Kedidi added: "This conference was organized by a number of my old friends, including American Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche, his wife the chairwoman of the international Schiller Institute, and Jacques Cheminade, the former Presidential candidate in France."

Also on April 2, Al-Kedidi was a guest on a daily talk show on the Qatar Satellite Channel (separate from Al-Jazeera), where he emphasized the Schiller Institute's work in condemning the Iraq war as illegal and a crime against humanity.

The Iraqi 'Clash of Civilizations' War Could Become a War of 'Sticks and Stones'

According to various Muslim press over April 3-4, no sooner did U.S. forces believed that they had "liberated" the city of Annajaf (Al-Najaf), than on April 3, thousands of angry, unarmed Iraqi men in the city marched down the main streets to the central square, because they were afraid American troops were heading for the mosque-shrine of Imam Ali, the holiest of Shiite Muslim sites. Inside the mosque, small Iraqi resistance forces were entrenched. The protesters said they are trying to negotiate with those inside to surrender their weapons without shedding blood, and get an amnesty.

The people in Annajaf have an equally intense hatred for Saddam as for the Anglo-American invaders, especially after hundreds of Iraqi civilians were massacred in the south by Saddam.

The highest religious leader of Annajaf is Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who is based in the school adjacent to the shrine of Imam Ali (Prophet Mohamad's nephew). He had issued a fatwa (religious decree) in March, banning any cooperation with the Anglo-American invaders. The Iran-based Iraqi Shiite opposition group SCIRI complied, and has remained neutral. Later, he issued another fatwa, calling on Iraqi Shi'ites to "defend the homeland against the invaders."

On Thursday, arriving with the U.S. troops from Kuwait was Abdul-Majid Al-Kho'i, chairman of "Al-Kho'i Foundation" in London. Like a puppet who is known to Iraqis in the region to have deep ties with the lunatic fringe of Anglo-American intelligence, Abdul-Majid is seeking to calm the rage of the occupied Iraqi population, and to mediate with the leaders of the clergy for the sake of the occupying powers. Abdul-Majid is the son of the former supreme religious leader of Iraq in Annajaf, Ayatollah Al-Kho'i (who died in 1993).

From Qom in Iran, the religious city where most Iraqi exiled Shi'ite scholars are based, scholars denounced Abdul-Majid's lies, and his cooperation with the invading forces. One renowned religious leader, Ayatollah Mohammed Mahdi Al-Asefi, told an Arabic television channel: "Both Saddam and the U.S.-U.K invaders are evil. The Iraqi people are trapped in a holocaust.... However, if the Americans attempt to occupy the country, then Iraq's people should resist them. The U.S. is not in Iraq to bring to the Iraqi people a political project for freedom."

Iran itself would most probably support the Iraqis in the south if they decided to fight against any U.S.-U.K. occupation. Shi'ites in Pakistan would do the same. Many observers note that Iran and Syria would not stand idle, allowing the United States to stabilize and legitimize its occupation of an Iraq, which would become a launching pad for destabilizing these two countries and the region.

According to what a senior Iraqi source in Iran told EIW: "If the U.S. decides to have a direct military administration of Iraq, they would have to face an uprising from the Iraqis in the south. If they try to install a puppet regime using hard-handed measures to control the population, the outcome would be civil war."

Egyptian Leaders and Legal Experts Discuss an Emergency Meeting of the UN Security Council

The Egyptian government web site on March 31 featured a discussion of the possibility of convoking a UN General Assembly session, to stop the Iraq war, based on UN Resolution 377 "Uniting for Peace." The article begins: "The whole world was vociferous in opposition to war, but no action was taken to stop it, despite attempts by some nations to obtain a resolution from the UN General Assembly on the illegality of the U.S.-led attack against Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. is doing its utmost to block a General Assembly meeting." The General Assembly can as a body overrule the UN Security Council, despite the veto of a member(s) of the Permanent Five.

The Arabic weekly magazine October hosted a piece by Prof. Rateb, Professor of International Law at Cairo University, who says: "A resolution could be issued by the majority without fear of a member or members using the veto," adding that during the Tripartite Aggression (Suez Crisis) in 1956, Yugoslavia invoked Resolution 377, giving the UN General Assembly the responsibilities of the UN Security Council. Dr. Rateb said that this led to Dag Hammarskjold's creation of "a peace-keeping force for the first time to bring an end to the war."

Dr. Rateb said that: "...If the Arab countries or any other side succeeds in calling a meeting of the UN General Assembly and act according to the 1950 resolution, there would be the distinct possibility that the American-British aggression in Iraq could be halted. In the case of 1956, Dr. Rateb said that the UN formed a peace-keeping force and forced the withdrawal of the aggressors. Dr. Rateb sees the difference between now and then, in the absence of a personality like Hammarskjold.

And Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., warned recently that the current UN Secretary-General is a good man, but might not withstand the pressures against such a development. Nontheless, wires reported that an April 2 meeting in Cairo Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, together with his Moroccan counterpart Mohammed Benaissa, and Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa spoke of the possibility of calling for such a meeting. However, a usually reliable EIW Egyptian source based in Washington, D.C., said that there is concern among the Arabs and Organization of Islamic Countries that the effort of the Arab League to override the UN Security Council by holding a meeting of the UN General Assembly on this matter to stop the war was not receiving support from European countries—much as the Europeans claim that the occupation plans must be endorsed by the UN. But, as LaRouche highlighted, this is a definite potential route to stop the war. (For more on the history of this process within the UN, see INDEPTH.)

Shin Bet Employer Cleared of Charges Related to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's Assassination

According to Ha'aretz of March 31, 2003, Avishai Raviv, a Shin Bet informant, was cleared of charges that he had knowledge of the plans to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat's "Partner for Peace," but did nothing. Rabin was murdered in 1995.

Raviv was an ex-Kach informant in the circles of Yigal Amir, Rabin's killer. Raviv claimed he never heard from Yigal Amir that he was planning to kill Rabin, and Amir confirmed that he never told him.

Raviv was never really accused of such a crime by the authorities, but was indicted because the right-wing exerted pressure in an effort to prove that there was a Labor Party plot to kill Rabin, making him a martyr to use against the right. Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon allowed the trial to counter the right-wing's accusation.

After the verdict, Raviv broke his silence, telling Israeli Army Radio, "I had nothing to do with this terrible thing, and Rabin's murder is the worst thing that has ever happened in this country.... My blame is the same as all of Israel's—everyone saw the pictures and nobody believed that a Jew would rise up to kill a Jew."

Irrespective of the justice of this verdict, it is notable that Arafat has said: "The murderers of Yitzhak Rabin are now running the country." Numerous religious and political allies of Prime Minister "Fat Arik" Sharon had tried to create an atmosphere in which Rabin's serious peace negotiations were being viewed as treasonous.

How Long Can Israel Maintain Warsaw Ghetto Mobilization?

As EIW has extensively reported, despite massive U.S. subsidies, the Israeli economy is also unravelling with the systemic world economic crisis. And, thus one finds growing impoverishment of Israeli citizens, while funds for the military occupation are huge. The question is whether or not, given major strike waves over Finance Minister Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu's austerity budget and the general world collapse, whether or not, as in the U.S., the economic crisis will add further impetus to insane military actions ranging from "Jordan is Palestine" to the use by Israel of nuclear weapons (Israel has the third largest arsenal of these in the world) just as the lunacy of the Bush Administration's "Chickenhawks" reveals.

On March 30, some 50,000 government employees went on strike, and on Monday, 100,000 employees of 265 local authorities went on strike over Bibi's austerity budget. For the first time since 1985, foreign service employees went on strike, closing consulates around the world. High school teachers, who are being forced to take an amazing 20% wage cut, have started job actions. The Histadrut Labor Federation will also call on workers in the private sector which could effect flights, rail travel, dockworkers, and the telephone company.

On March 25, Ha'aretz shocked Israel by reporting that one-third of Israeli children are below the poverty line and that Bibi's new budget will add 136,000 more. Meanwhile, Ha'aretz on April 2 reported that Ran Cohen of the pro-peace Meretz Party revealed that "Fat Arik" had six soldiers protecting one settler in an "illegal" outpost at a cost of NIS 43,000 ($10,000). This ought to be seen as an illegal use of U.S. funding for Israel, since President George W. Bush signed off on the "road map" for Israel to close down the settlements.

As EIW has previously reported, because of the closure of Palestinians to jobs in Israel, among other reasons, 76% of Palestinians are living below the UN poverty line of two dollars a day.

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