Arafat’s aides targeted for arrest
The Washington Post, April 2, 2002

Arafat’s aides targeted for arrest
 
Until now, Israel extended de facto immunity to his inner circle
 
Israeli troops in an armored vehicle enter the outskirts of the Palestinian town of Tulkarem on Monday.

By Lee Hockstader
THE WASHINGTON POST

JERUSALEM, April 2 —  With its military sweep of Palestinian cities and camps, Israel has set out to hunt down hundreds of suspected militants and terrorists, among them some of Yasser Arafat’s political and security lieutenants, a senior Israeli security official said today.

THE DETERMINATION to take in ranking officials from Arafat’s Palestinian Authority represents a shift in Israeli policy, which until now has granted what amounts to immunity from arrest or assassination to Arafat’s inner circle, the official said.
    The official’s remarks, coupled with similar comments in the Israeli media, constituted the most detailed attempt Israel has made to lay out the goals and scope of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s five-day-old military thrust into Palestinian-administered territory in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
    The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some of the suspects sought by Israel have taken refuge with Arafat, the Palestinian leader, in his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Others, he said, are among at least 200 Palestinians in the sprawling hilltop headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, a powerful agency that is one of Arafat’s main points of contact with the CIA and is Israel’s negotiating counterpart in attempts to coordinate security agreements.
    The Preventive Security headquarters, near Ramallah, has been surrounded by Israeli forces determined to arrest all the wanted men inside. A spokesman for the Palestinian security force, Samir Rantisi, said Israeli troops launched an attack on the headquarters complex early this morning, using heavy machine guns and other weapons.
 
IN SEARCH OF BARGHOUTI

    “Most of the important activists of Ramallah are now in these compounds,” a senior Israeli security source said. “They are not going to get away. We are going to arrest all of them.”
    Among the most pronounced changes in its policy, Israel has also decided to track down and arrest Arafat’s top political lieutenant in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, the Israeli security source said. Barghouti, 42, an electrifying speaker and charismatic street leader, is often mentioned as a possible successor to Arafat. Despite identifying him as a key figure in terrorist and other attacks, Israeli until now has exempted Barghouti from arrest on the grounds that he is too popular, too influential and too close to Arafat.
    “We’re going to arrest him, of course,” said the source. “Our big mistake is we used to respect the [Palestinian] VIPs too much.”
    He also said Israel is studying the possibility of arresting a number of top Palestinian security officials, most of whom have been in close contact with the CIA since Arafat established the Palestinian Authority in 1994.
    With the goal of building Palestinian agencies strong enough to rein in militant Islamic and other groups, the CIA provided extensive advice, equipment and training to Arafat’s security chiefs, with Israel’s knowledge and approval. Over the years, U.S. officials based in Tel Aviv developed reasonably close relations with their Palestinian colleagues.
    These include Tawfiq Tirawi, Arafat’s intelligence chief in the West Bank, and Rashid Abu Shbak, the No. 2 man in the Preventive Security force in the Gaza Strip. According to Israel, Tirawi has been involved in planning attacks on Israeli targets since the outset of the current Palestinian uprising in September 2000, and Abu Shbak is the key figure in the manufacture of Palestinian rockets and mortars in Gaza.
    In widening its list of wanted men to include some of Arafat’s top aides, Israel faces a dilemma. Israeli officials have often said they would like to somehow exile or remove Arafat in the hopes that the next generation of Palestinian leaders would be more “moderate” and “pragmatic.” But it is precisely that group of Palestinian leaders - men in their forties with growing power bases — whose arrests Israel is now contemplating.
    Israeli officials acknowledge that the dilemma goes deeper, and includes the question of whether to expel Arafat. Sharon, who calls Arafat a “bitter enemy” and has publicly wished him dead, has favored expulsion, despite opposition from the United States and its Western allies.
 
A THREAT ABROAD

    Israel’s security and intelligence agencies appear to agree with only part of this assessment. On the one hand, the agencies contend Arafat would represent a greater threat to Israeli interests if he were overseas, with free access to the world’s leaders and television cameras, than he does caged up in his Ramallah headquarters surrounded by Israeli tanks, Israeli newspapers have reported.
    On the other hand, the agencies have warned that Arafat’s likely successors include militants who made their names organizing attacks on Israel, but lack the prestige and power to exert near-term control over Palestinian areas, rein in radical groups or make political compromises with Israel.
    Staying “with [Arafat] is a very hard alternative, and without him is also a very bad alternative,” said the security source.
    For the time being, Israel is keeping its hands off some of Arafat’s most senior security chiefs, apparently hoping to preserve some infrastructure that might corral militant groups and would-be terrorists in the future.
    Chief among them is Jibril Rajoub, chief of Preventive Security in the West Bank, who Israeli officials believe has not joined the 200 or more Palestinian militants and others who have taken refuge inside the Security Service headquarters. They also include Mohammed Dahlan, Arafat’s security chief in the Gaza Strip, who has close ties with the CIA and is regarded as a pragmatist by Israelis and Americans.
    As Israeli officials describe it, the current military campaign, in scale and ambition, goes well beyond any previous offensive in the conflict. Israeli forces have already entered four of the eight largest Palestinian population centers in the West Bank — Ramallah, Tulkarm, Qalqilyah and Bethlehem — and are preparing to enter more. About 20,000 military reservists have been called up for duty in what the army has dubbed Operation Defensive Shield.
    Speaking Sunday evening, Sharon defined the operation’s goal as to “wipe out terrorist infrastructures from their foundations,” suggesting a long and arduous campaign. For the time being, there is substantial support for the Israeli policy from the Bush administration, Israel’s main strategic ally.
    But there is a growing tension between the ambition of Sharon’s goals — which many Israelis say are virtually unattainable — and the constraints of a world worried about instability in the Middle East, especially the Arab world. Some Israeli officials are mindful of international criticism and suspect Israel will be forced to curtail operations within a few weeks.
    “Every additional day of occupation [of Palestinian territory], every additional day of pictures of tanks opposite women and children increases the international pressure on the government,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth. “Sharon knows he is living on borrowed time.”
    Shimon Peres, the foreign minister, played down the idea that Israel might have set too broad a goal for itself or was in effect planning to reoccupy the territories it ceded to the Palestinians in the mid-1990s under the Oslo agreements. “We will be staying weeks at the most, not months,” he said. “We are not fighting a war of prestige here, we are fighting a war of existence. Our first concern is not our image but our lives.”

Correspondent Daniel Williams in Ramallah contributed to this report.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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