Fighting Terrorism (9 page)
Read Fighting Terrorism Online
Authors: Benjamin Netanyahu
The same can be said in large measure about the United States. If America has started to take note of the problem of militant Islamic activities within its borders, this has come about only after particularly spectacular attacks by these groups within the United States itself. In November 1990, an Egyptian immigrant to the United
States named El Sayyid Nosair was arrested and charged with murdering Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York.
a
The subsequent police investigation discovered forty-seven boxes of papers in his home, mostly in Arabic, that the police assumed were “religious materials” of no relevance to the case. They concluded that Nosair was a lone gunman, and never even considered the possibility of a larger conspiracy. It was only in 1993, after the bombing of the World Trade Center, that police returned to these boxes and found them to contain instructions on how to conduct assassinations and attacks on aircraft, as well as formulas for making bombs. In one notebook, Nosair had written: “We have to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of God ⦠by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that constitute the pillars of their civilization, such as the tourist attractions and the high buildings of which they are so proud.” It transpired that Nosair was a follower of the militant Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who had been involved in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and had set up shop in New Jersey in 1990, preaching
jihad
against non-Islamic Arab governments, Jews, and the West. Other Rahman minions were quickly arrested for the bombing of the Twin Towersâshortly before they were to begin
a wave of terror which was to include attacks on the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels as well as the United Nations building, and the assassination of prominent Americans. Nosair had been goading them on from his prison cell.
States named El Sayyid Nosair was arrested and charged with murdering Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York.
a
The subsequent police investigation discovered forty-seven boxes of papers in his home, mostly in Arabic, that the police assumed were “religious materials” of no relevance to the case. They concluded that Nosair was a lone gunman, and never even considered the possibility of a larger conspiracy. It was only in 1993, after the bombing of the World Trade Center, that police returned to these boxes and found them to contain instructions on how to conduct assassinations and attacks on aircraft, as well as formulas for making bombs. In one notebook, Nosair had written: “We have to thoroughly demoralize the enemies of God ⦠by means of destroying and blowing up the towers that constitute the pillars of their civilization, such as the tourist attractions and the high buildings of which they are so proud.” It transpired that Nosair was a follower of the militant Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who had been involved in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and had set up shop in New Jersey in 1990, preaching
jihad
against non-Islamic Arab governments, Jews, and the West. Other Rahman minions were quickly arrested for the bombing of the Twin Towersâshortly before they were to begin
a wave of terror which was to include attacks on the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels as well as the United Nations building, and the assassination of prominent Americans. Nosair had been goading them on from his prison cell.
But Nosair and Sheikh Rahman are by no means alone in the business of promoting
jihad
in the United States. In 1994, a pathbreaking piece of investigative journalism,
Jihad in America
, was aired by PBS, weaving together the threads of the quiltwork of Islamic terrorist groups and terrorist sponsors which have sprung up across America since the Iranian revolution. These include arms of the Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, and cells of the Sunni
Mujahdeen,
with centers of activity in Brooklyn, New Jersey, Tampa, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas Cityâand even Oklahoma City. Hiding behind a smoke screen of religious and charitable Islamic groups and small businesses, these organs work in the United States to raise funds, publish incendiary literature, recruit volunteers, issue orders, and lay plans for terrorist missions abroad, andâlike the ultra-rightist Patriot movementâtrain in the use of automatic weapons in preparation for the ultimate battle against the government of the United States. In recent years the United States has played host to at least a dozen known conferences of international Islamic terrorism, where the Islamic militants coordinated their moves and exchanged logistical information. One gathering in Kansas City in 1989, for example, attracted the militant Egyptian Islamic leader Yousef al-Qaradhawi, Tawfiq Mustapha of the Muslim Liberation Party of Jordan,
Abdullah Anas of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front, Rashid Ghannushi of the Tunisian fundamentalist group Al-Nahdha, and Sheikh Mohammed Siyyam of the Palestinian Hamas. A graduate of one of these conferences was Mohammed Saleh, a Palestinian-American from Chicago who was arrested in Israel in 1993 for financing the purchase of weapons used to murder four people.
jihad
in the United States. In 1994, a pathbreaking piece of investigative journalism,
Jihad in America
, was aired by PBS, weaving together the threads of the quiltwork of Islamic terrorist groups and terrorist sponsors which have sprung up across America since the Iranian revolution. These include arms of the Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, and cells of the Sunni
Mujahdeen,
with centers of activity in Brooklyn, New Jersey, Tampa, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas Cityâand even Oklahoma City. Hiding behind a smoke screen of religious and charitable Islamic groups and small businesses, these organs work in the United States to raise funds, publish incendiary literature, recruit volunteers, issue orders, and lay plans for terrorist missions abroad, andâlike the ultra-rightist Patriot movementâtrain in the use of automatic weapons in preparation for the ultimate battle against the government of the United States. In recent years the United States has played host to at least a dozen known conferences of international Islamic terrorism, where the Islamic militants coordinated their moves and exchanged logistical information. One gathering in Kansas City in 1989, for example, attracted the militant Egyptian Islamic leader Yousef al-Qaradhawi, Tawfiq Mustapha of the Muslim Liberation Party of Jordan,
Abdullah Anas of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front, Rashid Ghannushi of the Tunisian fundamentalist group Al-Nahdha, and Sheikh Mohammed Siyyam of the Palestinian Hamas. A graduate of one of these conferences was Mohammed Saleh, a Palestinian-American from Chicago who was arrested in Israel in 1993 for financing the purchase of weapons used to murder four people.
In short, elements in the American Muslim community have rapidly developed into the supportive hinterland necessary to serve as at least a partial home base for international terror directed
outward
, at Israel, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and other non-Islamic Middle Eastern regimes. Making use of American freedom of speech and religion, of liberal immigration and visitation laws, and of the relative lack of surveillance which they could hardly enjoy in their own countries, these groups have turned the United States into a terrorist haven in its own right. Again, the salient fact is that every one of these subversive or terrorist groups can operate far more freely in the United States than in their home states. While the United States is certainly not a state sponsor of terror, it has nonetheless become an unwitting state incubator of terror.
outward
, at Israel, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and other non-Islamic Middle Eastern regimes. Making use of American freedom of speech and religion, of liberal immigration and visitation laws, and of the relative lack of surveillance which they could hardly enjoy in their own countries, these groups have turned the United States into a terrorist haven in its own right. Again, the salient fact is that every one of these subversive or terrorist groups can operate far more freely in the United States than in their home states. While the United States is certainly not a state sponsor of terror, it has nonetheless become an unwitting state incubator of terror.
And it can only be a matter of time before this terror is turned
inward
against the United States, the leader of the hated West and the country responsible in the eyes of militant Muslims for having created Israel and for maintaining the supposedly heretical Arab regimes. Among the great inciters against America has been Abdullah Azzam, one of the religious leaders who transformed
the CIA-backed resistance of the Afghani rebels into a successful Islamic
jihad
against the Soviet Union. In 1989 Azzam was the keynote speaker at what was billed as the First Conference of the
Jihad
, held at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn. There, he told the audience: “The
jihad
, the fighting, is obligatory on you wherever you can perform it. And just as when you are in America you must fast ⦠so, too, you must wage
jihad
. The word
jihad
means fighting only, fighting with the sword.” As Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of the World Trade Center bombers, put it: “The obligation of Allah is upon us to wage
jihad
for the sake of Allah ⦠We conquer the lands of the infidels and we spread Islam by calling the infidels to Allah, and if they stand in our way, then we wage
jihad
for the sake of Allah.” Nor are Rahman, Azzam, and their ilk impressed with the might of the United States, now that they have had the experience of defeating the Soviets. As Azzam told a crowd in Oklahoma City in 1988: “After Afghanistan, nothing is impossible for us anymore. There are no superpowers ⦠What matters is the willpower that springs from our religious belief.”
7
inward
against the United States, the leader of the hated West and the country responsible in the eyes of militant Muslims for having created Israel and for maintaining the supposedly heretical Arab regimes. Among the great inciters against America has been Abdullah Azzam, one of the religious leaders who transformed
the CIA-backed resistance of the Afghani rebels into a successful Islamic
jihad
against the Soviet Union. In 1989 Azzam was the keynote speaker at what was billed as the First Conference of the
Jihad
, held at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn. There, he told the audience: “The
jihad
, the fighting, is obligatory on you wherever you can perform it. And just as when you are in America you must fast ⦠so, too, you must wage
jihad
. The word
jihad
means fighting only, fighting with the sword.” As Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of the World Trade Center bombers, put it: “The obligation of Allah is upon us to wage
jihad
for the sake of Allah ⦠We conquer the lands of the infidels and we spread Islam by calling the infidels to Allah, and if they stand in our way, then we wage
jihad
for the sake of Allah.” Nor are Rahman, Azzam, and their ilk impressed with the might of the United States, now that they have had the experience of defeating the Soviets. As Azzam told a crowd in Oklahoma City in 1988: “After Afghanistan, nothing is impossible for us anymore. There are no superpowers ⦠What matters is the willpower that springs from our religious belief.”
7
Thus, while the United States struggles to deal with the rising threat of domestic terrorism at home, a new tide of international terrorism has arisen, constructing a worldwide network of hate, possessing weapons, money, and safe havens of unprecedented scope. With residence in the United States and even American citizenship, these international terrorists have now become
domestic
terrorists as well, living in America so that they can wage
jihad
against America. As we have seen, a similar process is well underway in Europe. And it is this wholly new
domestic-international
terrorism which the United States and Europe now face and which threatens to assume even more alarming proportions as a result of two recent developments far from their shores.
domestic
terrorists as well, living in America so that they can wage
jihad
against America. As we have seen, a similar process is well underway in Europe. And it is this wholly new
domestic-international
terrorism which the United States and Europe now face and which threatens to assume even more alarming proportions as a result of two recent developments far from their shores.
The Gaza Syndrome
O
ne of the most important boosts Islamic terrorism has received since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran has been the creation of the PLO enclave in Gaza in the wake of the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO.
ne of the most important boosts Islamic terrorism has received since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran has been the creation of the PLO enclave in Gaza in the wake of the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO.
How did the deal between Israel and the PLO come about? Shortly after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in 1967, it had begun to dawn on portions of the Arab world that there was no possibility of destroying the Jewish state by conventional means. That war had pushed Israel's borders from the outskirts of Tel Aviv to the Jordan Valley forty miles to the east, and from the development towns of the Negev to the Suez Canal one hundred miles to the west. A stone wall a thousand meters high in the form of the Judean-Samarian mountains now provided a formidable barrier to Arab invasion from the east, while the sea and the huge Sinai desert to the southwest shielded Israel's populated coastline from any
threat in the west. It was no longer feasible for the Arab armies to simply thrust across Israel's borders directly into the heart of the Jewish state, which had before the Six-Day War been a mere nine miles in width at its narrowest point. That Israel was no longer so vulnerable was confirmed in the Yom Kippur surprise attack of 1973, which began with optimal surprise conditions for the Arab armies but quickly brought the Israel Defense Forces to the outskirts of Cairo and Damascus. The recognition that the Arabs would not be able to defeat Israel within its new boundaries gave birth to two competing approaches toward Israel within Arab politics. The first approach maintained that since the Arabs lacked a credible war option against Israel in its present boundaries, they had no choice but to gradually come to terms with Israel's existence, and eventually to make formal peace with it. It was this line of thinking which, for example, led to the gradual reconciliation between Israel and Jordan, and to the eventual signing of a formal peace between them. Yet simultaneously there developed a second approach, which started out from the same premise but reached a dramatically different conclusion: True, its proponents argued, Israel could not be defeated within its present boundaries; therefore, the proper policy would be to
reduce it to its former indefensible frontiers
and proceed to destroy it from there. Those who held this view believed that Israel could be made to return to the pre-1967 borders through a combination of relentless terrorist attacks and diplomatic pressure by the Arab states on the West to demand Israel's withdrawal.
threat in the west. It was no longer feasible for the Arab armies to simply thrust across Israel's borders directly into the heart of the Jewish state, which had before the Six-Day War been a mere nine miles in width at its narrowest point. That Israel was no longer so vulnerable was confirmed in the Yom Kippur surprise attack of 1973, which began with optimal surprise conditions for the Arab armies but quickly brought the Israel Defense Forces to the outskirts of Cairo and Damascus. The recognition that the Arabs would not be able to defeat Israel within its new boundaries gave birth to two competing approaches toward Israel within Arab politics. The first approach maintained that since the Arabs lacked a credible war option against Israel in its present boundaries, they had no choice but to gradually come to terms with Israel's existence, and eventually to make formal peace with it. It was this line of thinking which, for example, led to the gradual reconciliation between Israel and Jordan, and to the eventual signing of a formal peace between them. Yet simultaneously there developed a second approach, which started out from the same premise but reached a dramatically different conclusion: True, its proponents argued, Israel could not be defeated within its present boundaries; therefore, the proper policy would be to
reduce it to its former indefensible frontiers
and proceed to destroy it from there. Those who held this view believed that Israel could be made to return to the pre-1967 borders through a combination of relentless terrorist attacks and diplomatic pressure by the Arab states on the West to demand Israel's withdrawal.
This second school of thought has been championed by the PLO for over twenty years. Indeed, since the PLO formally adopted what it calls the “Phased Plan” at its 1974 Cairo conference, it has consistently been the most outspoken exponent of this view in the Arab world. According to the Phased Plan, the PLO would at first establish its “state of Palestine” on any territory which “would be evacuated by the Zionist enemy.” This new Arab state would then align itself with the other “confrontation states” and prepare for the second stageâthe eradication of Israel in a renewed onslaught.
1
1
Until 1992, all Israeli governments, whether led by the Labor Party or by the Likud, sought to strengthen the first approach in the Arab world while discouraging the second, striving to achieve peace with the Arab states while remaining within the improved defensive borders. Though there were differences as to what territorial concessions Israel might be prepared to make, there was a broad consensus against returning to the pre-1967 lines, which had been so fragile as to have provoked the Six-Day War, and against the establishment of a PLO state next to Israel. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the chief patron of the Arab dictatorships, and the Allied victory in the Gulf War created international conditions conducive to reaching an ArabâIsraeli peace on this basisâand it was from this consensual position that Israel opened negotiations with all its neighbors at the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991.
But the rise of the Labor government in Israel in June 1992 produced a drastic change in Israeli foreign
policy. Naïvely dismissing the PLO's professed ultimate aims as “propaganda for internal consumption,” the Labor government attempted for the first time to grant many of the PLO's demandsâin the hope of being able to forge an alliance with it. At Oslo, Israel in effect accepted the first stage of the PLO's Phased Plan: a gradual withdrawal to the pre-1967 border and the creation of the conditions for an independent PLO state on its borders (except for Jerusalem and the other Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, which were left for later negotiation).
policy. Naïvely dismissing the PLO's professed ultimate aims as “propaganda for internal consumption,” the Labor government attempted for the first time to grant many of the PLO's demandsâin the hope of being able to forge an alliance with it. At Oslo, Israel in effect accepted the first stage of the PLO's Phased Plan: a gradual withdrawal to the pre-1967 border and the creation of the conditions for an independent PLO state on its borders (except for Jerusalem and the other Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, which were left for later negotiation).
The first step in the Israeli withdrawal was the evacuation of the Israeli administration and military presence from Gaza. The Gaza district is a narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean some forty miles southwest of Tel Aviv, with a population of about 800,000 Palestinian Arabs, half of them refugees, and with a history of terrorism which competes with that of Lebanon. Egypt occupied Gaza during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, and controlled the district for nineteen years. During this period, the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza were denied Egyptian citizenshipâas compared with Palestinian Arabs living in lands captured by Israel and Jordan in 1948, who were immediately granted citizenship by those two countries. But this did not mean that Gaza was not useful to Nasserist Egypt. In the 1950s, Gaza became the foremost base for
fedayeen
, terrorists backed by the Egyptian government, who staged murderous cross-border raids into Israel resulting in hundreds of deaths and casualties. When Gaza fell into Israel's hands
during the 1967 Six-Day War, the city was in a state of appalling underdevelopment, and continued to be one of the principal centers of terrorist activity until 1970, when a concerted action by Israel uprooted most of the active terrorist cells from the area. While Gaza's economy grew over 400 percent in the subsequent years of Israeli administration,
2
the most ambitious Israeli efforts to dismantle the refugee camps and move the residents into modern and permanent housing projects met with ferocious resistance from the PLO, which relied on the system of refugee camps to foster anti-Israel hatred and provide the organization with a steady stream of recruits for its terrorist activities. In the end, only about 11,000 families were moved into the new apartment blocks.
fedayeen
, terrorists backed by the Egyptian government, who staged murderous cross-border raids into Israel resulting in hundreds of deaths and casualties. When Gaza fell into Israel's hands
during the 1967 Six-Day War, the city was in a state of appalling underdevelopment, and continued to be one of the principal centers of terrorist activity until 1970, when a concerted action by Israel uprooted most of the active terrorist cells from the area. While Gaza's economy grew over 400 percent in the subsequent years of Israeli administration,
2
the most ambitious Israeli efforts to dismantle the refugee camps and move the residents into modern and permanent housing projects met with ferocious resistance from the PLO, which relied on the system of refugee camps to foster anti-Israel hatred and provide the organization with a steady stream of recruits for its terrorist activities. In the end, only about 11,000 families were moved into the new apartment blocks.
Over the years, Gaza has become a symbol to Israelis as a lair of some of the most rabid Jew-haters in the Middle East. Despite a rich Jewish history, Gaza has become a byword for a hostile and alien place, one of the few bits of land taken by Israel in the Six-Day War of which many Israelis would be pleased to rid themselves. For this reason it was chosen by the Oslo negotiators as the most likely spot to be transferred to the hands of Yasir Arafat as an “empirical” experiment to prove that a PLO state on Israel's borders would be a step toward peace. Gaza was thus handed over to the PLO along with the village of Jericho (population 15,000), as the first step in implementing the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO. It was there that, in 1994, Yasir Arafat and tens of thousands of his followers arrived, triumphantly waving assault rifles and PLO flags, declaring Arafat to be
“President of Palestine,” calling for continued
jihad
until the liberation of Jerusalem, and imposing their corrupt and despotic order on the Arab residents of the area.
“President of Palestine,” calling for continued
jihad
until the liberation of Jerusalem, and imposing their corrupt and despotic order on the Arab residents of the area.
Oslo was, of course, celebrated with unrelieved pomp the world over as a great boon to peace, a breakthrough equal to the EgyptianâIsraeli peace treaty. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the same city in which negotiations for the PLOâIsrael deal were secretly negotiated a year earlier. Under these accords, Israel was to withdraw in stages from all the populated areas in the West Bank and Gaza, and the PLO would set up a regime ostensibly called “autonomy,” but which in effect would have nearly all the trappings and attributes of a sovereign state: its own army (called a “police force”); its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches (all of them controlled by Arafat); its own flag, passports, stamps, and border authorities. The PLO in turn promised to annul the PLO Covenant, which calls for Israel's destruction, and to act resolutely to quell any terrorist attacks emanating from PLO-controlled areas.
Shortly after Israel withdrew from Gaza, it became abundantly clear that the PLO had no intention of fulfilling any of its commitments under the Oslo agreement. Arafat refused to convene the Palestine National Council to annul the PLO Covenant, daily generating new excuses until the Israeli government even stopped asking. Equally, it became apparent that far from taking action against terrorist organizations in Gaza, the PLO presided
over a fantastic explosion of anti-Israel terrorism from Gaza that threatened to turn its mini-state there into a replica of the PLO mini-state in the Lebanon of the 1970s. Within a year and a half after Oslo, the agreement heralded by the Labor government as “the end to terror,” acts of terror against Israel had reached unprecedented dimensions. In the first eighteen months after Oslo, 123 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks, many of them launched from Gaza, as compared to sixty-seven in the comparable period before Oslo.
3
This was more than double the casualties in terrorist attacks during any comparable period in the preceding two decadesâproportionately as if 6,000 Americans had died from terror attacks in a year and a half.
over a fantastic explosion of anti-Israel terrorism from Gaza that threatened to turn its mini-state there into a replica of the PLO mini-state in the Lebanon of the 1970s. Within a year and a half after Oslo, the agreement heralded by the Labor government as “the end to terror,” acts of terror against Israel had reached unprecedented dimensions. In the first eighteen months after Oslo, 123 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks, many of them launched from Gaza, as compared to sixty-seven in the comparable period before Oslo.
3
This was more than double the casualties in terrorist attacks during any comparable period in the preceding two decadesâproportionately as if 6,000 Americans had died from terror attacks in a year and a half.
To understand the true intentions of Yasir Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership, one had only to listen to what they were saying in Arabic to their own people. Several days before the signing of the Oslo accords in Washington, Arafat gave an interview in which he interpreted the event for his followers, telling them that the Oslo accord was the implementation of the Phased Plan decided upon in 1974: “[The agreement] will be a basis for an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the Palestine National Council [of the PLO] resolution issued in 1974.”
4
This was the same position elaborated by Abbas Zaki, one of the PLO's security chiefs in the newly “liberated” territories: “This is merely a cease-fire before the next stage ⦠I am for negotiations, but they are not the only means. The revolutionaries in Algeria and Vietnam talked peace and fought at the
same time”
5
âthat is, just as the FLN “talked peace” before completely driving the French out of Algeria, and just as the North Vietnamese “talked peace” before completely driving the United States out of Vietnam (peace talks for which Henry Kissinger and his Vietnamese counterpart were granted the Nobel Peace Prize), so, too, could the PLO talk peace until Israel had been completely driven out of “Palestine”âwhich is to say, all of Israel. The overly blunt Zaki was discounted as having fallen from grace with Arafat. But to no avail. Arafat's confidants kept making the same points. When Jericho was evacuated by Israel, the commander of the PLO forces entering the city announced: “In Jericho we have taken the first step in the direction of Jerusalem, which will be returned to us in spite of the intransigence of the Zionists.”
6
PLO Foreign Minister Farouq Kaddoumi granted an interview in which he added: “The Palestinian people know that there is a state [Israel] that was founded by compulsion of history, and that this state must be brought to an end.”
7
Arafat later dropped the metaphor and told the leadership of his “Force 17” Fatah group in Gaza (which includes a highly regarded terrorist leader known by the name “Abu Hitler”): “With blood, fire, and sweat will we liberate Palestine and its capital, Jerusalem.”
8
A few days later he added: “In 1974 we accepted the decision [the Phased Plan] to establish our rule over every territory that will be freed from Israeli rule, and we will fulfill this decision.”
9
The day before he had said: “We will establish Palestinian authority over every place that will be liberated from the
Zionist enemy. We have achieved the first stage, but the way remains long and hard. We will continue our march until we can fly our flag over Jerusalem, the capital of our country, Palestine.”
10
One of the leaders of Arafat's security services in Jericho, Abu al-Fahd, put it more simply: “We will continue the struggle for the liberation of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beit Shean”
11
âin other words, all of Israel.
4
This was the same position elaborated by Abbas Zaki, one of the PLO's security chiefs in the newly “liberated” territories: “This is merely a cease-fire before the next stage ⦠I am for negotiations, but they are not the only means. The revolutionaries in Algeria and Vietnam talked peace and fought at the
same time”
5
âthat is, just as the FLN “talked peace” before completely driving the French out of Algeria, and just as the North Vietnamese “talked peace” before completely driving the United States out of Vietnam (peace talks for which Henry Kissinger and his Vietnamese counterpart were granted the Nobel Peace Prize), so, too, could the PLO talk peace until Israel had been completely driven out of “Palestine”âwhich is to say, all of Israel. The overly blunt Zaki was discounted as having fallen from grace with Arafat. But to no avail. Arafat's confidants kept making the same points. When Jericho was evacuated by Israel, the commander of the PLO forces entering the city announced: “In Jericho we have taken the first step in the direction of Jerusalem, which will be returned to us in spite of the intransigence of the Zionists.”
6
PLO Foreign Minister Farouq Kaddoumi granted an interview in which he added: “The Palestinian people know that there is a state [Israel] that was founded by compulsion of history, and that this state must be brought to an end.”
7
Arafat later dropped the metaphor and told the leadership of his “Force 17” Fatah group in Gaza (which includes a highly regarded terrorist leader known by the name “Abu Hitler”): “With blood, fire, and sweat will we liberate Palestine and its capital, Jerusalem.”
8
A few days later he added: “In 1974 we accepted the decision [the Phased Plan] to establish our rule over every territory that will be freed from Israeli rule, and we will fulfill this decision.”
9
The day before he had said: “We will establish Palestinian authority over every place that will be liberated from the
Zionist enemy. We have achieved the first stage, but the way remains long and hard. We will continue our march until we can fly our flag over Jerusalem, the capital of our country, Palestine.”
10
One of the leaders of Arafat's security services in Jericho, Abu al-Fahd, put it more simply: “We will continue the struggle for the liberation of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beit Shean”
11
âin other words, all of Israel.
With this kind of policy, it is no wonder that soon after Israel's withdrawal the various terrorist groups headquartered in Gaza understood that the time had come for an unprecedented murder spree against Israel. Downtown Jerusalem and central Tel Aviv became the scenes of horrible carnage as buses exploded and crowds of pedestrians were mowed down by machine-gun fire. The same happened in the Israeli towns of Hadera, Afula, and Ashdod, and at Beit Lid near Netanya. Virtually no part of the country was safe. Some of these murders were carried out by PLO operatives, whom Arafat did not discipline in any way. Most were conducted by two Islamic movements in Gaza, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, which dramatically expanded their operations after the Israeli withdrawal. Here, finally, they had nothing to fear. They could hatch their plans, arm their killers, dispatch them to Israel, and receive those that came back with no fear whatsoever of Israeli reprisal or interception. For as part of the Oslo accords, the Israeli government agreed, incredibly, to give up on the right of “hot pursuit” and preemptive attacks against terrorists, principles that had guided all previous Israeli governments
and which Israel continues to apply against the bases of the militant Islamic organization Hizballah in Lebanon. Instead, Israel now relied on Arafat's promise to act against terrorismâthereby creating the only place in the world in which Islamic terrorists would enjoy the promise of immunity from Israeli retaliation.
and which Israel continues to apply against the bases of the militant Islamic organization Hizballah in Lebanon. Instead, Israel now relied on Arafat's promise to act against terrorismâthereby creating the only place in the world in which Islamic terrorists would enjoy the promise of immunity from Israeli retaliation.
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