curious report from debka fwiw. They say Arafat feels he's on the ropes, so is striking back. Arafat rails against Sharon's withdrawal plan from Gaza (?):
However, according to DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources, Arafat forthwith convened an emergency conference in Ramallah of all his security and terrorist chiefs. He gave an unusually direct order to each and every Palestinian group, faction and organization to launch instant large-scale terrorist attacks against Israeli targets on the scale of the March 2002 massacres which precipitated Israel’s comprehensive West Bank Operation Defensive Shield campaign. Prime minister Ahmed Qureia who tried to reach him by telephone from Rome was not put through. Arafat refused to talk to him.
In the immediate term, Arafat determined to pile fury on Hamas revenge action for the Israeli raid in Gaza City; but his overriding strategic goal is to thwart Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement initiative. Addressing his security aides, he ranted and raved against Sharon’s proposal, which shocked many Israelis last week, to remove most of the 7,500 Jews living in enclaves in the Gaza Strip. Arafat ordered a ferocious assault to be mounted on the Gaza’s Gush Katif to make sure it did not happen and Sharon’s initiative was foiled.
The Palestinian leader in his battered Ramallah headquarters is reported by DEBKAfile’s sources to be distraught mainly because he is convinced his foes are moving in for the kill.
He took the petition signed last week by close to 400 members of his own Fatah organization, who handed in their membership cards in protest against bad leadership and corruption, as a revolt against his authority.
Moreover, French, European and International Monetary Fund investigators are suddenly interested in the bank accounts held by his wife Suha Arafat who lives in Paris. Suspicions of money laundering have been raised, but, more seriously, the sum of $900m in Palestinian Authority funds, some contributed by donor nations, was found to have been diverted by PA officials to overseas accounts, including those owned by Mrs. Arafat in Paris. Another formidable sum has vanished into the budget of Arafat’s bureau without an accounting. The investigators are making good use of the documents Israeli forces seized from Palestinian head offices in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield.
Feeling more beleaguered than ever, Arafat is striking back.
debka.com |
