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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scoobah who wrote (5249)	9/12/2002 12:59:15 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

retype - This is an area about which Israel’s military planners and intelligence are the least informed. They known that in the last six months, the Hizballah and Iraqi military intelligence have sneaked explosives experts into the West Bank, some of them belonging to al Qaeda, and the makings of booby-trapped cars and bomb belts loaded with chemical substances. There have also been reports, some coming from American and Jordanian sources, of Iraqi agents smuggling into the territory materials for biological warfare – most likely smallpox virus and anthrax. Some sources also speak of radioactive materials and nerve gas. The former UN chief nuclear arms inspector in Iraq, David Kay, raised the possibility earlier this week of the Iraqi ruler enlisting volunteers in Palestinian refugee camps to act as suicidal smallpox carriers and infect hundreds of Israelis, in retaliation for an American assault on his regime. For this type of warfare, Saddam has no need of missiles, air fighters or kamikaze pilots – only Yasser Arafat. Thus empowered, the Palestinian leader is convinced he will prevail in any power play his rivals and opponents launch against him.

To: Scoobah who wrote (5249)	9/12/2002 4:37:29 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 32591

Debka is sharply diverging from the analysis of the Israeli papers here. Do you believe them? Debka's slant has always been a) to believe the worst of Arafat (they've been consistently right on this), and b) to believe that Arafat remains almost all-powerful, pulling all the strings. I have always doubted the b) part, now more than ever. Arafat generally foments a sort of violent semi-chaos, and surfs the wave, so to speak, manipulating, intimidating, playing groups off against one another. At its best, this was power, but not the command-and-control power of a Stalin. Now, it seems to be slipping away from him as his forces get pounded and his strategy (if you can call the intifada a strategy) is revealed to be a failure. I suspect that anybody but Arabs would have chucked Arafat by now (as Abdel Khader said recently of the Palestinians, "We are like Bedouins. We follow our sheikhs."), but the discontent seems to be breaking into the open at last. Of course Arafat's epitaph has been written prematurely a million times before, but I wonder if he may not really be losing it this time. After all, on top of everything else, Bush has called him a "complete failure" and Arafat is clearly getting old and frail and probably senile to boot.