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

To: paret who wrote (9954)	9/17/2005 7:18:36 AM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 32591

DEBKAfile Exclusive: F-15 fighter-bombers have been relocated in the N. Saudi air base of Tabuk, violating a two-year US-Israel-Saudi understanding September 17, 2005, 1:59 PM (GMT+02:00) They were moved out of range of Israel in 2003 at US and Israeli insistence when al Qaeda was found recruiting Saudi pilots for a 9/11 strike against Israeli cities. Since they returned to Tabuk, the al Qaeda recruitment drive has been stepped up, prompting heightened preparedness in Eilat, Israel’s Red Sea town. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that from Tabuk, Saudi planes can reach not only Eilat but Jerusalem and Tel Aviv further north. September 9, Lt.-Gen Moshe Yaalon, then Israeli chief of staff, said publicly: “We have discovered from sources other than our own that al Qaeda is prospecting for a Saudi air force or civil aviation pilot to strike an Israeli city in the same sort of attack as the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. He was referring to intelligence, received in the course of regular US-Israeli swaps of terror data, that al Qaeda’s was busy at the Tabuk air base seeking out recruits among Saudi flight crews willing to fly an F-15 out of the base to ram an Israeli city. Israel then appealed urgently to Washington to prevail upon the Saudis to move their air crews and warplanes out of Tabuk. The Americans acceded to the request and within a short time, an understanding was reached between the US, which supplied the F-15s, the Saudis and Israel to move the F-15s and their air crews out of Tabuk. Their recent return to Tabuk contradicts these understandings According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the F-15 squadrons were moved back to Tabuk without informing the US or Israel. They report that the Saudis are using the base for flights deep inside Iraq to locate and bomb al Qaeda fighters heading into Saudi Arabia. But Israel counter-terror experts assess the danger of al Qaeda enlisting Saudi pilots for a mega attack on Israel is as great as ever. Indeed, the temptation for the Islamist terrorists would be great to gain control of an advanced super-warplane of American manufacture. Earlier this month, a Saudi passenger plane strayed off course and headed for Eilat, only to be escorted back to Saudi airspace by two Israeli fighter jets.