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Newsletter : 1fax0206.txt
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>JN Feb. 6, 2001, Vol. 9, No. 21
Secret Arafat-Saddam Deal
By DEBKAfile News
Palestinian and Arab sources have revealed the existence of a secret deal. The Palestinians propose stepping up their confrontation with Israel and at its climax, Yasir Arafat and other Palestinian Authority members, including security service chiefs and the Gazan and Ramallah ruling elites will remove themselves to Baghdad.
From a distance, Arafat proposes to continue managing the Palestinian "struggle," as he did after being expelled from Jordan in the '70s, from Beirut, and from Tunis, after he was expelled from Lebanon in 1982.
Detailed Palestinian discussions with Saddam Hussein cover Arafat's fee for Iraqi hospitality and the freedom to reorganize his governing institutions in Baghdad. The agreed sum is reliably reported to have run into billions of dollars, for transfer to Saddam's private accounts in Europe.
The reported scenario is as follows: As Ariel Sharon steps into office, the Palestinians will feign a peace overture, abort the negotiating process and then unleash a spate of vicious violence including acts of multiple terror.
Sharon will order the army to execute surgical reprisals against Palestinian bases, terrorist chiefs and the various Palestinian security service headquarters. The Palestinians will scale their responses up to the level termed by Israel generals "strategic terrorism." They will also wield the heavy weapons smuggled wholesale at present into Gaza by sea from Egypt, Lebanon and Cyprus and from Jordan across the river.
Israel tanks proceed to wipe out the bases of Palestinian security, the Tanzim militia, the Fatah and Jihad Islami.
Saddam Hussein makes good on his threat to missile-attack Israeli cities. He has warned he can keep the blitz up daily for six months. That would add up to between 180 and 200 missiles, a quantity his arsenal is believed to hold after receiving deliveries from Russia and North Korea. The Iran-backed Shiite Hizbullah will join the fray, shelling and rocketing Israel's northern towns and villages from Lebanon.
Saddam asks Jordanian King Abdullah and Syrian president Assad for permission to send his armored divisions through their countries towards the Israeli frontier.
Israeli armored columns recapture Palestinian West Bank towns to provide rear support for the Israeli forces advancing into Jordan and possible Lebanon to meet the Iraqi divisions.
At this juncture, the entire Palestinian leadership removes itself to Baghdad. Clearly, the Iraqi-Palestinian strategic and intelligence partnership will form a direct threat to the stability of most of the other Arab regimes, and the Americans are unlikely to sit still and watch the Middle East being torn apart from Baghdad.
Election Day in Israel
By VOA News
The two men vying to be the next prime minister made their final appeals to voters Monday. Israeli opinion polls show challenger Ariel Sharon retains a commanding lead over incumbent Ehud Barak.
Barak has cast the election as a clear choice between war and peace. But Israeli voters seem ready to repudiate the 19-month Barak administration.
Sharon says he is confident of victory and will form a unity government to heal the rifts in Israeli society over the Mideast peace process and other issues.
Israel sealed the West Bank and Gaza for election day, as it has in the past. Palestinian militants have called for a "day of rage" to coincide with the election. The Islamic Jihad group has vowed to increase its attacks against Israeli targets.
Egypt Predicts Violence After Israel Vote
By Dale Gavlak (VOA-Cairo)
Political analysts in Egypt, Israel's oldest peace partner, say a victory by Likud leader Ariel Sharon is a foregone conclusion in Tuesday's Israeli election. They are speculating that a win by Sharon will not only bring an end to the Middle East peace process, but may also lead to more violence elsewhere in the Middle East.
Arab analysts like Abdel Moneim Sa'id say they expect a stronger military response from hardline Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the four-month conflict raging between Israel and the Palestinians.
Sa'id, director of the Al-Ahram Strategic Center in Cairo, says he expects Palestinians to do whatever they can to make Sharon's term as prime minister a brief one. "There will be a period of wait and see and look at the repercussions of the position, which we expect will be bloody on the ground," said Sa'id. "The efforts will be how to make Sharon's period as short as possible."
Sharon has said that, as prime minister, he will not negotiate with the Palestinians while shooting continues. He has also said that he will not hand over sovereignty of Jerusalem or the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians. He also will not give up any Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory.
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad has vowed to carry out "the most painful blows" against Israel in the coming days.
List of 21,000 Swiss WWII Accounts Released
By Shlomo Shamir and Yair Sheleg
A list of the owners of 21,000 dormant Swiss bank accounts from the Holocaust period was released Monday. Two smaller lists of such accounts, totaling nearly 6,000 names, were released in 1997.
The new list of 21,000 names is slated for publication in newspapers around the world, as well as on the Internet (www.dormantaccounts.ch and www.swissbankclaims.com).
Jewish leaders in New York called the publication of the list of Holocaust-era account-holders "an important and significant step" toward implementing the international accord signed with Swiss banks in August 1998.
Under that accord, these banks established a $1.25-billion fund for the Jewish people. Of this sum, approximately $800 million is earmarked for compensation payments to the legal heirs of the account owners, most of whom are presumed to have perished.
After four years of intensive investigation, over four million dormant Swiss bank accounts were discovered that dated to the time of World War II. The names of these account holders were cross-checked against Yad Vashem's database of Holocaust victims, and 53,000 people were identified.
The Swiss banks argued that only about 26,000 of these account holders could be proved to be Holocaust victims. In subsequent negotiations, the banks argued that the list should be further reduced, and after a hearing in U.S. federal court in New York, an agreement was finally reached to publish the 21,000 names.
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