Israel Trains Us Assassination Squads In Iraq
By Julian Borger, ZNet 12/10/2003
Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq.
US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.
But the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope of suppressing the Ba'athist-led insurgency ahead of next November's presidential elections.
US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the "neutralisation" of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.
"This is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team," said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.
Moving Targets
By Seymour M. Hersh, New Yorker 12/15/2003
The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.
The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls “Manhunts”—a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon’s leadership to get his way. “Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,” a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.
One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers—again, in secret—when full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one wants to talk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” on Iraq.) The critical issue, American and Israeli officials agree, is intelligence. There is much debate about whether targeting a large number of individuals is a practical—or politically effective—way to bring about stability in Iraq, especially given the frequent failure of American forces to obtain consistent and reliable information there.
Protecting human rights
Editorial, Ha'aretz 12/10/2003
From year to year, the situation of civil rights in Israel worsens, as do the rights of people for whom the state is responsible. -- Today, December 10, is International Human Rights Day. The date was set by the United Nations in 1948, when it formulated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for everyone in the world. In the shadow of the darkest period in the history of the Western world - the Nazi era and the Jewish nation's Holocaust - the declaration drew its inspiration from modern humanism, which places the individual at the center of political thinking.
By that approach, it is not the regime that grants people their rights, nor the government that can take the rights away.
It's in that spirit that the declaration's first article begins, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" - the right to security, freedom, equality and dignity.
Those four principles include, among other things, the right to freedom of religion and freedom from religion, the right to marry and create a family without limits due to race, citizenship or religion, the right to a fair trial, the right to social welfare, and the right to demand that these rights be guaranteed through national and international efforts.
In the 55 years since the festive ceremony at the UN, a chasm has grown between the lovely declarations and the events and processes around the planet.
The Weathercocks are Turning
By Uri Avnery, Jerusalemites 12/9/2003
It is not yet a tidal wave. But it is more then a ripple. It is a wave in the process of formation. During the last few months a realignment of Israeli public opinion has started to become noticeable. It has several causes: public tiredness of the endless cycle of bloodshed, the perception that there is no military solution, the worsening of the economic crisis, the untiring activity of the radical peace movements.
The list of the accumulating symptoms is getting longer: the movement of the young men who refuse army service in the occupied territories, the revolt of the airforce pilots, the Ayalon-Nusseibeh initiative, the statement of the four former Secret Service chiefs, the criticism voiced by the Chief-of-Staff, and, this week, the public attack of the reserve officers on the continued existence of the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip.
The Geneva initiative gave this change a great boost in Israel, as well as an impressive echo abroad. The participation of international personalities in the solemn ceremony in Switzerland lent it status and prestige. The decision of the US Secretary of State and the General Secretary of the United Nations to receive the leaders of this initiative was a gesture of public support for the peace movement. (So was the warm personal message conveyed by the President of Germany, Johannes Rau, to the ceremony in which a Peace Prize was awarded to Sari Nusseibeh and me.)
One democratic state might be the solution (Part 2 of 2)
By Rifat Odeh Kassis, Electronic Intifada 12/8/2003
Eighth, the two-state solution will not ultimately satisfy any of the other nations living in this region forever. Religiously but also demographically such a solution will put barriers between the same nations. This solution has the potential to divide and spread the Palestinians into two or more different countries.
Ninth, within the framework of a two-state solution, the refugee problem will never be resolved, nor will the other equally persistent issues of Jerusalem or settlements and the settlers be tackled fairly and adequately. (400,000 settlers including Jerusalem and settlements now account for almost 42 percent of the West Bank, not including Palestinian East Jerusalem. Israeli settlements and bypass roads have virtually encircled occupied East Jerusalem, making it impossible for Palestinians to develop and expand their most important urban center - and making a mockery of the idea of a shared capital.
Tenth, Israel's so-called security wall, parts of which is nearly 8 meters high and are topped with watch towers and barbed wire, has more to do with seizing Palestinian land than it does with security. The wall is not being built on Israel's border, but rather in occupied Palestinian territory in such a way as to separate Palestinians from their adjacent farmland and water resources, thereby denying Palestinians not only their freedom of movement but also their livelihood.
Talking Out of Both Sides of their Mouths
By Sherri Muzher, Media Monitors Network 12/8/2003
Repeat fiery slogans to the countrymen and get them all excited while quietly negotiating a compromise of basic principles and human rights. Welcome to the Geneva Accords – Palestinian-style.
Does it ever dawn on Palestinian leaders that they might have an easier time winning the hearts and trust of their own people if they would just be upfront about what they plan to do instead of making empty promises they do not intend to keep? Even now, President Yasser Arafat has thrown his weight behind the Geneva Accords while at the same time declining to give the Accords his official seal of approval. Vintage Arafat -- keep ‘em guessing. However, as Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister Kadoura Fares told the UK Independent, “There is a blessing.”
Already surmising that there was a PA blessing, the populace responded in-kind. Palestinian protesters tried to prevent community leaders from crossing into Egypt on their way to Switzerland to commemorate the Geneva Accords. The scene wasn’t pretty. After all, the Geneva Accords unilaterally gives up the right of return to all Palestinians forced into exile by the Israelis in 1948.
A new opening
By Ghassan Khatib, Media Monitors Network 12/8/2003
Recent weeks have marked a clear decline in both the international backing and internal support enjoyed by the Israeli government led by Ariel Sharon. This was most recently illustrated by polls that gave Sharon his lowest public approval rating to date, and enunciated by the pronouncements of Israeli politicians from the right, by Ehud Olmert, to the left, by the security leadership or the Geneva crowd. Internationally, United States President George W. Bush was the most explicit he has ever been in criticizing the policies of the Sharon government.
As these events take place in parallel to a deterioration of Israel's image in the eyes of the world public, it is thus easy to conclude that they are the combined and inevitable outcomes of the policies and practices that have dominated Israeli government thinking for the last three years. The insistence on the use of force (and if that doesn't work, the application of more force) has brought us all before the conclusion that the Israeli government and its prime minister are responsible for the stagnation of the peace process and for the inhumane conditions in which Palestinians are living.
In parallel and ironically, the Palestinian state of affairs seems to be moving in the opposite direction. After a chaotic several months following the fall of the government of Mahmoud Abbas, the subsequent emergency government, and a period of tension between the presidency and the prime ministry that caused a dramatic deterioration in the credibility of the Palestinian Authority both among Palestinians and internationally, things have been running rather smoothly since the inception of the government of Ahmed Qurei.....
Israel's Options
By Hassan A. Barari, Miftah 12/10/2003
Amid what appears to be a new wave of political initiatives in the Middle East, chief among them the daring Geneva accord signed last week, Israeli intellectuals and academics have been hectically formulating competing policy options to handle the Palestinian problem. Five alternatives can be discerned within the Israeli discourse.
The first option is a long-term interim agreement. The proponents of this deal make the case that the Palestinians are not prepared for a final and comprehensive solution. Thus, both sides would be better off if they agree on reconstructing the roadmap plan and have it implemented gradually, over a period of 15 years. Gradualism contributed, by and large, to the failure of the Oslo process. The problem with such approach is that it allows the enemies of peace on both sides to foil any chance of progress. Moreover, given the long period of implementation, there is no reason to assume that the leadership on either side will remain committed to this scheme.
Those who are affiliated with the settlement movement suggest a more extremist option of maintaining the status quo. They are motivated by the anachronistic ideology that deems Greater Israel as a practical option. By perpetuating the status quo, Israel would realise its territorial goals. Explicit in their argument is that peace will work against Israel's interests.
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