Posted on 05/21/2002 7:06:49 PM PDT by RCW2001
U.S. blames Israel By Eli J. Lake WASHINGTON, May 21 (UPI) -- The United States on Tuesday said Israel's "destruction of the Palestinian Authority's security infrastructure" was partly responsible for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's failure to control extremists. According to the State Department's latest report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism" -- the first to be published since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington -- Israeli military attacks on West Bank cities and targeted strikes against Palestinian police stations and security establishments undermined Arafat's ability to arrest extremists and restore order. The report echoes the Palestinian Authority's own complaints that the Israeli strategy of shelling prisons and police stations and forcing the Palestinian security organizations into disarray had made it more difficult to arrest and hold militant Palestinians. "Israel's destruction of the Palestinian Authority's security infrastructure contributed to the ineffectiveness of the PA," the report says. "Significantly reduced Israeli-PA security cooperation and a lax security environment allowed Hamas and other groups to rebuild terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories." Meanwhile, the State Department said Tuesday it believed Palestinian documents seized by the Israelis in West Bank raids last month are authentic, but differed with the Israeli authorities on their interpretation. "We don't have any question about the authenticity of those documents," Ambassador Francis X. Taylor, the State Department's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, told reporters Tuesday. He made the comment when asked specifically about one document the Israelis said was in Arafat's handwriting authorizing funding for Tanzim, the militant wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Fatah organization, and for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The State Department has designated al-Aqsa as a foreign terrorist organization. Documents captured by Israel and made available to journalists last month show detailed memos the Israelis said were from top Palestinian intelligence officials on the activities of terrorist cells operating in the territories. The Israelis say the documents are a paper trail showing that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the top levels of the Palestinian Authority had direct links to militant attacks on Israelis in the intifada, or uprising. Senior Palestinian officials, including Arafat, have denounced the documents as forgeries. Taylor's statement was the first indication that the State Department regards them as genuine. However, Taylor said the State Department reserves judgment on whether the documents implicate Arafat or the Palestinian Authority's senior leadership. This view is in line with the State Department's latest periodic report on Palestinian compliance with the commitments in peace agreements with Israel. The report released last week, and covering a six-month period ending last December, said, "there is no conclusive evidence that senior leaderships of the (Palestinian Authority) or PLO were involved in planning or approving specific acts of violence." Taylor stressed that the State Department was "continuing to examine these documents."
UPI State Department Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 5/21/2002 5:11 PM
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Leni
It also, along with the invasions, severely crippled the
ability of the homicide bombers to wage war. Arafat
has no interest in controlling extremists.
There's only on reality. Let's talk about facts. How many attacks were there while IDF was in the west bank? You gonna reply to this post or skip over it?
We KNOW they support terrorists and
attack researchers of alternative energy sources.
But who directs this? and why?
Now the suicide bombers that kill babies and their mothers are excused because the Israelis killed some of their organizational structure. I would like the State Department to stop confusing the issue and me. In a personal attempt to confuse the issue even more: Is this the reason Bin was allowed to escape?
Had Israel not taken out Iraqi nuclear reactor in the mid-eighties, we would have faced Iraq armed with nukes during the Gulf War. More importantly, dozens of terrorist organizations would have been armed with suitcase
nukes about a decade ago...
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher explains
why blowing up Israelis different than blowing up
Americans
Richard Boucher, Spokesman
Washington, DC; September 27, 2001
...
QUESTION: To what extent does this campaign -- as you constantly review your Middle East
policy, what -- how much influence does this campaign against terrorism have in that? What's the
input? How does it weigh in here? See what I mean?
MR. BOUCHER: No, I don't.
QUESTION: It's obviously a factor --
MR. BOUCHER: We have talked about this on and off over the last few days. We recognize that
there is an influence. Some have said it affects the atmosphere, the Palestinian/Israeli issues
affect the atmosphere of cooperation. But, essentially, there are, on some planes, two different
things. One is that there are violent people trying to destroy societies, ours, many others in the
world. The world recognizes that and we are going to stop those people.
On the other hand, there are issues and violence and political issues that need to be resolved in
the Middle East, Israelis and Palestinians. But we all recognize that the path to solve those is
through negotiation and that we have devoted enormous efforts to getting back to that path of
negotiation.
And we have called on the parties to do everything they can, particularly in the present
circumstance, to make that possible.
I guess that's about as close as I can come to the kind of sophisticated analysis I'm sure you will
want to do on your own. But they are clearly issues that are different, not only in geography but
also, to some extent, in their nature.
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