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Posted on 10/13/2003 8:51:26 PM PDT by Nachum
An Israeli Arab with intimate ties to Hizbullah allegedly "sold" Elhanan Tannenbaum to the group in October 2000 for as little as $150,000, sources told The Jerusalem Post.
On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed the lifting of the gag order on the full discloser of the events surrounding Tannenbaum's abduction and those directly implicated in the kidnapping, pending an appeal by the family.
However, attention is now being focused on Kais Obeid, 30, of Taiba, the grandson of Diab Obeid, who served as a Labor MK from 1961 to 1973. Obeid anchored Hizbullah's financial connections in the territories and headed its efforts to recruit Israeli Arabs for various terrorist activities, including the abduction of Israelis, security sources said.
Obeid fled Israel in September 2000 and later resurfaced in Beirut as a close adviser to Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. In this role, he also served as a chief liaison between Hizbullah and the Fatah-related Tanzim/Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
Years before his abduction, Tannenbaum, a reserve lieutenant-colonel, had forged a close relationship with a leading Israeli Arab family, one of whose members – the man who "sold" him – suggested that the two do business in the Arab world. The man met Tannenbaum in Brussels, where he told him that to smooth out certain kinks in the business deal, Tannenbaum would need fly to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Once in Abu Dhabi, clandestine Hizbullah agents masquerading as his business contacts lured the heavily indebted Tannenbaum to Lebanon. They apparently coaxed him to fly to Lebanon by threatening to walk away from the deal.
Nasrallah has maintained from the beginning of the Tannenbaum saga that he arrived in Beirut of his own volition.
By law, Israelis are forbidden to travel to Lebanon, a state with which Israel is technically at war.
The business deal Tannenbaum sought to conclude remains shrouded in rumors – some of them involving drug smuggling, others indicating he sought to open a channel for the trade of a wide array of goods, the media reported Monday.
Before the May 2000 IDF redeployment from the security zone in southern Lebanon, Tannenbaum had apparently sold his Lebanese contacts powdered milk for babies and pharmaceuticals, according to an intelligence source.
According to sources close to the unnamed Israeli Arab's family, the man's motives for handing Tannenbaum over to Hizbullah were primarily financial, as were his efforts to abduct other Israelis and to smuggle weapons into Israel. Several members of the family were arrested for smuggling drugs from Lebanon.
This information comes a day after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that, "If it becomes clear that he [Tannenbaum] did something illegal, he will be punished here."
These leaks come as the government is engaged in the final stages of negotiations with Hizbullah over a prisoner swap. Israel is to exchange more than 400 Lebanese, Palestinian, and other Arab prisoners for Tannenbaum and the remains of St.-Sgts. Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham, and Omar Sawayid.
As the scion of a well established Israeli Arab family, Kais Obeid forged close ties with the leaders of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's personal bodyguard unit, Force 17. In 1996, he was charged with complicity in the sale of weapons and ammunition to Palestinian terrorists.
According to Palestinian sources, Obeid has maintained his close contact with Arafat and his confidants.
The Shin Bet has intermittently detained as many as six members of the Obeid family for suspected links to Hizbullah, and in an effort to gain information on Kais, who fled to Lebanon with his wife and three children in September 2000.
Intelligence sources note that Hizbullah and its patron, Iran, are attempting to establish a wide network of Israeli Arab spies and terrorists, Ma'ariv has reported.
As part of this program, Hizbullah established a special abduction unit following the IDF withdrawal from Lebanon. The unit, which included Israeli Arabs, was handed a "hit list" of some 20 Israelis targeted for abduction. Among them was former energy minister Gonen Segev.
Despite the Shin Bet's efforts to uncover Obeid's network in Israel, the Hizbullah agent has remained active. Last year he contacted a group of Israeli entrepreneurs and offered them a partnership in a "lucrative" business venture, Army Radio reported.
Obeid planned to kidnap the Israelis on business trips in Europe, a pattern almost identical to the Tannenbaum abduction.
The Army Radio report also suggested that Obeid planned to kidnap Israelis near the Lebanese border and recruited a number of other Israeli Arabs to assist him.
Iran and Hizbullah have also played a major role in recruiting Israeli Arabs to smuggle weapons from Lebanon to the territories. Using Israeli Arab proxies has long been favored by Hizbullah as an alternative to employing Palestinians.
Since the start of the violence, Hizbullah has funneled millions of dollars to terrorists in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, and Ramallah through the Syrian national banking system. From there, the money was wired to terrorists' accounts in local branches of the Arab Bank, according to a report obtained by the Post last week.
Intelligence sources warn that it would be foolish to underestimate Hizbullah and its highly effective intelligence arm, which has an unusual grasp of the Israeli political and military landscape. Part of this is due to Israeli Arab collaboration, they say.
It is said both in Hizbullah and among Israeli intelligence officials that the Obeid family has been linked both to crime and to Hizbullah. Hassan Obeid, deputy mayor of Taiba in the 1980s, was arrested in a major drug-smuggling scheme in the 1990s. In 1998, his family approached the Mossad, hoping to broker a deal whereby it would use its connections to glean information regarding missing IAF Lt.-Col. Ron Arad in exchange for clemency in his case, Ma'ariv reported.
The information the family passed to the Mossad turned out to be baseless.
Other family members, including Kais's brother, Kamel, also have long criminal records. Kamel insisted that the media attention and the Shin Bet interrogations "destroyed our family."
"We have suffered enough. [Kais] was 26 when he left the country, and it seems to us a little bit exaggerated what they are attributing to him. When did he manage to do all this?" he told Ma'ariv. Kamel and the rest of the family, however, added that they would condemn Kais's acts if the allegations are proven true in court.
Hey where is our media on this?/
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< /sarcasm > < \anger cont'd>
Distressing, but not surprising.
Dhimmi alert.
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