EL AVIV, April 6 — The Palestinian militants battling the Israeli Army in the West Bank lack the basic weapons available to the world's guerrilla armies: antitank guns, missiles and land mines that can cripple armored vehicles.Posted on 04/06/2002 10:09:45 AM PST by l33t
EL AVIV, April 6 — The Palestinian militants battling the Israeli Army in the West Bank lack the basic weapons available to the world's guerrilla armies: antitank guns, missiles and land mines that can cripple armored vehicles.
But Israeli intelligence officials say they have evidence that the Palestinians have recently augmented their limited arsenal with significantly more powerful, military-grade explosives that appear to have been smuggled into the territories.
Israeli officials said a forensic examination of two massive explosive charges used to cripple Israeli tanks in the Gaza Strip in February and March found traces of RDX, an explosive that is much more potent than the rudimentary bombs previously detonated by the Palestinians.
Officials said it was not known where the Palestinians had obtained the military-grade explosives, and they had no estimate of how much had been stockpiled.
Security officers said two suicide bombs that killed 25 people in Netanya on March 27 and 15 in Haifa four days later were also more expertly built than previous devices and appeared to have used the more powerful explosives. The bombs contained longer and better-packed nails to increase deaths and injuries, one senior officer said.
Israeli security authorities attributed the lethality of the attacks in Netanya and Haifa to the improved explosives and training in bomb-making provided by Hezbollah guerrillas, who have vowed to help the Palestinians with weapons and expertise.
The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks, and one of its leaders boasted in an interview this week that his group had obtained military-grade explosives while declining to provide details.
"Those blasts were more powerful and effective than anything we have seen before," said an American official in the region. "The Palestinians have learned some new tricks."
Still, the Palestinians are badly overmatched in terms of weaponry. The relative paucity of high-powered weapons discovered in the Israeli incursions underscores the contention by Palestinian militants that suicide bombers are their only means of countering one of the world's best-equipped armies, which uses heavily armored tanks and American-supplied warplanes and helicopter gunships to dominate the conflict.
The Palestinians' inability to obtain antitank missiles or mines has been evident in recent days as column after column of Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers rolled into town squares and encircled the headquarters of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
A tight Israeli security cordon around the Palestinian-controlled areas has limited the opportunities for smuggling heavy arms, leaving Palestinian militants to rely on local workshops and laboratories to produce explosives and short-range rockets that have proven largely ineffective against the Israeli military.
The explosives are typically volatile and less powerful than military versions, and the so-called Qassam rockets made by local machine shops are notoriously inaccurate and have limited range.
The information about the weaponry is based on interviews with Israeli officials and is consistent with what witnesses have reported seeing and what the Palestinians themselves have been saying.
Israeli officials said troops searching house by house in the West Bank had found a dozen or so rudimentary workshops for building bombs, relatively few heavy machine guns and some rocket-propelled grenades, a common weapon for attacking tanks and armored vehicles.
Israeli officials said the Palestinians had smuggled small quantities of high-powered weapons into the country. They said a search of Mr. Arafat's compound uncovered a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and 43 bombs, three Russian-made sniper rifles with telescopic sites and assorted other weapons.
Officials said the raids also uncovered evidence that a top Palestinian Authority official apparently controlled access to the rocket-propelled grenades, according to a document discovered in the compound and provided by Israeli authorities to The New York Times.
The document was a receipt on the letterhead of Fuad Shobaki, the chief financial officer for military operations of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a member of Mr. Arafat's inner circle. Dated Nov. 18, 2001, it was signed by a Palestinian militia officer to acknowledge that Mr. Shobaki had provided him with 20 RPG-7's, a common version of the antitank grenade.
Israeli intelligence analysts are trying to use serial numbers and seized documents to trace the origins of the grenade launcher and other weapons from Mr. Arafat's compound, officials said.
Israeli officials suspect that some small arms and explosives have been smuggled into Israel through a network of tunnels in Rafah, the divided city in the southern Gaza Strip that straddles the border with Egypt, Israeli authorities said.
Some tunnels are sophisticated, with intercoms and rails for small wagons. Others are cruder, with barely enough room for a single person to crawl through. But even the smallest can be used for weapons and explosives, authorities said.
Israeli intelligence officials said Bedouins in the Sinai desert sent weapons, drugs and other contraband through the tunnels. The Israelis said Egyptian authorities had tried to limit the smuggling, but they acknowledged that the task was difficult. "It's a wide-open desert," an Israeli security official said.
The Israelis have tried to close off the tunnels by knocking down houses to create a no man's land in sections of Rafah so that comings and goings of smugglers using the tunnels cannot be hidden inside houses. United Nations and Western aid officials have condemned the razing of houses as illegal collective punishment.
Smuggling occurs over the borders with Lebanon and Jordan, but authorities in Israel and Jordan said the amounts were believed to be insignificant because of heavy patrols.
Closer to home, Palestinians have obtained weapons from Israeli criminals. A former Israeli security officer was accused last year of selling Palestinians dozens of assault rifles stolen from an arsenal on a kibbutz near the Lebanese border. A security officer said $200,000 from the sales was discovered in the man's attic. But officials said that these sales were limited to rifles and handguns and that they did not include high-grade explosives or heavy weapons.
Sea routes, often a means of obtaining larger weapons have been blocked fairly effectively. On Jan. 3, the Israelis say, they prevented the Palestinian forces from obtaining 50 tons of weapons when commandos boarded a freighter, the Karine A.
The cargo contained the types of weapons that the Palestinians have been unable to obtain — antitank mines and missiles, two tons of TNT and C-4 explosives, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, and Katyusha rockets capable of reaching most Israeli cities from the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli officials say the Palestinian militants have also turned for help to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based guerrilla group financed and trained by Iran and Syria. The group's leader recently called on all Arab countries to help arm the Palestinians.
American and Israeli intelligence officers said members of two Palestinian militant groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, had been trained at Hezbollah camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. That training, they said, showed up in two particularly lethal suicide attacks late last month.
In the seaside resort of Netanya, a bomb set off at the start of a Passover Seder nearly destroyed the dining room of the Park Hotel, sending debris onto the street and leaving walls tottering. Four days later, a bomb of similar magnitude blew the roof off a restaurant in Haifa.
Similarly, two huge blasts that knocked out Israeli tanks in Gaza exhibited unusual power. They were the first successful attacks on Israeli tanks by Palestinians, and Israeli security officers said there were indications that the explosives contained some RDX. Tracing the origins of the explosive, however, is impossible because it was vaporized, a senior officer said.
"We know they have RDX in Gaza," he said. "We don't know how it got there."
The Palestinians deliberately target civilians, the Israelis do not.
The Palestians use suicide bombers because they lack the weaponry the US provides for Israel.
If the Palestinians had F-16s, they'd be bombing Israeli cities. If they had real artillery, they'd fire it on Israeli cities. If the Palestinians were militarily equal to Israel, they would be slaughtering Jewish civilians, as many as they could get their hands on.
I see little difference between the Palestinians and the Americans who fought for freedom in the Revolutionary War. Just as we did, the Palestinians are fighting for the right of self-determination. This is a right that all people have.
The Palestinians have never tried to negotiate peacefully. And George Washington didn't lead and praise massacres of Tory women and children.
The only way to end the war in the Middle East is to give the Palestinians nuclear weapons. Once both sides are starring mutual destruction in the face, they will have to make peace. Right now, Israel has no incentive to negotiate with the Palestinians, because they have overwhelming military superiority.
What a joke! The Palestinians would turn the weapons on Israel in a heartbeat. They're not civilized enough to be trusted with rifles, much less nuclear weapons.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.