Bibi: Qaeda Tie to Kenya Blast Offers a 'Golden Opportunity'

The Forward ^

[RCW2001]

DECEMBER 6, 2002	| current issue | back issues | subscribe |

Bibi: Qaeda Tie to Kenya Blast Offers a 'Golden Opportunity'

The Situation
By CHEMI SHALEV

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials view last week's terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in Kenya, apparently by Al Qaeda or an affiliated group, as reinforcing their argument that Israel and the West are battling a single enemy.

Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meeting with ministry staff in the aftermath of the Kenya attacks, said that the incidents had presented Israel with a "golden opportunity" to strengthen its strategic ties with the United States and other Western countries.

The attacks, including a suicide bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel and a failed missile attack against an Israeli jetliner, both near the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, appeared to be the first attacks by Al Qaeda against Israeli targets. They were also the first attacks in more than a decade against Israeli targets abroad.

Al Qaeda claimed credit for the attacks in a statement on an Arabic-language Web site and called them an expression of support by "the Mujahadeen" for "their compatriots in Palestine."

"The action came to strike another blow at the Israeli Mossad, like the blows we landed in the past at the Djerba synagogue."

The statement also promised more attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide. "In response to the killing of our children, we will kill yours; for our wives, we will kill yours; for our elderly, we will kill yours; and for [the destruction of] our houses, your towers," the statement said.

Israeli officials said Jerusalem would be in a better position now to portray Palestinian terrorism as part and parcel of the global terrorist threat, and to equate Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad with Al Qaeda and other extremist Islamic movements.

Apparently anticipating such a response, the Palestinian Islamic groups attempted this week to distance themselves from the Mombasa attacks. Spokesmen for both Hamas and Islamic Jihad told Israeli reporters that they had no interest in taking their fight outside Israel. However, both groups pointedly refrained from criticizing the Mombasa attacks.

Seeking a concrete response to the missile attack, Netanyahu ordered Foreign Ministry officials to prepare an international lobbying and publicity campaign aimed at persuading Western governments to invest billions of dollars in developing electronic missile-repellent devices that could protect civilian jetliners from the threat of shoulder-held missiles.

A leading Israeli arms manufacturer, Rafael, claimed this week that within three months it will be able produce such a protective apparatus for civilian aircraft.

Netanyahu told his aides that the threat to civilian aircraft is "global" in scope, adding that intelligence information suggests Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups are determined to down a passenger jet belonging to the United States, Israel or some other Western country.

Israeli experts believe that the failure of the attack on the Arkia Airlines jet was due partly to the attackers' failure to fire their missiles at an angle that would ensure contact with the aircraft. The experts said that the outdated Russian-made Sam-7 Strela missile used by the terrorists required an exact launching angle, despite its heat-seeking capabilities, but added that Al Qaeda could most likely also get its hands on American-made "Stinger" missiles, which are much more efficient.

Israeli analysts believe that Israel was only "inches away" from a catastrophic terrorist success in Mombasa that would have killed hundreds of Israelis and created an entirely new reality in the Middle East. In a speech to the Herzliya Forum on National Security this week, the head of Israel's National Council, Ephraim Halevy, a former head of the Mossad, said that such a "mega-attack" would "immediately change the rules of the game and bring about a sharp shift in Israeli attitudes and policies."

Halevy said the emerging threat to Israel, in light of the Mombasa attack, was one of "genocide, the destruction of the state and of its foundations." He referred ominously to Israel's "wide-ranging capabilities," which, he cautioned, "should not be exposed prematurely." Halevy said that in the face of mega-terrorism against Israel, the international community is likely to understand and accept a massive and unprecedented Israeli response.

Israeli intelligence experts have yet to furnish an adequate explanation for Al Qaeda's apparent decision to target Israeli rather than American targets in the Middle East and elsewhere. Some intelligence analysts believe that evidence will be found linking Al Qaeda and the attack in Kenya to a seemingly imminent American attack against Iraq. The intelligence analysts say that Baghdad and Al Qaeda have a common interest in pointing to Israel as the "root cause" of their conflict with the United States, in order to drum up popular sympathy throughout the Arab world.

There are indications that the Mossad, like other intelligence services, had some prior warning of the intent to carry out a terrorist attack in East Africa, but sources claim that the information was "not specific enough" to enable preventive measures. Other officials, however, claim that Israel had known for more than a year about a terrorist plan to try and down a civilian aircraft, but that the information was kept secret. The officials say that a few El Al jumbo jets have been outfitted with electronic devices meant to foil missile attack, but that most of Israel's civilian jet fleet, like the rest of the world's, is vulnerable to a missile attack.

The attack in Kenya has also focused attention on the Israeli Foreign Ministry's travel advisories, which until now have been ignored in the media and by the public. The ministry has warned Israelis to stay away from certain destinations, or at least to limit their vacations there. A range of African and Asian countries have been cited, including Thailand, a favorite destination for Israeli tourists.

In the aftermath of the Kenya attacks, there has been a sharp decline in Israeli group tours destined for Africa and Asia. Leading commentators noted morosely that the attacks had ended Israelis' illusion that they could escape their country's troubles, if only temporarily, by going abroad. One leading daily, Ma'ariv, carried a day-after headline that blared, "No escape."

Despite the seeming escalation of the threat facing them, however, many Israelis appeared ready to put the Kenya attacks behind them as quickly as they might a domestic attack. Indeed, within days public attention had shifted back to the nation's accelerating election campaign.

Still, many Israelis appeared to embrace Netanyahu's view of the attacks as proving that Israel and the West are facing a single enemy. "We are not alone," the respected columnist Yoel Marcus wrote this week in the daily Ha'aretz.

But the fact that the terrorist threat may be universal offers scant consolation to beleaguered Israelis, who always expect the worse, and whose premonitions, especially in recent years, are usually right on target.

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