Posted on 08/14/2003 4:29:04 AM PDT by yonif
The Shin Bet presented a pessimistic view of the future on Wednesday, predicting that Palestinians will launch another wave of terror as the cease-fire inevitably disintegrates into chaos.
Briefing defense reporters, a senior Shin Bet official said the Palestinian Authority's present leadership is powerless to dismantle the terrorist groups even if it wanted to. He also said the PA leaders are being hampered by the disintegration of Palestinian society into a state of anarchy.
The assessment is that PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has succeeded in "selling us air" in return for concessions like the transfer of Bethlehem to PA control, release of prisoners, and other measures.
The PA has now backtracked on initial announcements it needed time to start dismantling armed groups, saying now it is not prepared to take this step.
"The PA is gambling that this quiet will become popular and give them more legitimacy to carry out these crackdowns," he said. He said that even if the hudna is extended and a cease-fire reigns but the terror groups are not disarmed, the result would be a PA "infected with a cancer" waiting to explode.
This view runs counter to that of IDF Intelligence, which believes that Abbas and PA Minister of State for Security Affairs Muhammad Dahlan do have the capability but not the desire. "Desire is the brother of capability," said the official. "Remember, we see things from a 'sewers'-eye-view.' "
Dahlan is having much trouble consolidating a power base in the West Bank. Already despised as an outsider since he is a Gazan, Dahlan was encountering bitter infighting among the various Fatah "sheriffs" in cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and Hebron.
In the northern West Bank, the contempt for the PA among Palestinian youth is so deep that Jenin and its environs are "ex-territoria" for the PA. The security source described a situation among these renegade Fatah activists who have rejected the cease-fire not out of ideology, but because of money.
"They have no ideology except for money from Iran. They don't see any choice. If they stop attacks, they'll stop getting money. So there is no incentive to stop," he said. Still, on a purely numerical basis, Dahlan has much more manpower and arms than Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and renegade Fatah militants. But this does not mean that a crackdown on the armed groups would be successful.
Hamas has turned out to be a very disciplined organization which is keeping the cease-fire. The only exception was Tuesday's suicide bombing in Ariel, which it said was in retaliation for the killing of two of its members in Nablus last Friday.
Security sources said that Hamas does not consider it a violation of the cease-fire since it was in the West Bank.
Nevertheless, the cease-fire is providing Hamas with much-needed breathing room, and it is using the time to stock up on bombs, recruit members, and create a leadership for the day after the hudna collapses, the official said. Furthermore, Hamas is interested in creating an autonomy inside the Gaza Strip on the model of Hizbullah in Lebanon. It wants to acquire rockets and other weapons capable of striking Israel as a deterrent much like Hizbullah's Katyusha rocket arsenal, he said.
In a broader context, he said the future does not look good for the Palestinians.
"We are witnessing today the symptoms of what happened at the end of 2000 and that is the complete disintegration of the Palestinian nation, both its leadership and its society," he said. He said that there are great fissures being opened and they include a split between the urban Palestinians and the poorer villagers and refugees.
Another split is between the younger generation, which bore the brunt of the uprisings, and the old guard, which came home from a comfortable exile in Tunis.
A major fissure is also developing between the Palestinians of the West Bank and those in the Gaza Strip. Only the religious-secular divide has been bridged, mainly through a common hatred of Israel.
He admitted that the Israeli security establishment did not predict the extent of this disintegration.
For the immediate future, the Shin Bet is advising the government to limit goodwill gestures to the Palestinians to areas that are quiet. But no concessions should be made in Nablus or Jenin.
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