Excerpts: Egypt expects Israelio Gaza surrender. Terrorists selectively
denounced.Be'ersheva follow-up.2 September 2004

+++ JORDAN TIMES 2 Sept.'04:
"Egypt says needs more from Palestinians, Israel"
QUOTES FROM TEXT:
"the Palestinian Authoriity has taken steps to reorganize the security
forces. which had greatly proliferated ... since Arafat returned to
Gaza in
1994."

"It {Egypt] wants Israel to promise not to attack in Gaza at all, even
in
response to an attack on Israel, and to withdraw fully from the
corridor
between Egypt and the Gaza Strip."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------EXCERPTS:
ALEXANDRIA (Reuters) - Egypt will send security experts to the Palestinian
territories if Israel gives assurances of their safety and the Palestinian
Authority clarifies the role of its police force, an Egyptian spokesman said
on Tuesday.
. . .
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar
Suleiman were due to meet ... Arafat in... Ramallah on Wednesday to discuss
... Palestinians taking full control of Gaza.
But the foreign minstry said the meeting had been postponed until a later,
unspecified, date because of "the situation there." ... .
The postponement follows twin suicide bombings in ...Beersheva on Tuesday,
which killed at least 16 people. ...Egypt offered to help in Gaza months ago
and has had frequent contacts with all the parties but so far it has not
been able to tie up the arrangements for the Egyptian experts to ... train
the Palestinian police forces. In the meantime, the Palestinian Authority
has taken steps to reorganise the security forces, which had greatly
proliferated ...since Arafat returned to Gaza in 1994.
[IMRA: Why since 1994 hasn't the Palestinian Authority been able to
eliminate illegal firearms?]
. . .
As a first stage, Egypt will start training some Palestinian security
officials in Egypt,... ..
"If we get encouraged ... we will be willing ... to send trainers over
there, provided that we have some ... assurances from the Israelis for their
safety and their security because we don't want this to be used as some kind
of a trap between us and the Palestinians, or between us and the Israelis,"
he said.
Diplomats familiar with the negotiations say Egypt has set strict conditions
for helping in Gaza and the plan might eventually come to nothing.
It wants Israel to promise not to attack in Gaza at all, even in response to
an attack on Israel, and to withdraw fully from the corridor between Egypt
and the Gaza Strip.
[IMRA: Is EVERYTHING possible with Sharon?]
Abdel Fattah said Palestinian factions also needed to agree amongst
themselves on what he called a "political profile" for Gaza if Israel
withdraws, whether unilaterally or under the "roadmap" peace plan prepared
by international mediators.
Qureia told reporters that the Palestinians had started taking steps on
security and on the political dialogue.

+++ARAB NEWS (Saudi) 2 Sept.'04: Editorial:Senseless Violence"
FULL TEXT:

ARE there really no limits to senseless violence? On Monday, 12 Nepalese who
hardly knew which country they were in were captured and butchered by Iraqi
terrorists. Now Chechens have seized a school in North Ossetia and are
holding hundreds of schoolchildren, parents and teachers as hostages.
The Chechen separatist movement led by Aslan Maskhadov may not have
authorized the action, as asserted by his envoy in the UK, but there is no
doubt that the hostage takers are Chechens - perhaps a rogue operation by an
independent group. The people of Chechnya have a legitimate cause for anger
at Vladimir Putin's Russia. Their land has been devastated and their men,
women and children killed in thousands in a war that was not necessary. A
negotiated solution for Moscow's standoff with Grozny could have been found
if Putin, appointed premier in 1999, had not proceeded immediately to prove
how tough he was by crushing Chechnya with military might. Bloodshed has not
stopped since then, either in Chechnya or Russia.
All this is true. However, the grievance the Chechens have is against the
Kremlin, not against ordinary Russians - certainly not against
schoolchildren and schoolmarms. When genuine political grievances are sought
to be solved through perpetrating violence against children, it inflicts the
most grievous harm on the cause that is sought to be furthered. The decent
people who were supporting them in their fight against injustice turn
against them. The United States, which has long been critical of Russian
policy in Chechnya, blasting human rights abuses and Moscow's refusal to
deal with separatists on a political level, has condemned the attack as
"terrorism." UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was appalled to learn
of the attack and urged the hostage takers to release their captives and
condemned the "criminal act directed against the most vulnerable members of
society." Similar calls have come from all world leaders.
Back in Nepal, furious crowds have condemned their government for not having
done enough to secure the release of their unfortunate young citizens. There
was in truth nothing the authorities in Katmandu could have done. It could
not follow Manila's example and cave in because Nepal has no military in
Iraq. That is what makes the kidnap and murder of Nepalese peasants
extremely sickening.
In Russia there can be no doubt that the Kremlin is not prepared to trade
the lives of hostages for any concession whatsoever. As with past mass
seizures of a hospital and a theater, the drama may end with the facilities
being stormed by Russian security forces. There can be no doubt that from
the minute this attack was planned, the terror leaders have been quite
prepared to shed torrents of young blood. There are no words strong enough
to express the disgust and horror all decent people feel toward such
actions. Their campaigns are the very opposite of brave and heroic and bring
the deepest and most profound shame upon the causes they pretend to
represent.
[IMRA: But the double suicide bombing in Be'ersheva is un-noticed.]

+++INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE 2 Sept.'04:"Israeli intelligence is faulted
after blasts"by Steven Erlanger NYT
HEADING:"Disciplined Hamas cell has killed dozens"

JERUSALEM Israeli intelligence came under careful criticism Wednesday for
its failure to crack the Hamas cell in Hebron that carried out the twin
suicide bombings in Beersheba on Tuesday in which 16 people died and more
than 100 were wounded.

The Hamas cell, led by Imad Qawasme, has been responsible for the deaths of
more than 80 Israelis, and its internal security has been so disciplined
that neither Israeli Army intelligence nor the Shin Beth has been able to
crack it.

The army was concerned that Hamas was preparing an operation from Hebron ...
officials said Wednesday, but there was no specific warning on which to act.

The Hebron cell is strictly compartmentalized and makes little use of the
telephone, Israeli security officials say, and after successful attacks the
leadership normally goes underground.

On July 11, the cell infiltrated a suicide bomber into Jerusalem, but he
lost his nerve and threw off his explosive belt near the Cafe Caffit, which
he was supposed to attack. While he was later killed by the army, his
infiltration is considered another success of the Hamas cell, said Amir
Rappaport of the Maariv newspaper.

[IMRA: So when was its prior Israeli murdering attack? That this cell
made such a basic error in its selected bomber indicates fundamental
weakness.]

. . .
Alex Fishman, writing in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, said .... "The
security establishment has a lacuna in Hebron, a large 'black hole' of
information," he wrote. ... "when there is no intelligence, successes are a
bingo game."

Qawasme, part of a large Hebron family, has been on Israel's most-wanted
list since the beginning of 2003, and he is considered to be the heir of the
cell's founders, Abdullah Qawasme and Ahmed Badr, who were assassinated by
the army last year.

[IMRA: Haven't been able to crack the cell but were able to kill its
leaders!]

Qawasme's cousin, Ahmed, was one of the suicide bombers on Tuesday in
Beersheba.

In October 2003, more than 100 members of the Qawasme clan and others were
arrested to try to break up Hamas in Hebron, but to no avail, and the night
before the attacks, on Monday, there was a large army operation to try to
arrest Hamas members in Hebron.

In part to deflect attention from Hamas in Hebron, Israeli officials accused
Syria of harboring Hamas commanders and allowing terrorist training camps in
Syria and in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based.

Ranaan Gissin, an adviser to ...Sharon, argued on Wednesday that Israel's
success in attacking Hamas leaders in the West Bank and Gaza meant that the
organization's leaders have moved to Damascus. "Orders and support for
terrorist actions come from neighboring countries that support terrorism,
like Syria and Iran," he said.

Israel is not about to attack Syria, Gissin said. But he warned the Hamas
political leader in Damascus, Khaled Mashal, not to believe that "he has
immunity ...in Damascus."

In 1997, Israel tried to assassinate Mashal in Jordan

[IMRA: He was in Jordan because Netanyahu refused to accept him even
after Israel persuaded the US court to extradite him to Israel for trial on
aiding terrorism. Paradoxically. Jordan did Israel a favor by accepting
him.]

by injecting him with a poison, but two Israeli agents carrying Canadian
passports were captured there. The United States forced the then-prime
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to provide Mashal the antidote, and later, the
Mossad agents were returned at the price of releasing Hamas's founder, Sheik
Ahmed Yassin, from prison. Last year, Israel assassinated Yassin in Gaza
... and Mashal is apparently back in Israel's sights. ... General Moshe
Yaalon, told a parliamentary committee: "Whoever is responsible for using
terror against us won't sleep quietly." Israel must "deal with those who
support terrorism, whether it be elements of the Palestinian Authority,
elements from Hezbollah in Lebanon or terror command posts in Damascus with
Syrian approval," ... . Politicians filled the airwaves to press for the
rapid completion of the separation barrier, about a third finished, that has
made it harder for suicide bombers to enter Israel. There is no barrier yet
in the south, between Hebron and Beersheba, because the north, where most
Israelis live, was considered a priority.

Mayors of southern towns, like Beersheba's Yaacov Turner, urged the
government to immediately start construction in the south, rather than wait
until the northern part is completed.

Turner was among a group of mayors who wrote last December to the defense
minister... "our area is wide open to the free passage of Palestinian
terrorists from Judea, and for a long time we have also suffered from thefts
and crime from the Palestinian population."

The mayors said that they "fear that the moment the building of the security
fence in the Samaria area and Jerusalem envelope is completed while the
southern seam line is open, there will be a massive strengthening of
Palestinian terror in our area." But Gissin said that the government had
already decided in early June to accelerate the construction of the barrier
wherever there were no pending petitions about its route before the Israeli
Supreme Court. Another adviser to Sharon, Zalman Shoval, a former ambassador
to the United States, said that the Beersheba bombings might influence the
court - "not in the nature of their decisions, but in the speed with which
they deal with pending cases."

He said the carnage in Beersheba might also aid Israel "in international
forums when the face comes up, as it will."

Dr. Joseph Lerner, Co-Director IMRA