Friday, 9 October 2009

Full Articles and Analyses
DEBKAfile

Abbas' Palestinians try to cash in on Jerusalem unrest for talks with Mitchell

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

October 7, 2009, 5:55 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli security forces are on high alert for a fresh round of Muslim unrest centering on Temple Mount on Friday, Oct. 9.

The arrest Tuesday night, Oct. 6, of the Israeli Islamic leader Raed Salah on charges of inciting the four-day Muslim rampage on Temple Mount - and sedition - was a point up for his partners, the Palestinian Hamas. The pose Salah struck of a Muslim hero defending al Aqsa mosque (against a fabricated assault) rallied Islamist support. Although an Israeli magistrate released Salah on bail - in defiance of the Israel police's application to hold him as a public menace - and although he was barred from entering Jerusalem for 30 days, the Israeli Muslim leader lost no time in adding "martyr" to his performance as hero.

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Ramallah took a couple of days to catch up with the Hamas-backed campaign. Tuesday, his spokesmen loosed a torrent of abuse, accusing Israel of igniting the Palestinian unrest which swept out from Temple Mount to Jerusalem's suburbs and hauling out their old war cry: "The Jews are plotting to tear down al Aqsa and rebuild their temple!"

Abbas has taken a ton of flak for the Palestinian Authority's consent to the postponement of a UN Security Council debate on the Goldstone war crimes report on the Gaza conflict earlier this year.

Caught wrong-footed on two counts in the Palestinian street, Abbas hopes to put things right by cashing in on the Jerusalem unrest for political gain:

1. The mosques are administered by the Muslim Waqf (religious foundation) while the Temple Mount site is under Israel's security control. The Palestinian leader will use Jerusalem as the most burning issue in the way of peace negotiations and present Israel as incapable of maintaining security and order for Muslims to pray in their mosques on Temple Mount. He will claim Israel prevents Muslim worship at al Aqsa when in fact the authorities have closed the site to Jewish worship. When the US envoy George Mitchell arrives Wednesday night, Oct. 6, he will be confronted with these grievances.

2. It will serve as the pretext for the Palestinians to lobby for Temple Mount to be declared an exclusive Muslim shrine off-limits to members of other faiths. Gaining this point would be one up for Abbas' Fatah over Hamas.

Since giving up the ancient site of the two Jewish temples is unthinkable for Israel - and Muslim leaders will never heed the Israeli rabbi's call for the heads of the three monotheistic religions to work together for a solution - Palestinian and Israeli Muslims will keep the unrest simmering.


Tehran moves to impose gasoline rationing ready for showdown with US

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 9, 2009, 10:50 AM (GMT+02:00)

2007 gasoline riots in Tehran

2007 gasoline riots in Tehran

Tehran plans to slash the supply of subsided gasoline to the public by 45 percent and ration individual purchases to 55 liters per month, down from the 100 allowed at present. This announcement Wednesday, Oct. 8, by Iranian oil minister Massoud Mirkazemi was Tehran's second step ahead of an expected showdown with the West over its nuclear program.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report: Accusing the US of involvement in the disappearance of an important Iranian nuclear scientist was the first. 
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Tehran accuses US in case of missing Iranian nuclear scientist

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 8, 2009, 6:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki charged Wednesday, Oct. 7 that Tehran had "documents that prove US interference" in the disappearance of the nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri during a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. He spoke after attending an Iranian cabinet meeting. Six days after meeting the six powers on its nuclear program in Geneva, Tehran appears to be preparing a new crisis. (Picture: Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki) 




Al Qaeda recovers fast from "loss of operational capacity" described by Obama

DEBKA-Net-Weekly 415 Updated byDEBKAfile

October 7, 2009, 1:26 PM (GMT+02:00)

Al Qaeda is far from done

Al Qaeda is far from done

US president Barack Obama praised the efforts of the organizations represented by the National Counterterrorism Center which he visited Tuesday, Oct. 6, crediting them with al Qaeda's "lost operational capacity" and disappearing "legitimacy and credibility."

In its issue of Sept 25, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 415 offered a fuller and more accurate picture of al Qaeda's situation. The top command did indeed suffer serious damage but has reduced it by speedily filling key gaps. Two new commanders are the Chechen Abu Zaar and Egyptian Abu Hafez.

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weeklyclick HERE 
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Israeli Muslim leader arrested for incitement and sedition

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 6, 2009, 10:55 AM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli Muslim leader Raed Salah

Israeli Muslim leader Raed Salah

Raed Salah, head of the Islamic movement of Israeli Arabs, was placed under arrest Tuesday, Oct. 6, on charges of incitement and sedition. A magistrate then released him with an order to stay out of Jerusalem for 30 days. Last week, he and the Palestinian Hamas jointly launched a violent campaign on Temple Mount to support the shrine's exclusion to Jews. Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch appealed to the heads of allthree faiths which hold Temple Mount sacred to work together and restore sanity to Jerusalem. 
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Israel is the loser from the Geneva encounter, Shalit tape release

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

October 3, 2009

Pulling the wool over international eyes

Pulling the wool over international eyes

After the hype evaporates from the Geneva encounter between the six powers and Iran and the raw emotions fade from the videotaped sight of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit, Israel is left to take stock of where it stands in relation to its enemies, Iran and the Hamas. The score is Israel - nil; Iran and its ally Hamas - two up.

In the first place, Iran has gained substantially from the Obama administration's decision to abandon the US demand for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment as the precondition for talks. This US surrender has awarded Tehran the legitimacy for retaining its "nuclear right."

Then, too, the Geneva conference became the platform for the world powers to agree to hold up sanctions if Iran transferred three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium (1,179,4 tons out of 1,451,4) to a Russian plant for further enrichment to 20 percent grade. The product would then be referred to France for "further technical modifications" - meaning probably a process which would make it unfit for weapons grading.

This arrangement, while seeming to solve this key problem, was in fact a major setback for the American and Israeli campaign to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons for the following reasons:

1. Even that concession is not binding on Tehran and gives it plenty of room to wriggle out and dictate terms. European Union executive Javier Solana, who chaired the Geneva meeting, is the only source claiming its existence as a result of a deal he said he struck with Iran's negotiator Saeed Jalili. Apart from Solana, no one in Tehran - or even Jalili - has confirmed it.

Solana's record should be remembered: For seven years, the Spanish diplomat went around discussing the nuclear controversy with Iranian officials, formally and informally, and issuing uniformly optimistic reports on the breakthroughs he achieved. His claims were never confirmed by Tehran, which used the time gained to carry on developing its military program regardless.

2. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accepted the principle of using a third country for processing enrichment uranium, but that was no concession, because he never agreed to stop Iran's own centrifuges spinning, some of them now home-made. Neither did he clarify Iran's terms for this arrangement.

Those terms are bound to effectively nullify the value of the project as they did in the past, when Tehran held out for joint management (Iranian-Russian at one point) of a foreign-based plant, to gain full control of the level of enrichment. Now too, Ahmadinejad offers Iranian funding to exercise its control of any foreign facility.

3. The Geneva talks focused on the enriched uranium which the International Atomic Energy Agency knows about - not the amounts concealed from inspection. The discovery of a secret enrichment facility near Qom points to the existence of more hidden plants and stocks.

4. This point may be the most crucial of all. While a big thing is made of uranium enrichment, the world powers are saying nothing about Iran's "second path program" for developing a plutonium bomb.

DEBKAfile's sources have learned a secret plutonium facility is may well be buried in or near the Qom site.

5. The Obama White House no longer talks about sanctions but the "pressure track," a flexible locution which can be graded up or down, but will be interpreted in Tehran as a softening of the president's position on its nuclear program.

6. The administration's earlier bombastic talk of an embargo on refined oils and gasoline sales as the price for continued Iranian stalling and deception has also faded.

7. By giving the Iranians two weeks to open up their Qom facility to international inspection, Obama has in fact given them time to clean out the facility of incriminating evidence. In any case, the outgoing IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei, who arrived in Tehran Saturday, Oct. 3, is famous for his Iranian myopia.

This weakening of international pressure on Iran in return for vague gestures of apparent goodwill has left Israel once again face to face with a regime which continues to outmaneuver and outfox the West in its drive for a nuclear weapon and hegemonic status in the Middle East.

Shalit tape deal is more of the same

The deal for Israel to receive a recent video-tape of the kidnapped Israel soldier Gilead Shalit from a secret Hamas prison in return for 20 female Palestinian prisoners cost Hamas nothing. The gesture proving that the soldier is alive and fit was a great comfort to his family. In fact it gave the Islamists' tarnished terrorist image a badly-needed lift after more than three years of denying his human rights as their captive.

A communiqué from the prime minister's office in Jerusalem Friday, Oct. 2, after the tape was released, holding Hamas responsible for Shalit's safety and wellbeing, simply played back Hamas' own assumption of responsibility for their hostage. And even if the Palestinian extremists decide for their own reasons to give up this responsibility, what can Israel do?

DEBKAfile's military sources are not even sure that the tape's release has enhanced the Israeli sergeant's prospects of a fast-tracked negotiation through German and Egyptian go-betweens and his early release. Hamas is running for election in June 2010 and plans to use its success in obtaining the freedom of up to 1,000 jailed Palestinians, the price they have set for Gilead Shalit, as a major boost for its campaign against Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah. The Islamists will therefore want the prisoner swap to take place as close as possible to voting day to maximize its impact on the Palestinians polling for a new parliament and president.

This election is not a foregone conclusion either. It is contingent on the Hamas-Fatah deal on the date holding up for nine months.

Whatever the outcome of the Palestinian factional give and take, Israel has ended up with a higher price tag for its prisoners in Palestinian terrorist hands: One thousand Palestinians for every Israeli soldier.


No Homegrown US Islamist Terror Network proven by FBI arrests

DEBKAfile Special Report

September 26, 2009

Born in Afghanistan, suspected of terror in New York

Born in Afghanistan, suspected of terror in New York

A deceptive impression has been gained from the rash of FBI (preventive) arrests in recent weeks that a home-grown network of Islamist terrorists is raising its head to strike in the US, like the one which has taken shape in Britain.

However, in America, the cases were all in different states, unrelated to each other and the suspects reeled in were small fry.

The case of Najibullah Zazi, 24, the Afghan shuttle van driver, was the most serious. In other cases, unrelated to the first, a Jordanian Muslim was detained trying to blow up a Dallas office tower and two American Muslims were taken in for questioning.

In contrast, local jihadi networks in Britain managed to attack the London railways system in July 2005, killing 51 people, tried and failed to plant liquid explosives on seven transatlantic airliners bound for the US from Heathrow in 2006, and staged an attack on Glasgow airport in June 2007.

No organized terror network on this scale appears to have sprung up in America although the latest arrests appear to suggest that the country's transport systems and high-rise buildings are in danger.

Naibullah Zazi was accused Friday before a US federal court in Denver, Colorado, of plotting to detonate explosives - possibly on the anniversary of the World Trade Center bombings of 9/11. Assistant US Attorney Timothy Neff said there was evidence he and his associates had purchased materials for an explosive such as hydrogen peroxide and acetone. In his New York hotel room, he tried to "cook" them after driving in from Denver. Bits of the components were found in the room's air conditioner.

Nine pages of instructions for building a bomb were found on his computer. Zazi admitted under questioning that when he paid a family visit to the Pakistani city of Peshawar last year, he received explosives training from al Qaeda instructors. The judge ruled he could be transferred to New York for trial.

Federal agents tailed Zazi after his associate, Ahmad Wais Afzali, Imam of Queens, New York - and a secret FBI informer - fingered him.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian, was arrested in an FBI sting Thursday, Sept. 24. An avowed supporter of al Qaeda, he parked his SUV which he believed was packed with explosives outside Fountain Place in Dallas and dialed a cell phone which he thought would detonate his truck bomb.

The "explosives" had been planted on him by an FBI agent posing as a fellow Islamist and the incident ended with his arrest.

Last month, two men, Daniel Patrick Boyd and Hysen Sherifi, were charged in North Carolina with plotting terrorist attacks overseas and against the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. They were among seven suspects arrested for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and for conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people overseas. A new indictment presented Thursday charged them with "conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel."

The main difficulty with the Zazi case, the biggest of the three, is that it rests on intent rather than actual wrongdoing, such as the construction of a finished bomb or proven choices of targets. The FBI explained the weakness of its case was down to Imam Afzali who tipped Zazi off that the FBI was onto him immediately after betraying him. The Bureau had no chance to gather enough evidence for a solid case against the suspected terrorist.

According to DEBKAfile's counter-terror experts, the Afghan would-be bomber's chances of conviction are comparable to those of the 24 British detainees accused of conspiring to plant liquefied bombs on airliners. They too were only shown to have assembled components for explosives but never assembling them.

None were caught spying out targets at Heathrow and today many experts doubt it is possible to make the liquid bombs they are accused of plotting to use.

Therefore, only 11 of the 24 suspects were brought to trial in April 2008. The jury, however, were divided on eight of the suspects and found only three guilty of attempted murder.

British law enforcement authorities could not let this go unchallenged; their security measures in all UK national and international airports were on the line. They decided to go for a second trial for eight of the suspects. But this time too, a jury nailed only two on the reduced charge of conspiracy to blow up airliners. The prosecution had to back down on the more serious charges of terror and attempted mass murder for lack of solid evidence.

If the American Afghan terror suspect does not lose his nerve under questioning and insists on his innocence, he has a good chance of getting away with a light sentence at worst.


Related articles:

Terrorism not ruled out in Air France crash mystery

So who did bomb the Iranian arms trucks in Sudan?

Why London and Sderot Alike Are Not Safe from Jihadist Terror



DEBKAfile


Israeli Muslim leader arrested for incitement and sedition

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 6, 2009, 10:55 AM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli Muslim leader Raed Salah

Israeli Muslim leader Raed Salah

Raed Salah, head of the Islamic movement of Israeli Arabs, was placed under arrest Tuesday, Oct. 6, on charges of incitement and sedition. A magistrate then released him with an order to stay out of Jerusalem for 30 days. Last week, he and the Palestinian Hamas jointly launched a violent campaign on Temple Mount to support the shrine's exclusion to Jews. Heeding their call "to defend al Aqsa," young Muslims have been on a rampage for four days - first on Temple Mount, then through western districts of Jerusalem.

Earlier Tuesday, the Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch appealed to the heads of the three faiths which hold Temple Mount sacred to work together and restore sanity to Jerusalem.

Palestinian leader Muhammad Dahlan responded by accusing Israel of deliberately fanning the flames which he warned could spread across the Middle East. His fellow Palestinians have been calling on their Muslim brethren to "defend" the al Aqsa mosque against an Israeli takeover, although police have allowed no Jews or tourists to set foot on Temple Mount during the entire Succoth festival - only Muslims over 50.

Monday, large caches of stones and rocks were discovered hidden by Muslim rioters inside al Aqsa mosque and various corners of Temple Mount.

Israeli security forces are braced for the Islamic violence to peak Friday, Oct. 9, after the television preacher Yusuf Qardawi, spiritual leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement, urged all Muslims to mark that day by "defending Al Aqsa" against the shrine's takeover by "the Jews." His influence is enough to bring inflamed Muslims streaming to Jerusalem in Friday.

Monday saw riots, firebombs, rocks and burning tires spreading through Jerusalem's Arab villages, including Abu Dis, Tzur Bahar and Jebel Mukaber. Many of the rioters were masked, presumably because they have jobs and business ties in West Jerusalem. Yet police patrols were told to stay out of the villages.

Shuafat opposite French Hill exploded into violence after an Israeli soldier routinely inspecting a bus was stabbed in the throat by a Palestinian passenger.

Attempting to pour oil on troubled waters, the police suppressed information about the extent and gravity of the unrest - in particular, the fires young Palestinians from Tsur Bahar and Jebal Mukaber in south Jerusalem set to neighboring Jewish farm crops and parks. They attacked the firemen putting out the flames which they reignited.

Here, too, the police were criticized for staying out of the villages and not arresting the arsonists, although they were identified by neighbors watching the rampage from their windows.

DEBKAfile's military sources confirm the impression that internal security minister Aharonovitch and his police chiefs have not grasped the full extent of the security threat to the city and are treating it as a local outbreak that will soon die down if handled discreetly. However, as we disclosed earlier, Syria and Iran are behind the trouble. Israeli Arab and Palestinian Muslim leaders are their willing tools for spearheading a fresh uprising (intifada) against Israel, using the purported Jewish assault on al Aqsa to inflame Muslim masses worldwide.

For this article click HERE

Mosques in Turkey have responded by orchestrating wild demonstrations. Egypt, Syria and Jordan may follow, not to mention the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israeli Arab communities.



DEBKAfile


Iran wins six-power legitimacy for uranium enrichment - contrary to UN resolutions

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 5, 2009, 9:27 AM (GMT+02:00)

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov

If Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is to be believed, Iran came out of its first diplomatic engagement with the big powers flushed with success. Not only has Tehran gained international legitimacy for its enriched uranium program - contrary to UN Security Council resolutions - but third-nation help is on tap for reaching a higher grade of enrichment.

Monday, Oct. 5, Lavrov let the cat out of the bag when he said in Vienna that an agreement reached between Tehran and six world powers last week for Russia to help enrich uranium for an Iranian reactor had yet to be finalized.

He said experts would meet soon to implement the plan, after the IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei stated in Tehran Sunday that the experts would meet in Vienna Oct. 19 to discuss the deal for Russia to take some of Iran's processed uranium and enrich it further.

The Russian minister referred to "an Iranian reactor," whereas the IAEA chief spoke of enriched uranium to be reprocessed abroad "for use as medical isotopes." Visitors are shown around a small medical reactor in Tehran to demonstrate that its nuclear program is innocuous although Western intelligence believes it to be a link in Iran's covert plutonium bomb project.

The plan to be cleared in Vienna is for the transfer of Iran's stock of uranium enriched to 3-5 percent to Russia where it would be further reprocessed to 19.75 percent. Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton explained Monday that this level "is barely under the 20 percent definition of weapons-grade" uranium.

None of the representatives of the big powers attending last Thursday's meeting with the Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili last Thursday, Oct. 1, revealed that Russia's helping hand would effectively jump-start Iran's last lap to 90 percent enrichment in no more than a week or two.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi was perfectly correct when he said there has been no change in his government's "nuclear stance" as a result of the Geneva conference. Not only has Iran not given an inch, but it is presenting the conference and the IAEA chief's visit as "Western acknowledgement of its right to pursue civil nuclear technology including enrichment."

The harsh sanctions hanging over Iran's head have melted away. Indeed, Tehran is effectively off the hook of past sanctions which punished it for pursuing a banned enrichment program.

Furthermore, Moscow will boost enriched uranium stocks four to fivefold.

If the Vienna meeting on Oct. 19 approves this arrangement, it will cut the ground from under any US or Israeli demands for further UN sanctions. It is therefore hard to understand why the Israeli government headed by Binyamin Netanyahu has not spoken up in protest against a deal which shortens Iran's road to a nuclear weapon.


Israel is the loser from the Geneva encounter, Shalit tape release

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

October 3, 2009

Pulling the wool over international eyes

Pulling the wool over international eyes

After the hype evaporates from the Geneva encounter between the six powers and Iran and the raw emotions fade from the videotaped sight of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit, Israel is left to take stock of where it stands in relation to its enemies, Iran and the Hamas. The score is Israel - nil; Iran and its ally Hamas - two up.

In the first place, Iran has gained substantially from the Obama administration's decision to abandon the US demand for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment as the precondition for talks. This US surrender has awarded Tehran the legitimacy for retaining its "nuclear right."

Then, too, the Geneva conference became the platform for the world powers to agree to hold up sanctions if Iran transferred three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium (1,179,4 tons out of 1,451,4) to a Russian plant for further enrichment to 20 percent grade. The product would then be referred to France for "further technical modifications" - meaning probably a process which would make it unfit for weapons grading.

This arrangement, while seeming to solve this key problem, was in fact a major setback for the American and Israeli campaign to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons for the following reasons:

1. Even that concession is not binding on Tehran and gives it plenty of room to wriggle out and dictate terms. European Union executive Javier Solana, who chaired the Geneva meeting, is the only source claiming its existence as a result of a deal he said he struck with Iran's negotiator Saeed Jalili. Apart from Solana, no one in Tehran - or even Jalili - has confirmed it.

Solana's record should be remembered: For seven years, the Spanish diplomat went around discussing the nuclear controversy with Iranian officials, formally and informally, and issuing uniformly optimistic reports on the breakthroughs he achieved. His claims were never confirmed by Tehran, which used the time gained to carry on developing its military program regardless.

2. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accepted the principle of using a third country for processing enrichment uranium, but that was no concession, because he never agreed to stop Iran's own centrifuges spinning, some of them now home-made. Neither did he clarify Iran's terms for this arrangement.

Those terms are bound to effectively nullify the value of the project as they did in the past, when Tehran held out for joint management (Iranian-Russian at one point) of a foreign-based plant, to gain full control of the level of enrichment. Now too, Ahmadinejad offers Iranian funding to exercise its control of any foreign facility.

3. The Geneva talks focused on the enriched uranium which the International Atomic Energy Agency knows about - not the amounts concealed from inspection. The discovery of a secret enrichment facility near Qom points to the existence of more hidden plants and stocks.

4. This point may be the most crucial of all. While a big thing is made of uranium enrichment, the world powers are saying nothing about Iran's "second path program" for developing a plutonium bomb.

DEBKAfile's sources have learned a secret plutonium facility is may well be buried in or near the Qom site.

5. The Obama White House no longer talks about sanctions but the "pressure track," a flexible locution which can be graded up or down, but will be interpreted in Tehran as a softening of the president's position on its nuclear program.

6. The administration's earlier bombastic talk of an embargo on refined oils and gasoline sales as the price for continued Iranian stalling and deception has also faded.

7. By giving the Iranians two weeks to open up their Qom facility to international inspection, Obama has in fact given them time to clean out the facility of incriminating evidence. In any case, the outgoing IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei, who arrived in Tehran Saturday, Oct. 3, is famous for his Iranian myopia.

This weakening of international pressure on Iran in return for vague gestures of apparent goodwill has left Israel once again face to face with a regime which continues to outmaneuver and outfox the West in its drive for a nuclear weapon and hegemonic status in the Middle East.

Shalit tape deal is more of the same

The deal for Israel to receive a recent video-tape of the kidnapped Israel soldier Gilead Shalit from a secret Hamas prison in return for 20 female Palestinian prisoners cost Hamas nothing. The gesture proving that the soldier is alive and fit was a great comfort to his family. In fact it gave the Islamists' tarnished terrorist image a badly-needed lift after more than three years of denying his human rights as their captive.

A communiqué from the prime minister's office in Jerusalem Friday, Oct. 2, after the tape was released, holding Hamas responsible for Shalit's safety and wellbeing, simply played back Hamas' own assumption of responsibility for their hostage. And even if the Palestinian extremists decide for their own reasons to give up this responsibility, what can Israel do?

DEBKAfile's military sources are not even sure that the tape's release has enhanced the Israeli sergeant's prospects of a fast-tracked negotiation through German and Egyptian go-betweens and his early release. Hamas is running for election in June 2010 and plans to use its success in obtaining the freedom of up to 1,000 jailed Palestinians, the price they have set for Gilead Shalit, as a major boost for its campaign against Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah. The Islamists will therefore want the prisoner swap to take place as close as possible to voting day to maximize its impact on the Palestinians polling for a new parliament and president.

This election is not a foregone conclusion either. It is contingent on the Hamas-Fatah deal on the date holding up for nine months.

Whatever the outcome of the Palestinian factional give and take, Israel has ended up with a higher price tag for its prisoners in Palestinian terrorist hands: One thousand Palestinians for every Israeli soldier.


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