DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 18, 2010, 11:18 PM (GMT+02:00)
Despite Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's efforts to ham up his groundbreaking visit to Lebanon last week, DEBKAfile's military sources quote Western and Arab observers as summing it up as a dud and a shambles. Lebanese leaders clamped down on his performance in the South on Thursday, Oct. 10, and spoiled his plan for a grand display of hostile power opposite Israel.
That day, after receiving a University of Beirut honorary doctorate, the visitor was tackled over lunch by Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and chief of staff Gen. Jean Qahwaji who demanded that he rearrange his South Lebanon itinerary.
The original plan was for Ahmadinejad, with Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah beside him, to drive down the coast to the south past cheering and waving crowds. The Hizballah leader was to be the co-star of the event and their cavalcade's security escort entrusted to armed Hizballah men and Iranian Revolutionary Guards instead of Lebanese military soldiers.
In the event, Suleiman and Gen. Qahwaji insisted on cutting Hizballah out of any security tasks and the national army be exclusively responsible for his safety throughout the visit.
This decision set off furious arguments, with Nasrallah threatening to torpedo the entire event if he was not permitted to accompany Ahmadinejad on his tour of the Lebanese-Israel border.
According to DEBKAfile's sources, the visitor finally bowed to his hosts' demand. As a result, Ahmadiinejad's trip South started late Thursday afternoon and had to be rushed through the two hours remaining before nightfall. The triumphal coastal drive was called off and the Iranian president carried to Bin Jbeil in S. Lebanon, some two kilometers from the Israeli border, by a Lebanese army helicopter. The troops refused to let Nasrallah climb aboard the chopper and he was left behind.
So furious was the Hizballah chief at being thrown of the helicopter and left out of the high point of his boss's visit that he ordered his top commanders to boycott the ceremonial welcome for Ahmadinejad at Bin Jbeil. They were therefore conspicuous by their absence. By the time the speech was over, the light was fading and the Lebanese officers accompanying Ahmadinejad told him that the helicopter flight in the dark to his next stop at Maroun a-Ras, right on the border, was too risky to undertake so late.
Ahmadinejad had to give up his ultimate provocation of reviewing the battlefields of the 2006 Israel-Hizballah war within the sight of Israel and standing alongside the golden replica of Al Aqsa in Jerusalem which Hizballah had constructed in his honor.
In this way, the Lebanese president and chief of staff managed to keep the Iranian president away from the border with Israel and staging the confrontational poses to which his visit had been building up.
At the time, the delay in Ahmadinejad's arrival in the South was explained as caused by his effort to persuade Prime Minister Saad Hariri to dismantle the UN tribunal and so avoid having Hizballah officials indicted for complicity in the murder of his father Rafiq Hariri five years ago.
The subject never arose between them, our sources report. The Lebanese prime minister was already packing ready to fly to Riyadh and report to King Abdullah on the Ahmadinejad visit which the Saudis deeply resented.
The following Sunday, Oct. 17, DEBKAfile's Middle East sources disclose that Jeffrey Feltman, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, arrived in Beirut for a brief stop. He had been instructed to assess the damage Ahmadinejad's visit had wrought to US interests in the country and report back to President Barack Obama.
The American official was informed that the Iranian president had opted for giving his visit a Lebanese national character rather than reflecting Hizballah factional interests. The report he brought back to Washington was therefore favorable. Neither Ahmadinejad nor Nasrallah had obtained any of their objectives from the event.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 18, 2010, 10:01 AM (GMT+02:00)
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is seriously weighing a secret plan for bringing a fresh influx of Hamas fighting and intelligence forces into the West Bank at points opposite Israel. At the same time, he tells the world that the only impediment to Middle East peace is Israel's refusal to halt Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report that this secret plan is at the top of the agenda of the second round of reconciliation talks between Abbas' Fatah and Hamas representatives opening in Damascus Wednesday, Oct. 20. The plan would be a trade-off: Fatah fighting and intelligence units would also regain a foothold in the Gaza Strip for the first time since they were thrown out in Hamas' 2007 putsch.
Our sources report that this swap would be part of a plan dubbed "Reform of Palestinian Security and Intelligence Services." It is the touchiest point in the negotiations led by Fatah's Ahmad al-Azzam and Hamas' political bureau chief Mussa Abu Marzuk which the rival factions have embarked on to bury the hatchet and cut a power-sharing deal.
The two parties see the plan as giving each of the two parties reciprocal guarantees sheathed in steel for the other to stand by any accord reached in the talks.
It would go forward in three incremental steps:
1. An exchange of territory. The internal security bodies of the two Palestinian organizations would take up position in predefined areas - Hamas on the West Bank and Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Each will take charge of security in those patches - while also guaranteeing the good faith of its opposite number.
2. If this stage goes through without hitches, Fatah and Hamas will then swap fighting forces in their respective territories.
DEBKAfile's military sources report that this stage would bring six American-trained Palestinian Authority special forces over to the Gaza Strip and a corresponding number of Hamas Ezz-e Din Al-Qassam units trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizballah into the West Bank.
3. Mahmoud Abbas will undertake to persuade the Obama administration to coerce Israel into accepting the deal for the sake of resolving the Palestinian internal feud and reuniting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
According to our sources, Hamas representatives, who put the plan to American and European parties in informal contacts, gained the impression that Washington might be brought around to buying it and even lean on the Netanyahu government to accept this formula in return for quiet Palestinian forbearance in the face of limited Israeli construction for the settlements and Jerusalem.
However, our political sources report that when word of this evolving scenario reached Jerusalem, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak hit the ceiling. They sent word to Washington that if it went through, Israel would take four steps:
First, break off the two-year old US-sponsored military cooperation with the Palestinian Authority in the war on terror;
Second, redeploy Israeli forces in all the West Bank areas and towns evacuated over that period;
Third, restore the dozens of counter-terror roadblocks and checkpoints removed from West Bank roads as a concession to meet demands for easing Palestinian movement;
Fourth, Israel would use force to keep Hamas armed units and security elements out of the West Bank - even if they were routed through Jordan.
Awareness of the Palestinian leader's double dealings with Hamas and their scheme for deploying Iran-backed fighting extremists to the West Bank has prompted Netanyahu's frequent assertions of late that any accommodation with the Palestinians must include a guarantee that the West Bank will never become a missile launching-pad against Israel.
All the same, before they left for Damascus, Abbas instructed his representatives to continue discussing the euphemistic "Reform of Palestinian Security and Intelligence Services" with Hamas.
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