Above and beyond the large arms caches found in Arafat's Mukata compound in Ramallah, Israeli officials say that Arafat's headquarters served as the heart of a secret Palestinian operation to flood Israel with counterfeit money. An Israeli army officer said that the phoney money operation could have had far-reaching consequences including undermining the already-weakened Israeli economy and helping Arafat pay the salaries of terrorists. "There were hundreds of thousands of shekels along with the printing plates to produce millions of more shekels," said an Israeli army officer. IDF units seized the fake Israeli bills in denominations of 50, 100 and 200. The colorful red, tan and green bank notes - bearing the portraits of late Israeli presidents Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and Zalman Shazar - looked quite authentic to the untrained eye.
Israel intelligence suspects that Arafat also had printing plates for counterfeiting American currency, but these have not yet been discovered. Israeli and Western intelligence officials have long suspected that Arafat might have a counterfeit money operation, like the one he maintained in Lebanon during parts of the 1970's and early 1980's. Islamic terrorists have also used counterfeit money as an element in financing their operations.
Just as dirty as we expected. Wonder when they're gonna find the dope operations? |