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Middle East
Followup: Americans Targeted in Gaza Like Baghdad
2003-10-15
More details on the Gaza attack from DEBKA:
The explosion that blasted a CIA vehicle outside Beit Hanoun just after an official US embassy convoy entered the northern Gaza Strip through the Erez checkpoint represents a dangerous escalation of Palestinian terrorist aggression. It is a milestone, akin to the August 19 suicide strike against UN headquarters in Baghdad which claimed 15 lives including special UN representative in Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello. He was the linchpin of American efforts to restore normalcy to the country. Since then, the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated disastrously as international bodies assisting those efforts quietly withdraw themselves and their services from Iraq. The Palestinian assault on an American convoy in the Gaza Strip had the same objective. Despite official denials, the convoy was carrying members of John Wolf’s monitoring team appointed by the US President to bring some normalcy to Palestinian-controlled areas and start defusing Palestinian-Israel warfare.
Erekat said they were taking scholarship applications. I guess that was when his lips fell off. Again...
Clearly, the Palestinian attack aimed at undermining not only the American initiative but also the efforts of diplomats and aid workers posted in region by the United Nations and Europeans, who of late are avoiding contact with Yasser Arafat and threatening to sever ties with him altogether. Now, their representatives and staff will almost certainly emulate their colleagues in Iraq and quietly pull up their stakes in the embattled country.

Arafat, despite his grave health condition, is still up to concocting one of his famous smoke-and- mirrors stratagems. Brandishing an olive branch to conceal the gun, he assigned one of his top disinformation experts, Yasser Abed Rabbo, to the task of luring a group of Israeli left-wingers into the web of deceit which has become known as the “Geneva Accords”. At the very moment that attention focused on the debate aroused by this “peace” initiative, he struck an official American target in the Gaza Strip with swift, dramatic effect as the next stage in his coming terror campaign. Aware he may not have much time left to develop this campaign, he has removed the gloves and is striking out simultaneously in three directions:
1. Against Israel. Wednesday, the 21st victim of October 4 Palestinian suicide attack in a Haifa restaurant died of his wounds.

2. Israel Arab citizens are being increasingly drawn into acts of terror.

3. Strikes against US targets in Palestinian-controlled regions and Israel.
The Beit Hanoun attack Wednesday required a high class of advanced, precise intelligence and logistic preparations that could not have been assembled overnight. The assailants were fed their data on American CIA movements in Gaza by the same foreign intelligence agents who supply the pro-Saddam guerrillas in Iraq.
The convoy consisted of three armor-plated vehicles with two Palestinian police escort cars. The bombers detonated their charge precisely to hit the one carrying CIA guards, the last in line. Fox TV’s Col.(ret.) David Hunt described it as a Chevy Suburban with level 5 armor built to stand RPG hits to the doors and landmine explosions from the bottom. He estimated the landmine that struck the car as between 30 and 50 pounds, similar to the devices used against coalition forces in Iraq. It is possible that an RPG was fired first to crack the heavy armor and make the vehicle susceptible to the landmine. An Associated Press reporter spotted a wire and switch leading from the scene of the attack to a concrete building.

The US cultural attaché rode in another vehicle. He was of no interest to the Palestinian bombers. They were after American security personnel. All the Palestinian terrorist organizations — from the al Aqsa Martyrs brigades to the Hamas — denied responsibility for bomb attack with one voice. American investigators who arrived quickly on the scene near Beit Hanoun were pelted with stones. They fired on the Palestinian mob and injured some. A similar incident occurred outside Gaza City’s Shifa hospital where US officials attended injured and dead.

An Israeli tank force entered the northern Gaza Strip to restore order and take command of the highways. The offer by Palestinian leaders including Arafat to probe the assault jointly with American investigators went down as arrant cynicism. No one doubts any longer that Arafat’s hand stirs the terrorist pot in Israel and Palestinian regions, be the perpetrators Palestinian, Hizballah or al Qaeda, any more than an inquiry is needed to establish who is behind the guerrilla terrorist operations carried by Saddam’s men and al Qaeda in Iraq. It is clear that Arafat is determined to go out on a blaze of Palestinian terror — not just against Israelis but Americans too. The State Department’s first reponse was to order Americans to leave the Gaza Strip and exercise extreme caution in the West Bank.
Time to fire up the death ray again.
Posted by:Steve

#3  The Death Ray should be set on Deep Fry. With a wide azimuth...
Posted by: tu3031   2003-10-15 2:26:34 PM  

#2  No one doubts any longer that Arafat’s hand stirs the terrorist pot in Israel and Palestinian regions,..

Except maybe Shimon Peres.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2003-10-15 10:34:07 AM  

#1  The death ray's too slow. Time for MOAB.
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2003-10-15 9:38:24 AM  

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