Syria has, after a short break, returned into Uncle Sam's crosshairs. The immediate consequences were Israel's warning to Syria after the Beer Sheba terror attack, and a US diplomatic offensive aimed at forcing Syria to get out of Lebanon. The attack in Beer Sheba got the limelight, but the really important events this week in the Middle East occurred in Lebanon and Gaza. On the 29th of August a firefight broke out in the Palestinian refugee camp Ein el-Hilweh, near the port of Sidon, in which two Palestinians were killed, supposedly by operatives of Sabaath al-Nasr, a small radical Islamic Palestinian terrorist organization. It seemed like just another small incident of random violence endemic to this part of the world, and was treated accordingly, relegated to the international media's peanut gallery. However much more was at stake.
The firefight was the end result of a botched assassination campaign hatched by Iran, intended to allow its proxies to replace Arafat's Fatah movement as the most important armed Palestinian force in Lebanon. According to western intelligence sources, the attackers were not al Nasr operatives, but Pasderan (Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards, an independent elite military force answerable only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, similar to the SS in the Third Reich) officers. The prime target of the offensive were not the two relatively junior Fatah officers killed, but Col Abdul Jaafar, one of the most senior Fatah officers in the camp, in charge of internal security.
Between 2-3 weeks Col. Sultan Abu Einan, the Fatah commander in the camp sent Arafat an urgent communication, warning him that his erstwhile Hezbullah and Iranian allies were planning to take over the camp. According to intelligence sources, Hezbullah and the Pasderan were recruiting Fatah troops, offering them $500 a month for their allegiance. He warned Arafat that unless something was done, Hezbullah would soon be able to replace Fatah as the main military force in the camp. |