Community Magazine November 2003

THE PALESTINIAN CHALLENGE Israel today faces two main and imme- diate challenges. First is the Palestinian challenge. As long as Yasser Arafat remains the sovereign of the Palestinian entity, there is not the slightest chance for real peace. He still believes in the combi- nation of terror, as a tool to break our will, and talk of peace. Peace, for Arafat, means one big Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Iraqi desert - including Jordan, the West Bank, and Israeli Arabs. He is focus- ing on a kind of peace that will include the Palestinian “right of return” that, based on demographic trends, will create one big Palestine in the future. The Abu Mazen government was impor- tant in one perspective. Abu Mazen declared openly: “I am excluding terror as a way to convince the Israelis.” Such a statement had not been made in a long time. But, in fact, Arafat gave Abu Mazen’s government no room to act. For example, when Mohammed Dahlan as Minister of Security gave an order to the security forces, Arafat would issue a contradictory order within minutes. The overwhelming majority of the security forces belong to Arafat, so it was impossible for Dahlan to do anything. As long as Arafat is in power there will be no fundamental change. Israel gave the Abu Mazen government many concessions. The road was opened from Rafah in the south to the northern part of Gaza, and at the Rafah crossing point with Egypt, the hours were extended to 10 p.m. Israel has encouraged Palestinian employment inside Israel. There was even improvement in the economic situation, according to Palestinian data. The industri- al area in Gaza is flourishing; the Karni crossing point was opened, with 800 trucks a day. Israel gave billions of shekels to Palestinian Authority Finance Minister Salam Fayad. But even today, a significant part of this money is going directly to Arafat, and it is used to finance terror. The Palestinian Authority has a security force of 53,000 who are getting salaries. They are doing nothing because they were ordered to do nothing. Israel’s deterrent capability has been strengthened after its effort to get rid of the top leadership of Hamas in Gaza. In the end, we didn’t hurt them only because we didn’t want to hurt civilians. But the mes- sage was clear; since then, the Hamas lead- ership has been living underground. There is no political leadership in this extremist organization - neither in al-Qaeda, nor in Hamas, nor in the Moslem Brotherhood. There is a top leadership that meets with the operational level to plan horrible and bloody acts of terror against Israelis. Israel cannot live with a neighbor that believes in terror, encourages terror, and engages in incitement. In the Oct. 4 bomb- ing of a Haifa restaurant that killed 21 peo- ple, the woman who committed the suici- dal attack was a victim of intensive incite- ment. Behind this terrorist is an entire infrastructure including civilian charities financing and fueling the terror machine. Israel was pleased to hear that the EU has decided to recognize that the charity chan- nel to Hamas is fueling a pipeline of terror. So far, however, nothing has been done and all these funds are still operating. SYRIA’S TWO FRONTS Israel’s second challenge is Syria, which 28 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE s ” xc A S T R AT E G I C A N A LY S I S B Y : M A J . - G E N . ( R E S . ) A MO S G I L A D Undermining theWar on Terrorism: The Role of Yasser Arafat and th