Hamas's retaliation

[madape]

So far, so inept.

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2 Palestinians Killed Attacking From Sea
48 minutes ago

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Armed Palestinians in wetsuits and flippers emerged from the Mediterranean and fired toward a beachfront Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites), the army said Friday. Two attackers were killed and a third was wounded and fled.

The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on the Tel Katifa settlement in Gaza. Hamas has threatened to carry out attacks on Israelis to avenge the assassination of its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.


In a farewell video, two attackers posed in their wetsuits, with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs and goggles pulled above their foreheads. The video also contained footage of a training session in which two men charged toward a rocky cliff, firing assault rifles. The settlement attack is the first of "earthshaking operations to come," a Hamas leaflet said.


Thousands of Hamas supporters marched in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Ramallah on Friday, threatening revenge. In the Nablus, the protest was led by about 200 men in masks and military-style dress. At one point, they torched a large model of an Israeli bus and ran in a circle around it.


In the nearby Balata refugee camp, a Palestinian militant was killed when a car he was driving exploded. Palestinian security officials said the car carried explosives that apparently blew up prematurely. The blast which killed Ahmed al-Abed, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed group linked to Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) movement.


In the Gaza attack, the assailants came ashore late Thursday. From the beach, they fired assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades toward the Israeli army post guarding the settlement, and soldiers returned fire.


Ari Odes, a Tel Katifa resident, said he and his wife were driving toward the settlement when they heard shooting. Moments later, he saw the attacker on the road, aiming at the car, Odes told Israel Radio.


"I pulled my head down and tried to aim the wheel so as to run him over but he jumped onto the shoulder of the road and I drove into the settlement," Odes said. "There was a second terrorist who shot massive fire at the gate of the settlement and the outpost."


An Israeli army officer said the Israeli navy spotted three men swimming toward the beach and that two approached the settlement. A third man was wounded and footsteps indicated that he fled into the sea, said the officer, identified only as Lt. Ayelet. Soldiers found rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles and explosives on the beach, along with flippers. The military believes the attackers were trying to build a bomb on the beach for use in an attack on the settlement, she said.


Tensions have increased significantly since Israel assassinated Yassin on Monday.


At the United Nations (news - web sites), the United States on Thursday vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel for the assassination. The U.S. ambassador complained that the text did not mention Hamas attacks against Israelis.


Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said the U.S. veto will be seen by Israel "as an encouragement to continue the path of violence, escalation, assassination and reoccupation."


At Friday noon prayers at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site, the prayer leader harshly attacked the United States. "The United States is not the sponsor of peace, it is the sponsor of international terrorism, and this veto is a green light to continue the assassinations," said the cleric, Yousef Abu Sneineh.


Israel's tightened security has foiled several attacks in recent days. On Wednesday, soldiers stopped a 16-year-old Palestinian youth, Hussam Abdo, with a bomb vest strapped to his body at a crowded West Bank checkpoint, setting off a tense encounter with soldiers.


Abdo remained in Israeli custody Friday, but military sources said he might be released in coming days. The Al Aqsa group denied recruiting the youth. However, Abdo's uncle, Jihad, said the boy's ID card had the words "Al Aqsa Brigades" scribbled on it. It is customary for attackers to leave their ID card with the group that dispatches them, so it can be used in a subsequent claim of responsibility.


The family of the teenager said he was gullible and easily manipulated, and relatives demanded that militants stop using children for attacks.


"It is forbidden to send him to fight. He is young, he is small, he should be in school. Someone pressured him, maybe because they killed Ahmed Yassin," wailed Abdo's mother, Tamam.

Also Friday, Israel's vice premier said Israel is not seeking U.S. approval of its plan to withdraw from most of the Gaza Strip, although it would like to coordinate certain moves with Washington.

Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, a confidant of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), told Israel Army Radio that Israel is not demanding U.S. guarantees or public statements in exchange for a unilateral withdrawal.

Sharon's aides initially suggested that in exchange for withdrawing from Gaza, Israel is seeking U.S. approval of an Israeli annexation of several West Bank settlement blocs in a final peace deal. Israeli officials, including the foreign minister, have said Washington is unwilling to give such guarantees.

Earlier this week, Israeli envoys met U.S. officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites). The officials proposed to evacuate nearly all Gaza settlements, as well as six West Bank settlements, a senior Israeli government official said.

Sharon has suggested the Gaza pullout as part of a plan to reduce friction with the Palestinians in the absence of a peace agreement. The plan is expected to include a limited pullback from the West Bank, where Israel would impose a boundary.

[madape]

So much for the escalation (at least from Hamas). This article from DEBKA makes it seem like Hamas has been almost completely incapacitaded through mismanagement and strong Israeli counterattacks. Who says you can't beat terrorism by fighting it head-on?

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Hamas’ Missteps Set Scene for Yassin Assassination

DEBKAfile Special Report

March 23, 2004, 4:18 PM (GMT+02:00)

The same mistakes that set the scene for the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin are now tying the hands of his organization for carrying out its sworn revenge mega-strike against his Israeli killers.

The funeral procession that accompanied his coffin to burial on Monday March 22 was not quite as impressive or frenetic as Hamas leaders would have liked. The Arab world saw more impressive turnouts after the deaths of Egypt’s Gemal Abdul Nasser in 1972, Syria’s Hafez Assad in 2000 and King Hussein of Jordan a year later. Aziz Rantissi, senior Hamas spokesman and candidate to succeed the dead sheikh, would have preferred to delay the funeral until later in the week to gain time for staging a full-dress Palestinian national event and preparing some spin on the succession struggle. However, Ismail Hanya rushed the preparations forward and the result was a plain plywood box carried aloft without much ceremony and a foreshortened funeral, over before the masses could rally on the streets of the Arab world to voice their anger at the assassination.

The spin came a day later in the form of an implausible claim that Hamas would choose its next leader in a democratic election – a virtual contradiction in terms.

Hanya had good reason to hurry the ceremonial along. He was anxious to draw a thick line between the before and after of the episode so as to divert attention from the errors of judgment of which he and fellow Hamas leaders were guilty and for which Yassin paid with his life.

For one, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that the heads of Hamas did not believe Israel would actually send tanks into Gaza Strip Palestinian refugee camps. But they were wrong. In the week prior to Yassin’s killing, Israeli tanks struck five times - in Nuseyrat, al Bureij, twice in Rafah and once in Abasan near Khan Younes, accounting for 70 dead operatives, a heavy loss in relation to the size of Hamas.

Before that, On March 14, the double suicide bombing of Israel’s Mediterranean Ashdod Port that left 10 Israelis dead was perceived by Hamas as a fiasco. The months of intelligence work, complex pre-planning and funds invested were designed to produce an Israeli death toll running into hundreds. And worse, for a mini-operation, Hamas threw to the winds the valuable intelligence secret of how to fool Israeli scanners at border crossings. This was probably obtained from the Hizballah who got it from Elhanan Tannenbaum the returned captive who has been under interrogation since his released by the Hizballah.

Having discovered the chink in its security, Israel has stopped it up.

In the same fateful week, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report, the Hamas leadership lost its last western intelligence contact, Alistair Crook from the UK, who promised the Foreign Office in London that he would rope the Hamas into the joint “British Security Project” set up in the Gaza Strip with the object of bringing law and order to the streets of the territory. However, Crook got nowhere with the Hamas and the Foreign Office ordered him to give up and leave.

Even more disastrously, the Hamas did not believe the Israeli government’s vow, published after the Ashdod attack, to target all ranks of its organization. They satisfied themselves with routine safety precautions instead of going to ground as they did six weeks ago. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin paid the price for this imperturbability. He stayed at home as usual except when he went to the mosque in full view of Israel’s eyes in the sky, which disproved the story Hamas put about that he had moved house.

It was only after his death that the Hamas perceived they had been treated to the second half of Israel’s massive 2002 operation on the West Bank in the wake of the Netanya Park Hotel massacre, an operation aimed at cutting terrorist capabilities down to the bone. They found themselves left with insufficient resources for wreaking the revenge they craved and mounting a striking mega-terror attack that would bring Israel to its knees.

This realization dawned on them too late after too many losses:

1. The Ashdod Port strike had blown for good their most important method of smuggling terrorists past heavy security - a cargo container. Months will be needed before they can come up with a new dodge.

2. Hamas lacks the organization for operations outside the Gaza Strip. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report Hamas can field only one competent operative on the West Bank, Ahmed Bader. But even he is hardly active after lying low for several months in the Ramallah district to avoid the long arm of Israeli security. He is therefore not the man to orchestrate mega attacks.

3. It is no good counting on Arafat’s Fatah-al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for an operation that will spill the blood of hundreds of Israelis. This group is not capable of much beyond sending suicide bombers with explosive belts against buses, cafes and malls – nothing more impressive.

To find terrorists capable of large-scale massacres, the group was forced to turn to major outside terrorist players. Hizballah and al Qaeda have therefore been asked to perform expeditiously against an Israeli or Jewish target overseas. Security has been stepping up in all parts of Israel and increased for Israeli embassies aboard and Jewish synagogues and schools.

Hamas has no real overseas resources – except in Syria. The Hamas plea has accordingly been addressed to the Hizballah, al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran, all of whom function in many countries and know how to plant agents in Israel.

The question now is does such an operation suit the agenda of any of these partners in terror. Israel will soon find out.