[iwar] [fc:Case.Study:.Perceptions.Management.in.the.Middle.East]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-01-21 08:16:45
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 08:16:45 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Case.Study:.Perceptions.Management.in.the.Middle.East]
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Israel's official account of the Palestinian Authority's connections 
with a ship found loaded with weapons makes little sense, writes 
Brian Whitaker

by  Brian Whitaker
The Guardian
Monday January 21, 2002

At a select gathering in London last week, Israeli intelligence 
officers briefed journalists on the strange affair of Karine A, the 
ship seized by Israeli commandos with 50 tonnes of weapons on board.

I know it was a select gathering because I was one of those selected 
by the Israeli embassy NOT to attend - on the grounds that they 
disliked what I had written about the affair in the Guardian 
(including a World dispatch from last Monday).

That, along with several abusive emails in response to last week's 
article, encourages me to return to the subject this week. Although 
most of the Arab world dismisses the story as an Israeli fabrication 
from beginning to end, the basic outline of what happened is, so far 
as I know, true: the Karine A, captained by a man with connections to 
the Palestinian Authority, and laden with a variety of weapons 
including rockets and mortars, sailed from the Gulf to the Red sea, 
where the Israelis intercepted it.

But the official version, as told by Israeli spokesmen and spoon-fed 
to selected journalists, makes little sense when it moves on to the 
questions of who did it and why.

The ship and its voyage Israel has so far failed to substantiate its 
crucial claim that the Karine A belongs to the Palestinian Authority. 
If true, that would provide a direct link to the Palestinian 
Authority's leadership, including Yasser Arafat.

It is now clear that when Israel made this claim its intelligence 
service had not checked the ship's ownership with the registration 
authorities - a relatively simple matter - and was relying on 
something said by the ship's Palestinian captain, Omar Akawi, under 
interrogation.

The original army press release on January 4 said that "preliminary 
investigation of the team members arrested revealed that the Karine A 
ship was purchased by Adel Mughrabi in Lebanon." Its document 
described Mr Mughrabias "a major buyer in the Palestinian weapons 
purchasing system".

On the same day, "senior Israeli officials" told the Washington Post 
that Mr Mughrabi had not bought the ship in Lebanon, but in Greece or 
Bulgaria.

Although the army had been careful to point out that its information 
was "preliminary" - and therefore tentative - numerous Israeli 
spokesmen and politicians immediately treated it as established fact.

On January 7, for instance, the defence minister, Binyamin 
Ben-Eliezer, met the two senior European envoys, Javier Solana and 
Miguel Moratinos. He told them that "the ship was purchased by the 
Palestinian Authority after September 11" and that "the whole 
operation was managed and funded by the Palestinian Authority in 
cooperation with Iran and other sources".

One of the conclusions they were supposed to draw from this was that 
the EU should reconsider its funding of the authority.

Unfortunately for Mr Ben-Eliezer, on the day of his meeting, the 
shipping newspaper, Lloyds List, published documents showing that the 
legal owner of the Karine A is an Iraqi passport holder named Ali 
Mohamed Abbas.

Mr Abbas had given the registration authorities an address and 
telephone number in Yemen, but he has so far not been traced. The 
Israeli version of the ship's voyage is also confused. According to 
the original army statement, it sailed first to Sudan and picked up 
normal cargo.

Members of the smuggling team replaced the original crew and in 
November it sailed to Hodeidah in Yemen. In December, according to 
the army, it sailed into the Gulf, "to the beaches of Iran near Qeshm 
Island".

"There a ferry approached it, most likely arriving from Iran, from 
which the weapons stored in 80 large wooden crates were transferred 
and loaded on to the ship."

This account appears to have come from interrogation of the crew 
rather than high-technology tracking.

The army now says that the island concerned was Kish, not Qeshm. 
Asked to explain the discrepancy, a spokesman at first denied that 
Qeshm had ever been mentioned. He later said Qeshm appeared only in 
English-language versions and was presumably a mistranslation from 
Hebrew.

The Israelis say the Karine A loaded its weapons in the Gulf on the 
night of December 11-12. Its interception by commandos in the Red 
Sea, 300 miles south of Eilat, was not until January 3 - almost three 
weeks later.

That is an extraordinarily long gap, which has not yet been fully 
explained. According to the army, the ship "had to divert to Hodeida 
port in Yemen due to technical problems".

The role of the Palestinian Authority Apart from claiming that the 
ship belongs to the Palestinian Authority, Israel says that "senior 
figures" in the PA were involved in the smuggling, and that the 
weapons were intended for use by the authority.

Given the stringency of Israeli security measures, this is the part 
that many people find most unconvincing. Would the Palestinian 
Authority really be so stupid as to imagine that it could 
successfully import the weapons in this way?

Assuming the ship had not been stopped in the Red sea and had passed 
through the Suez canal without being caught by the Egyptians, the 
problem would be how to sneak its weapons into Gaza without the 
Israelis noticing. At current levels of surveillance, the chances of 
that happening are almost nil.

Moving the 62 large rockets within Gaza would also be extremely 
difficult because of Israeli checkpoints. The rockets' range is only 
12 miles, so in order to attack Tel Aviv and most major Israeli 
cities, they would have to be moved out of Gaza and into the West 
Bank - which is well nigh impossible.

The four "senior" Palestinians who have been identified so far are 
not exactly household names, and the extent of corruption in the 
Palestinian Authority will make it difficult to establish whether 
they were acting in an official capacity or as part of a private 
racket.

Last week Michael Jansen, writing in the Beirut newspaper, the Daily 
Star, questioned whether two of them were still connected with the 
authority. He quoted Palestinian sources as saying that Omar Akawi, 
the ship's captain, "left Gaza nearly two years ago with his family 
and has made no contact with the Palestinian Authority since then".

In interviews after his arrest by the Israelis, Akawi said he had 
served as an officer in the Palestinian naval police and later worked 
as a naval traffic adviser for the Palestinian transport ministry. He 
claimed to be still employed by the authority.

Adel Mughrabi (aka Adel Awadallah and Adel Salameh) is described as 
the head of the smuggling project and is said to have bought the 
ship. According to the Daily Star, he was a member of Arafat's staff 
until the early 1980s, "when he was dismissed for conducting private 
business which conflicted with his official status".

The role of Hizbullah Shortly after the smuggling operation came to 
light, American officials suggested that the weapons were intended 
for Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shi'ite organisation, rather than the 
Palestinians.

Israel initially dismissed the idea, but defence sources later told 
Ha'aretz newspaper it was "certainly possible that some of the arms 
were earmarked for Hizbullah," - though they insisted that most "were 
clearly bound for the Palestinian Authority".

Either way, both Israel and the US agree that there was some level of 
Hizbullah involvement - for example when the weapons were loaded on 
to the ship. Hizbullah already has a well-established route for 
acquiring weapons from Iran: they are sent by air through Syria.

If the weapons on the ship were really for Hizbullah, why risk such a 
hazardous sea voyage when there were safer and simpler delivery 
methods? In the absence of a satisfactory answer to that question, it 
would be reasonable to conclude that the weapons were not for 
Hizbullah.

But there may be an explanation after all. According to Ha'aretz 
newspaper, Hizbullah's air route was shut off last year when "Turkey 
began intercepting Iranian aeroplanes delivering weapons to Damascus".

Syria's current attitude to the weapons flights is also uncertain. 
President Asad has been trying to appear co-operative in the "war 
against terrorism" and it would not be surprising if the Americans - 
who formally outlawed Hizbullah last November - had been pressing him 
to stop the weapons flights.

If Hizbullah does indeed have problems flying weapons in, smuggling 
them by sea would make more sense. Last week (at the select gathering 
for journalists in London), Israeli intelligence wove a new Lebanese 
villain into the plot: Imad Mughniyeh, who is said to be the 
"mastermind" of the smuggling operation.

Although little has been heard of him since the 1980s, his inclusion 
may stimulate British and American interest in the affair. He is on 
the FBI's "20 most wanted" list (accused of the 1983 bombing of the 
US embassy in Beirut and the hijacking of a TWA airliner) and is 
blamed for the kidnapping of two Britons in Lebanon, Terry Waite and 
John McCarthy.

He was reportedly expelled from his refuge in Iran after the 
September 11 attacks, but the Lebanese authorities denied that he had 
returned to Lebanon.

The role of Iran Israel maintains that the weapons came from Iran. If 
this is true - and there is no good reason to doubt it - what does it 
indicate?

Many Israeli politicians see it as evidence of a new strategic 
alliance between the Palestinian Authority and the Iranian 
government. But most non-Israeli observers of Iran ridicule the idea 
totally, for a variety of historical, political and religious 
reasons. It also conflicts with the foreign policies adopted by 
President Khatami.

The trouble with Iran, though - as one Iranian exile remarked last 
week - is that it has two governments and 10,000 leaders. If you are 
going to pin blame, you have to determine which one is responsible.

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz newspaper suggests that the arms shipment cannot 
have had full backing from the Iranian authorities. If it were 
officially approved, the Karine A would not have picked up the 
weapons at night from another ship near Kish: it would have gone 
straight to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and loaded its cargo 
openly.

Loading secretly near Kish could point to involvement by a section of 
the Revolutionary Guards or one of the wealthy religious 
"foundations" that operate largely outside state control.

The source of the weapons might be easier to identify if we knew 
whether the primary motive behind the smuggling was political or 
financial, or a bit of both. Israeli estimates put the value of the 
weapons at anything between $10m and $100m. Was the recipient 
supposed to pay for them, or were they a donation?

What does it all mean? The only thing we can say with confidence is 
that when the full picture emerges it will be a lot more complex than 
the current official version.

There are still many pieces in this jigsaw that don't fit, but 
Israeli politicians have already decided what the finished picture 
should look like and tailored it to reinforce Israeli policies.

The Karine A affair has already been invoked as grounds for the 
overthrow of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and for not 
resuming the peace process.

Binyamin Netanyahu, former Israeli prime minister and probably a 
future contender for power, said last week that it means there cannot 
be a Palestinian state ... ever.

"With its own independent port, such a state would receive shiploads 
of arms, day and night, and we would find ourselves facing a 
terrorist state, armed to the teeth," he said.

Meanwhile, the Hizbullah connection can be used to push Hizbullah - 
and, by extension, Lebanon and Syria - to the top of America's 
anti-terrorism list.

And the Iranian connection, even if it does not really involve the 
Iranian state, can be used to stymie hopes of a rapprochement between 
Tehran and the west.

None of these goals will contribute anything to peace and stability 
in the Middle East. But you can be sure that Israeli embassies around 
the world will be working hard to promote them at select gatherings 
of diplomats and journalists.

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