Gaza strip
Retaliating for a terrorist bombing, Israeli rockets targeted a jeep transporting Dr. Abdel Rantisi. A pediatrician by trade and a strident leader of the radical Hamas organization, Rantisi threatened, “We will continue with our holy war and resistance until every last criminal Zionist is evicted from this land.” Another Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, joined in declaring, “This crime won’t pass without punishment against the Zionists. It’s time for Palestinian society to throw the road map into the garbage.” He added that “the Hamas response will be like an earthquake?” Asked whether this would include targeting Israeli politicians, Zahar said, “An eye for an eye… a politician for a politician.”
By targeting Rantisi, the Israelis created a large wedge between the Hamas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by their new Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas. Further complicating the process is the fact that Rantisi enjoys strong popularity among Palestinians, and the attack clearly undermines efforts by Abbas to resume a dialogue with Hamas and other militant groups.
Hizballah
According to the DEBKAfile Internet news service, “A senior US official has been in secret negotiations with the group’s leaders for its voluntary disarmament, its withdrawal from the Israeli frontier and parts of southern Lebanon and a pledge to stay out of Iraqi Shiite affairs. That’s for starters. Next, the Bush administration’s emissaries will demand guarantees from Hizballah leaders to desist from supporting Yasser Arafat and his Fatah-Tanzim and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as the Hamas and the Jihad Islami, and to break off operational interchanges with those Palestinian terror groups. The Americans also want an assurance that in the event of an outbreak of hostilities with Iran, the Hizballah will stand aside and not open a second anti-American front. Accession to these demands would end the Hizballah’s life as a fire-eating radical terrorist organization and remake it as a Lebanese Shiite political movement, safe from the threat of American assault. US officialdom is talking directly to Hizballah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, head of a group branded a terrorist organization and widely associated with the design and setting up of the 9/11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington. The middleman is the Lebanese Shiite religious leader Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Hizballah’s spiritual guide who is also esteemed by Iraqi Shiites. Given the dramatis personae, the talks, still at an early stage, are extremely delicate, depending heavily on the course of events in Iraq and the state of US-Iranian relations.”
Syria
According to the DEBK A file news report, “The ground in Damascus is shaking hard in the face of the decision by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s decision to finally get rid of General Mustafa Tlas, the veteran fixture of both Assad regimes from the days of the Soviet-Syrian military alliance. Apart from considerations of age, he has to go because his son, Firas Tlas, was the Syrian government’s point man for its oil and weapons smuggling transactions with the Saddam regime. He also arranged for the clandestine transfer of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction from Baghdad, Tikrit and al Qaim, into Syria and Lebanon. Parts of this arsenal have since been destroyed; the rest buried under an army base in northern Syria and in huge pits dug by Syrian engineering units in the Beqaa valley. As DEBKAfile was first to reveal on April 3, Syria also set up a secure escape route across its territory for high-ranking members of the Saddam regime.
“To distance himself from his Saddam associations in Washington’s eyes, the Syrian president needs to remove anyone named Tlas from his government. Those charging the Bush and Blair governments with exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction need look no further than Firas Tlas for their facts. He has them at his fingertips. In fact, the Tlases, father and son, are now rich men, paid handsomely for their services by the deposed Iraqi ruler.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One