Note: The translations of articles from the Hebrew press are prepared by the Government Press Office as a service to foreign journalists in Israel. They express the views of the authors.
"OBEYING IRANIAN ORDERS"
(Article by Oded Granot, "Ma'ariv", Nov 8, 1998, p.6B)
One does not need to make a great effort in order to understand how it
happened that the Islamic Jihad suddenly woke up and sent its members to
blow themselves up in the Mahane Yehuda market.
The most logical explanation: They were responding to a clear and
unambiguous order from Teheran. Islamic Jihad, as is known, accepts the
authority of the Iranians, and unlike the Hamas is almost completely
dependent on them for the financing of its operations. Whoever listened to
the stormy speech of the spiritual leader Ali Khamenei in Teheran last
week could not have failed to see that the Iranians wanted a large scale
attack, and quickly. Khamenei heinously insulted Arafat, and called on
opponents of the agreement in the territories to take up arms. Hizballah
in Lebanon supported this call.
An additional explanation is the desire of Islamic Jihad not to be left
behind by Hamas, who took responsibility for the attacks in Beersheva and
Gush Katif. Furthermore, the Islamic Jihad supports the view that
everything must be done to stop the implementation of the Wye memorandum,
which obligates the PA to hit the terrorist infrastructure hard.
Islamic Jihad, which is a much smaller and weaker organisation than Hamas,
knows very well that it is currently in danger of involving itself in a
frontal clash with the PA. It could have learnt this from the way in which
Arafat referred to the Friday attack in Mahane Yehuda. The PLO leader
spoke for the first time of "criminal acts of terror", an expression which
has not been heard in the past with regard to Hamas attacks.
There is no mistaking the Arafat's current determination to do everything
in his power to prevent Netanyahu from finding a pretext not to approve or
implement the Wye Agreement. If it becomes conclusively clear that the
terrorists did indeed set out from areas under Israeli control, and not
from Area A which is under PA control (even if they lived thee for a short
period), Arafat will be able to claim that it is not possible to blame the
PA in this case for not doing enough to stop terrorism. The Americans, it
may be assumed, will support these claims.