Briefing by
Ambassador Nimrod Barkan, Special Advisor to the Foreign Minister
Colonel Miri Eisin, of the Intelligence Corps of the IDF
National Media Center, Jerusalem,
April 11, 2002
Ambassador Nimrod Barkan:
Ladies and gentleman, good afternoon. We are happy to welcome
Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell, upon his arrival in Israel, and
we are to a large extent grateful to the United States for taking
upon itself this difficult task of trying to restore security and
peace here between us and the Palestinians. Let me try to make a few
comments concerning the visit, and if you do have any questions, I
understand the sequence is that I speak, and then Col. Eisin after
me, and then questions will follow both our words.
Arafat feels today empowered vis-a-vis the United States. He feels
that he has succeeded in forcing the United States to come down from
positions it has held before, and to compromise with positions that
he is holding. His sense is that the decision by the Secretary to
meet him is a major American concession to him, taking into account
the fact that two or three weeks ago, Vice President Cheney put a
whole set of conditions to him (which he hasn't met, as you may
know), and now Powell is coming here and meeting him without any
preconditions. He has a very strong sense of empowerment over the
weak. He also feels that the Americans have no real leverage on him,
while he has substantial leverage on them. He feels that he can
sabotage American foreign policy in the Middle East, and dictate
American policies concerning the Palestinians, due to this ability
that he has. He strongly senses that the United States cannot attack
Iraq if it so decides, without his consent because he feels he can
burn the entire Arab world through a few acts of terrorism against
Israelis, and thus force the United States into appeasing him. That's
how he feels, therefore serving the interests of Saddam Hussein. And
that is a very difficult position for the United States to start the
negotiations with Arafat from. He says that he has leverage with the
United States and an ability to threaten American strategic interests
in the region.
Israel is today faced with three options:
One option, which of course has been rejected, as you know, by many,
is to stay in the territories, to stay in the places we took until
there is a major change on the situation.
The second option is just to withdraw, and leave the towns,
the town centers and villages which we took for anyone who may want
to take them over. It is clear that, if we do that, the entire area
that we will evacuate would be immediately taken over by the more
extreme elements within Palestinian society. If we are "lucky", the
Tanzim will take over, and if we are not lucky, then the Hamas and
the Islamic Jihad - an organization which is operated from Iran
actually - will take over. I don't think that this is something that
any one of you would like to see.
Therefore our position, as stated by the Prime Minister in the
Knesset, is one that is also commensurate with the position declared
by National Security Adviser, Condoleesa Rice, on the Sunday talk
shows: that we do not believe that Israel should withdraw and leave
chaos after that. The withdrawal should be coordinated in such a way
that Israeli forces will be replaced by a stable force that will
enable us to be sure that terrorism will not begin immediately
against Israel from the areas that we evacuate. After all, ladies and
gentlemen, the meaning of something like that is that Israel would
have to reenter all these areas, and that we would reenter the cycle
that we have seen, because of the terrorist activities, and that is a
sure prescription for disaster. We do not want that.
The third option is really to find some kind of a force that will
assure us that there is no terrorism operating against Israel from
the territories that we evacuate. We do not know what it is exactly
that Secretary Powell is coming to us with, after he is through with
the Arab world. It must be clear that the game here is between the
United States demanding a declaration of a ceasefire from Arafat, and
being satisfied with that - and that, unfortunately, is clearly
insufficient, in view of my explanation before about the dangers of
evacuation without a replacing authority - or that the United States
will demand, as we think is the case, even though we do not know for
sure, that Arafat agree to the Zinni plan, as it was reformed and
improved to satisfy Palestinian needs, shortly before the Passover
massacre, that particular plan to which the President of the United
States referred when he said, the day before the massacre, that there
is a good chance of achieving a ceasefire between Israel and the
Palestinians. For us, not only the acceptance by Arafat of this
(version) of the Zinni plan and the declaration that ensues from it,
but also the implementation of this particular plan is crucial to our
ability to withdraw, in order to provide security for Israelis and
Palestinians alike.
These are basically my main points, and I would like to make one
reference to the situation in Lebanon and then allow Col. Eisin to
say her piece.
About the situation on the Israel-Lebanese border. The situation on
the Israel-Lebanese border is very tense. Hizbullah is clearly
escalating it's acts of provocation against Israel, trying to drag it
into a major confrontation in the northern region. The Hizbullah is
operated in this context by the Iranians, and the Syrians clearly do
not understand the nature of the warnings in the Israeli diplomatic
messages, which have been passed to them both by us and by the United
States. Those elements in Syria who detract from the seriousness of
the American demand that they harness or reign in the Hizbullah, and
detract from the danger of an Israeli reaction are playing a very
dangerous game. And it is very, very important that those elements
within the Syrian government that fail to understand the seriousness
of the situation will reevaluate and restudy the situation, so that
things will not go completely out of control for them and they become
the pawns of the Hizbullah who is playing a very cruel and
manipulative game there for the Iranians.
In conclusion, let me just
say the following: The entire episode that we have been going through
is a result of the terrorist activities, the suicide bombing, leveled
against us. Whole families were obliterated. The one thing that
particularly touched me personally was the two latest events. The
one, the terrorist attack on Passover, where elderly people were
killed, as I was sitting at the Passover table with my 94-year-old
mother in law. I didn't tell them about the massacre, because I
didn't want to spoil the atmosphere, and we knew that old people were
murdered there without anything bothering the murderers. And then the
following terrorist attack in Haifa where whole families, people
my
age, with children, the age of my children, went out to do
exactly what I did, go out for a Pesach lunch, were killed in cold
blood. This was the thing that broke the hearts of many Israelis and
made it impossible for us not to carry out a major military move to
prevent
it. That is why it is so important that we should not have to
relive this experience.
Two more points I want to make: we will be able to provide you with
details about the abuse of the Palestinian refugee camps, and abuse
of the holy places by the Palestinians in the recent conflagration, I
think we have a short video to demonstrate that, and with that I
conclude and will be open for questions later on.
(Video was not shown, due to technical difficulties.)
Colonel Miri Eisin:
Hello and good afternoon. Today I'm here on April 11th. I'm going to
be speaking today only about Jenin. As you know, in military
intelligence we have been working extensively on documents. To date,
over the last 10 days, we've managed to translate and explain around
a dozen documents, different documents of different types, which have
shown the connection of the Palestinian Authority to terrorism, of
Yasser Arafat personally funding terrorism. What I want to try and
show today a bit more is the involvement of the Palestinian security
apparatus directly in terrorism. I'm going to focus on Jenin, it's
sort of an accident but it is Jenin. I am going to use this as an
example.
I want to explain a little bit more in depth the background of where
we found the documents and of what we are doing with them. There have
been a lot of contentions about the authenticity, and I think you
journalists know probably better than me at the moment what the
Arafat compound in Ramallah looks like. It is a large round area
where there are several dozens of offices; we at the moment are
encircling Arafat's own office, and we entered dozens of offices
within the compound, not of Arafat himself. We entered into Fuad
Shoubaki's - the chief financial advisor - we've shown many things
from his office; and what we captured was in boxes, in files, a lot
of things that were being prepared to be destroyed. Only in the last
few days have we really started to assimilate more the amounts, the
mounds of paper that we found.
In these papers in the last few days, we started finding more things
from the office of Tafik Tirawi, he is the head of the general
intelligence. The general intelligence is responsible within the
Palestinian Authority - as its name, general intelligence,
(suggests), as opposed to preventive security, they basically look at
all of the different problems within the authority; they tell Tafik
Tirawi, who sits in Ramallah. Tafik Tirawi, himself a colonel, is
with Arafat at the moment within the compound, and we took out all of
his files.
Now, as I said, as an intelligence officer - when you take out
the files of a different intelligence, it takes a little time to
understand them. They have their own filing system on the one hand,
and besides that, what they are looking at isn't necessarily what we
look for. Because of that, we have been assimilating these different
documents, and the document that I am going to talk about now is, as
an intelligence officer, the kind we always want to find. It's an
intelligence release that an intelligence officer from Jenin wrote to
Tafik Tirawi on the 4th of February 2002. Everything that I will
explain here is on the IDF site (http://www.idf.il), the original in
Arabic and a translation into English. As it is their own
intelligence reports, it wasn't the sort of thing that I pick up,
read, and immediately recognize everything in it, because it has all
of their different nicknames for their own sources, for their own
different things, and it takes us time to understand the
connections.
What is amazing in part of these documents, because they are
unidentified sources of the general intelligence within this document
itself, is the fact that there are names, that I am going to go
through now, that were the hardcore of certified terrorists that were
fighting in Jenin, until now, including now. As you know, there is
still sporadic fighting going on in Jenin, it has not ended
completely there. I want to speak about what was in the report, and
about the people that the general intelligence found in the reports
we are talking about.
Item #1: They describe in this report, on the 4th of February, the
fact that the preventive security - this is the general intelligence
that is writing about the preventive security's deputy in command in
Jenin - is an Islamic Jihad man, that he informs the people from the
Islamic Jihad and the Hamas before they are supposed to be arrested,
before any of the other security apparatus; they inform them ahead of
time, as soon as they hear an Israeli airplane in the area, to make
sure that they should know, that they should get out of the way
because maybe the Israelis are looking for them. I'm talking about
preventive security, the Palestinian Authority in February informing
certified terrorists - I'll go through the list in a moment; these
are names that have been on our lists for a very long time - to make
sure that they know.
This is just a portion of the paper itself. All of the underlining
that you see there is the original underlining because the report was
sent from Jenin to Ramallah. Somebody read it in Ramallah and
underlined it, we found it already underlined, informing as I said.
The report itself, in the area that we are looking at right now (on
screen) with all of the little side lines, is explaining in depth who
are the terrorists in Jenin, and it explains the following. As I
said, you can read the entire document afterwards on our web site and
with the translation; and I am sure that you will take the Arabic and
retranslate it, because you won't accept our translation.
What the general intelligence says is that, in Jenin, the Islamic
Jihad, the Hamas, the Fatah and the preventive security are all one.
They work together, they understand each other, they run each other,
and most of the money and the funding in Jenin, both for the Fatah
and the Hamas, and of course for the Islamic Jihad, is coming from
Syria, from the heads of the Islamic Jihad. They know that this money
comes in and they don't stop it. (It also says) that, on the 27th of
November, 2001, the suicide bomber who exploded in Afula and killed 2
Israelis near a bus station in downtown Afula - that was a joint
effort of the Islamic Jihad and the Fatah Tanzim. This is in their
general intelligence report, not in ours. Within the report itself it
explains, as I said, that the deputy commander of security of the
Palestinian Authority, in Jenin, is the one who tells Hamas and the
Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim who is about to be arrested, to make
sure that they are not arrested; that they knew of the Afula attack
ahead of time and did nothing to prevent it.
We talk on three levels when we are talking about terrorism and the
fact that the Palestinian Authority from top to bottom, not only
allows terrorism, but funds terrorism, initiates terrorism; and in
this specific report, it explains that, again, the deputy commander
of the preventive security is the one who supplied the weapons to the
Islamic Jihad and the Tanzim to do their acts of terror. This is one
report.
We've gone through dozens of reports. What we're trying now is, as I
said, it is not that we're holding anything back; I suppose we could
just hand it out and say: here, take and translate it yourself. These
are not easy to read, they are written in a language of intelligence
with their own sources. They talk here in this report specifically
about three people who are the leaders in Jenin - this was a report
from February 2002 - who are the leaders in Jenin of terrorism. This
is about terrorism
The first one is called Sabat Mawari, I do not know what his status
is to date, all I can say is that he planned and sent out the suicide
bomber on the 16th of July, to Benyamina, at the train station, where
two Israelis soldiers were killed. That he planned and sent out the
suicide bomber on the 20th of March, all of three weeks ago, where 7
Israelis were killed, 5 of them soldiers, in a bus in Wadi Ara; that
was three weeks ago. He himself planned it and he is mentioned, and
they know he is a terrorist, and that is what he does.
The second name that is mentioned in this report, and again I do not
know his status at present - all of these I'm mentioning were in
Jenin over the last two weeks, heading the fighting against us, in
the camp, from the civilian area, doing all of the things that you
know of: the booby traps, the suicide bombers within the camp itself
as we entered into it. The second name is Ali Safuri. Ali Safuri is
the second that I am mentioning - the first is Hamas, the second is
the Islamic Jihad, Ali Safuri, again, one of the planners of the
suicide bomber sent out to Benyamina on the 16th of July. And he sent
out the suicide firer - at some stage along the way we decided to
differentiate: if you blow yourself up with a bomb, then you are a
suicide bomber, but I want to remind you that they have sent out
suicide committers, who fire with fire arms, and then are killed
themselves; this is also the same idea - they know that they are
going to die. And in Hadera on the 28th of October, 4 Israelis were
killed when a suicide firer opened fire on Israelis in the middle of
downtown Hadera, and both these men were sent by Ali Safuri.
The third name is somebody you may have heard of, because he was
killed yesterday, Nusri Tawalbe, who was the head. All I can say is,
there is an interview with him, around two months ago - it was shown
yesterday on TV, and you can see it on the Channel 2 site, for those
here from Channel 2 - in which he says and expresses himself probably
better then anything that I need, within the general intelligence
report, where he says we'll stop fighting when all the Jews are back
in Poland, Latvia, Russia etc. That's in his words, not my words.
The report itself was found in Tafik Tirawi's office, the commander
of general intelligence. He himself is with Arafat at the moment in
the compound, together with a lot of the other people that I've been
mentioning from the different documents that we've been putting out.
I'd like to say, by the way, that we have additional documents; I
don't hold them back, it's just not ready yet to be put out, because
we have to understand them. Documents that connect in a strong way to
the Palestinian Authority security apparatus. I'm talking about
people within the general intelligence, the people who were supposed
to stop the terrorists, with their own reports saying: not only do we
do nothing, but we arrested a suicide bomber and let him go and he
exploded afterwards. This is in their own reports, more additional
things that we will let out.
I have one additional thing that you may have heard on the news
already. In Tulkarm today - I remind you that we exited Tulkarm two
days ago - in Tulkarm today, we went in and we arrested a woman who
was on her way to commit suicide dressed up as a pregnant woman. So
let's talk about cynicism, and how exactly do you define a woman who
gets on a bus, and looks like she is pregnant, sits down and
explodes. We arrested one such woman today, and these are just some
of the things we have stopped.
In Jenin the sporadic firing continues, because the three names that
I just mentioned were fighting in Jenin; we don't know yet what
exactly is the fate of all of these terrorists within the camp
itself.
Questions and Answers
Q: The question would be probably to both of you. How do you expect
the documents that Colonel Eisin has exposed today to impact the
decision by Colin Powell or to impact how Mr. Powell views his visit
with Mr. Arafat; and who actually presents those documents, have they
been presented to Secretary of State Powell?
A: All the documents that we are presenting, and maybe that's part of
why it takes a little bit of time, we certainly are sharing with our
American counterparts. I'm talking about counterparts, I don't work
in diplomatic or political circles, I work in the military circles.
All of these documents, there is no question about their
authenticity, and we have truckloads of documents, it really takes a
long time to go through them, and their impact is something that
maybe somebody political would be able to talk about.
A: As you know, the administration in Washington has been exposed to
the entire collection of Israeli intelligence throughout the last
three years. There has been exceptional intelligence cooperation
under the Prime Minister's instructions. It is not that the United
States is not aware of who is organizing what, and what this sort of
fellows were doing. The remarks of President Bush about Israel's
right to self-defense etc. are clearly a result of this knowledge by
the administration. Not only that, may I point out that the Zinni
plan, both the first and the second Zinni plan, were based on his
understanding that it is the Palestinian Authority that knows and
does not stop the terrorists from operating. And he knew very well,
by the way, that the Palestinian Authority was privy to all the
planning concerning terrorist activities. And that is why we think
that it is incumbent upon the Secretary of State to be very well
aware of what he has known before, what the Administration has known
before, what the President has pointed out before, what General Zinni
spoke about before, when he comes to us and asks us for withdrawal.
We will not be able to withdraw, if there is a danger of the
resumption of terrorism from the cities that we will withdraw from.
This would be suicidal for us, and it would be a folly of great
magnitude that would only lead to the resumption of the fighting. It
would be irresponsible to ask us to withdraw, and I am convinced that
the United States is not interested in creating chaos that will lead
to further conflagration.
Q: What kind of conditions do you see before the withdrawal
concerning forces. Are you talking about American forces, for
instance.
A: As you have noticed, I have not yet said what are the exact
circumstances that we feel would provide us with sufficient security
in order to continue the process of withdrawal. We will of course
withdraw from wherever we don't fear that there is a danger of
resumption of terrorism, as we have withdrawn from villages and as we
have withdrawn from Tulkarm and Kalkiliya, even though the jury is
still out on the wisdom of that withdrawal; that was done only
because of pressure by the United States, because we have not yet
fully developed our position concerning that. And, surprisingly
enough, we plan to present it first to Secretary Powell, and only
after that to the press.
Q: How long can Israel hold back from having to respond to the
attacks that have been going on there with increasing velocity as you
have been talking about? So far you have held back.
A: We are concerned, as I said before, that the responsible
authorities in Syria misinterpret the messages that we and the United
States and the Secretary General of the United Nations of course are
giving them concerning the need to rein in the Hizbullah. We do not
exactly understand why they misinterpret it, but we are concerned
that this is a classic case of perception that blinds the decision
makers in Syria and that may lead to a veritable conflagration much
bigger than the one that we have seen in the West Bank. We hope that
the responsible leadership in the West will realize that there is a
real problem there in Syria in understanding the messages that we are
trying to convey to them, and we are not convinced that the Syrians
are interested in major confrontation. We are concerned that they do
not understand that this may lead to a confrontation because they may
misinterpret our decision not to react, in ways that are incorrect
and misleading. And that of course explains, it goes right to the
heart of your question of how long do we intend to wait. We intend to
wait until we are certain that the Syrians understand the nature of
our message. If we are convinced that the Syrians are there in order
to really provoke an all-out war with them, then they know, they will
drag us into this and we won't have a choice. But we want to make
sure that we have done everything possible to warn them about the
dangers that are looming in the future. And of course a lot depends
on what are the actual results of the provocations, the terrorist
provocations by the Hizbullah and some of their allies in Lebanon.
I would say that if the results are such that they cost us a lot of
human lives, our ability to restrain ourselves would be diminished,
and if the confrontation or the shooting by the Hizbullah is
restricted to areas where no civilians are being hurt, no soldiers
are being hurt, then it is easier for us to restrain ourselves. But I
think that the main reason why we are restraining ourselves is our
sense that the Syrians don't understand exactly what is going on. At
least we hope that this is the case. And therefore a better message
has to be conveyed to the Syrians, and maybe there is a chance to
quiet the border, without a need for Israeli reaction or activity to
stop the firing against us.
Q: Obviously we don't expect you to tell us everything that you're
going to tell the Secretary of State. But there must be certain basic
principles guiding Israel's approach to the criteria before
withdrawal. And I wonder if you could sketch at least some of those,
I mean I would assume for instance, that Israel would not accept an
international force, a peace-keeping force. But what about the
question of international monitoring, which the Americans have
suggested, international monitoring of the cease-fire? What is the
situation, now that so many weapons have been confiscated or
destroyed by Israel, so many terrorists have been either killed or
captured by Israel? What is the order of priorities now in the
familiar demands of Israel of Yasser Arafat to disarm, to confiscate
illegally held weapons, and lists that we have heard so many
times.
A: I wouldn't call this, by the way, the familiar Israeli demands
from Arafat. The demand to live and not to be attacked by terrorists
doesn't constitute for me a familiar demand, but a very basic
request, in the relationship between two sides. We are not asking him
to become violent, we are asking him to abide by his own commitments
to avoid violence. That's one thing. Secondly, naturally I will not
be able to elaborate, I just want to make two points.
First of all,
we did not reject the concept of monitors in the past, or when it was
raised. We are yet to be convinced how the monitors will supply the
security that is needed, or maybe there is some other idea that can
be acceptable to us. Another element that I want to point out is that
we have not demanded that the Palestinian Authority be dismantled. We
do not reject in principle the concept that the Palestinian Authority
be recreated, in the sense of its security forces: it's in existence,
it hasn't been dismantled, but the security forces are certainly not
in an operational situation right now, and before, they had been
basically operating with the terrorists. As Colonel Eisin said, Tafik
Tirawi is part and parcel of the very establishment of the
Palestinian Authority, and I can tell you stories - I don't want to
get into Col. Eisin's territory - of other Palestinian Authority high
operatives who cooperated with terrorism, and so it is not impossible
to reconstitute the security forces of the Palestinian Authority,
provided that they cooperate in the prevention of terrorism. We also
understand that there will have to be after the ceasefire, after
terrorism is stopped, a political element, the famous political
horizon, in which we can aspire to and work until there is no
terrorism. So a combination of all these elements, in a gradual way
that will assure us that we are not headed into another cycle of
vicious terror attacks against Israelis, is possible.
Q: All I wanted to ask is if you have some kind of general, perhaps
ballpark assessment of how severely the infrastructure of Palestinian
violence has been destroyed or debilitated or neutralized by the last
12 days of operations.
A: First of all I would say that it was hit harshly, and every day we
find more explosive labs, as we did today both near Nablus and in
Hebron, south of Hebron, and other places we keep finding more
explosive labs, more caches of weapons, and the more we go in and
enter different houses, buildings, structures to check out - we are
going into every single building and every single city that we go
into we're finding more and more. We went into Tulkarm and came out,
and two days later there is a suicide bomber with a belt around her,
so that means that there are still more there, and that means the
longer that we're in there, the more you can find.
Does it mean that we have to stay there forever? No! But we do feel
that if we had several weeks of activity, we would be able to find
more. Does that mean twice as much more? I think that we have already
found a lot. And we have to (differentiate between) the weapons that
we're finding, the weapons of the Palestinian Authority that have one
status, as part of the agreement, and the illegal weapons: all of the
explosives, and the explosive labs, and the anti tank weapons and all
the different things that of course are way beyond Oslo, that have
been smuggled into the areas. I'd say that in the area of Ramallah
we're continuously finding more, we found another cache today in
Ramallah, an explosive lab in Rashadiya, which is near Nablus. We're
consistently finding more, but the numbers sound small: 5 handguns,
10 machine guns, a Galil rifle, an explosive lab. But that's what we
are doing. We're going inch by inch, and if we wanted to go in and
destroy Palestinian civil authority, we wouldn't be doing it the way
we are doing it. We're going in very pinpointed, trying to find the
specific places where they are making this. Booby traps and charges
are different things that they make also, and in Jenin alone, just
within the camp, most of the Jenin camp was booby trapped; that was
one of our difficulties, and it is still one of the difficulties of
going in there, and it continues to be a problem with the sporadic
fire, because not everybody has surrendered within the camp
itself.