Israeli Arab demonstrations after then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon went to the Temple Mount last September prompted the Palestinian Intifada, Shin Bet Chief Avi Dichter told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday.

In his semi-annual briefing to the MKs, the head of Israel’s secret service said that the deaths of Israeli Arab demonstrators and subsequent incitement by the leadership of Israeli Arabs brought about the outbreak of the hostilities in the territories.

He said that there is a “worrisome” separatist movement growing in the Israeli Arab community, for both religious and nationalist reasons. According to Dichter, MK Azmi Bishara is one of the key leaders of the nationalist movement.

He said that most Israeli Arabs regard the events of last September and October as a mistake, but there is a growing emotional identification – within legal means – with the Palestinian Authority among Israeli Arabs.

Dichter gave the MKs a tour d’horizon of the state of the Palestinian organizations involved in hostilities against Israel. He said that Tawfik Tirawi’s General Intelligence force “co-opted” the Tanzim and Force 17, which were responsible for dozens of terror attacks against targets in the West Bank and inside Israel proper. But since last month’s cease-fire arrangements brokered by CIA chief George Tenet, Tirawi’s groups have ceased their terror activities, Dichter said. Tirawi’s people have begun taking preventive action, except that they don’t put suspects in jail but rather in “hotel-like” conditions. Furthermore, he said, the Palestinians are not conducting interrogations or investigations, which means there’s a limited intelligence picture about planned terror attacks.

By April 2000, there were indications that trouble was already brewing, he said, when some rank and file members of Palestinian security organizations, such as Mohammed Dahlan’s Preventive Security force in Gaza, began conducting terrorist activity. Eventually, Dahlan began commanding those operations. But since the Tenet agreement, he said, Dahlan’s organizations has ceased involvement, except for a few individuals.

A similar phenomenon took place with regard to the Tanzim, Fatah-related youth movement, which Dichter said was under the complete command of Yasser Arafat. Two organizations that have not taken part in any of the terror activity against Israel have been Jibril Rajoub’s Preventive Security force in the West Bank and the National Security force.

Dichter surprised the committee by saying that he favored a fence between Israel and the West Bank, similar to the one between Israel and Gaza.

A Jewish terror cell, not an underground

A Jewish terror cell is already operating in the territories, Dichter told the MKs, but he refrained from referring to it as a Jewish underground similar to the 27-member conspiracy that existed in the early 1980s and was eventually arrested by the Shin Bet.

He said that the cell has committed three shooting attacks on Palestinians in the Ramallah and Halhoul areas. One Palestinian was killed and four others wounded, he said.

Up until a few months ago there was a large measure of self-restraint on the part of Jews in the territories, but there has been an upsurge of anti-Palestinian activity, mostly in the form of vandalism, he said. The violent line in the settlement movement is led by members of Kach and Kahane Hai, as well as others in the radical right.

Dichter said that he handed over to the police the investigation into the explosion in Kach activist Noam Federman’s car, after reaching the conclusion that there were no “strategic” arms involved. The weapons found in the car on Monday were mostly “the type of equipment reservists who don’t respect the law take home from the army,” including smoke grenades, stun grenades and flares. He said the explosion was probably the result of poor handling of the material.

Grim numbers

Dichter summed up the Intifada’s statistics for the MKs, telling them that since the outbreak of the Intifada 136 Jews have been killed and 1,308 wounded by attacks, while 531 Palestinians have died, with 68 of them under the age of 16. This article ran in HaAretz on July 18, 2001

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