US report says Hezbollah set up rogue Fatah cells

The Daily Star ^ | August 22 2003 | Nicholas Blanford

[knighthawk]

Hizbullah has established rogue Fatah Tanzim cells in the West Bank to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks to derail any chances of a peace breakthrough between the Palestinians and Israel, according to a report published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Called the Shiva Brigades, the cells are funded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards based in Lebanon and have “significantly expanded Hizbullah’s targeting capabilities as well as its political goals,” the report said.

“As disturbing as the recent flare-up on Israel’s northern border is, it pales in comparison to the far greater threat that Hizbullah poses in the West Bank,” the report said.

The report also asserts that the Shiva Brigades have enhanced Hizbullah’s alleged “global reach” with operatives plotting to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to China and conducting surveillance of the Israeli Embassy in Berlin.

Hizbullah said it was unaware of the claims carried by the report.

However, the claims contradict the assessment of a senior European security source based in Gaza that Hizbullah’s penetration of the Palestinian territories has been insignificant. Instead, Hizbullah has concentrated its efforts in establishing intelligence-gathering cells among the Israeli-Arab population in northern Israel, the source said.

The Washington Institute report said the existence of the Shiva Brigade first emerged in September 2002 following the arrest of a senior operative Ghaleb Abdel-Hafez Abdel-Qader Ikbariya. According to Ikbariya’s confession, the Shiva Brigades contain two wings, a military component to wage attacks in Israel and a political component to infiltrate brigade members into the Palestinian Authority and its security bodies.

The report says that initially, Mounir Maqdah, a colonel in Fatah and the dominant military leader in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp outside Sidon, served as a conduit to channel funds from the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon to the West Bank cells. Since April 2002, however, the main go-betweens are Qais Obeid, an Israeli-Arab from Taibe in northern Israel now based in Lebanon, and senior Fatah officials in Jordan, according to the report.

“Hizbullah’s Shiva Brigades pose the most challenging and immediate threat to both the cease-fire and the ‘road map.’ Iran continues to sponsor Palestinian terrorism at a frenetic pace, and the lethal capabilities of Fatah and other terrorist elements in the West Bank are significantly enhanced by the presence of Hizbullah units there,” the report said.

The European security source said the similarity between Hizbullah attacks in South Lebanon and some of the tactics of Hamas does not mean that they were introduced by the Lebanese group.

“The Americans make too much of a deal about this,” the source said. “It doesn’t take Hizbullah to teach these tactics to another group. They can do it themselves.”

Although there have been persistent reports of Hizbullah involvement in the Palestinian territories since the beginning of the intifada three years ago, the source said that some may be linked to suspected “sting” operations by Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service. He referred to a series of assassinations of Palestinian militants around 18 months ago after they had been contacted by “Hizbullah” for potential recruitment.

“We suspect that they were being set up by the Shin Bet,” the source explained.

A militant would receive a phone call from someone claiming to be a Hizbullah operative and be given a contact number with Lebanon’s 961 international code. Answering the phone, however, would be a member of Shin Bet.

“They would arrange to meet somewhere,” the source said. “It would be a way of flushing the militants out into the open.”

[knighthawk]

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