• The Precise Statement of the Israel Prime Minister Concerning Czechoslovakia
• Sharon's Statement on Czechoslovakia: Background by Shimon Schiffer and Nahum Barnea
• President Arafat: "Israel continues to violate International Legitimacy Resolutions" Demands Implementation of the #194 resolution and the "right of return" for all Palestinian Arab Refugees from 1948
• The Bin Laden Palestinian Arab Connection by Rony Shaked
• Terrorism: How the US Ignored the Money Trail by Rachel Ehrehfeld

Released from the Office of the Israel Prime Minister, October 4, 2001

Today, Israel suffered another heinous Palestinian terrorist attack, which took a heavy toll: Three dead and seven wounded.

All our efforts to reach a cease-fire have been torpedoed by the Palestinians.

The fire did not cease, not even for one day.

The Cabinet has therefore instructed our security forces to take all necessary measures to bring full security to the citizens of Israel.

We can rely on ourselves only.

We are currently in the midst of a complex and difficult political campaign.

I call on the Western democracies, and primarily the leader of the free world, the United States:

Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for 'a convenient temporary solution.' Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense - this is unacceptable to us. Israel will not be Czechoslovakia. Israel will fight terrorism.

There is no 'good terrorism' and 'bad terrorism,' as there is no 'good murder' and 'bad murder.'

Terrorism, as we witnessed this week in Alei Sinai, is worse than murder.

We have been fighting terrorism for over 100 years.

Unfortunately, there is no swift and immediate solution, but if we confront this terrorism united, we will be able to overcome it and bring peace.

And we shall overcome.

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Sharon was furious. Suddenly hearing that Syria is against terror, and has "always" been against terror. The serial terror enemy! And how did the German foreign minister react to those lies? With excitement.

On the heels of this introduction, there naturally came a request from Israel. "You have to make concessions to the Palestinians," said Fischer. "These concessions my be painful for your generation, but they will guarantee a better future for the next generations."

Several hours later, Sharon Spoke at a press conference and accused the West, headed by the US, that it is delivering Israel over to terror just as the West handed over Czechoslovakia to Hitler in Munich in 1938. The conversation with Fischer was like waving a red flag, one of many. For weeks Sharon had been drawing near an explosion of this kind.

Sharon's statements sparked a great deal of anger in Washington. White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said that President Bush views Sharon's statements as unacceptable. He was asked why President Bush had not been in touch with Sharon. After all, Israel and the US are allies. Fleischer answered, "This is not the time."

There were five phone calls between Sharon and Secretary of State Colin Powell since Sharon spoke at the press conference. Sharon's bureau issued a calming message. The former ambassador, Zalman Shoval, was called upon to explain that Sharon did not mean what he said, in actual point of fact. Powell, for his part, gave a damage control interview to AP, saying that occasionally there are clouds in the relationship between Israel and the US, but that they do not affect their intensity.

However, at the same time, officials at the State Department did their utmost to inflate the incident. The officials there have an agenda of their own. America is currently at a very sensitive juncture, between a lethal terror blow and the opening of a war. The world is divided into good buys and bad guys, and President Bush is the leader of the good guys. The link Sharon made between him and the most terrible act of betrayal of the twentieth century was received, at best, with a astonishment.

"There is a moment when you discover things are being done behind your back," said Sharon. "I decided, this far and no more. A war is soon to begin. Israel will be asked to make excessive concessions to the Palestinians. Should it refuse, it will be accused of undermining the war. It was the last possible moment."

In order to understand the events leading to Sharon's outburst, one has to return to September 11, 2001. In fact, the roots of the crisis predate the terror attack. Over the summer, the State Department prepared an American program for a comprehensive arrangement at the heart of which was a call for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Powell was to announce the principles of the plan in a speech to the UN General Assembly on September 19.

The plan was prepared behind Israel's back. The Israeli government was surprised; it always is. Also in the past, at times that seemed to the Israeli government as the height of friendship and coordination, American plans were made behind its back with regard to the Palestinian issue. It happened with Carter, Reagan and Bush Sr. It did not happen with Clinton.

None of these plans were ever implemented in practice. They were all "still-born," as Menahem Begin said of the Reagan plan. And that is exactly what Sharon would like to have happen to the new American plan. His statements were meant as a preemptive strike, before the American plan is revealed. They were meant as a deterrent and to make the lines of the American plan less binding.

The terror attacks in the US delayed the publication of plan, but also increased its proponents' ambitions. Facing Israel in this struggle are not only the Arabists, who have taken over the management of Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department from Jews like Dennis Ross, but also Arab officials, headed by Prince Bandar Abu Sultan, Saudi Arabia's all-powerful ambassador to Washington.

William Safire, the influential New York Times columnist, revealed last week, that the day following the terror attacks, Prince Bandar handled getting 14 of Bin Laden's relatives, who were on US soil at the time, out of America. FBI investigators protested this action to their superiors, but their protest was of no avail. Safire wrote that the Saudi royal court had made sure to water down previous investigations into Bin Laden's crimes as well. The Saudis were concerned that an in-depth investigation would lead to them, to the acts of corruption and surrendering to corruption which allow the Saudi court to survive.

Sharon claimed that from the moment the Americans decided to form a coalition against Bin Laden and to include Moslem countries in it, they put Israel on hold. In crisis situations Israel has always been changed from lawful spouse to concubine, but this time Israel was truly ignored, as though it does not even exist.

That is the case even though Sharon said that Israel has been providing the United States with "priceless" intelligence information about the Bin Laden front. Sharon gave instructions to put "everything" at the Americans' disposal, both in terms of intelligence as well as in information on the combat methods of special units. Sharon says that, covertly, the Americans thank Israel every day for the crucial information it is providing them.

However, when US Secretary of Defense Donald Ramsfeld comes to the region, the only friendly country he does not visit is Israel. Ramsfeld telephoned his counterpart, Fuad Ben-Eliezer, and let him understand that Israel is not part of the plan. Sharon had a hard time swallowing that.

Sharon asked the Americans to include Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah on the new list of terrorist organizations. The Americans refused, saying they are on the previous list. Sharon understood the refusal otherwise: In practice, the administration is distinguishing between what it defines as "global terror" (i.e., terror against America) and what it defines as "local terror" (i.e., terror against Israel).

The Americans want to include Iran in their coalition. Sharon views this American intention with deep concern, not simply because it involves the United States granting legitimacy to continued acts of terror by Hizbullah, but because it means granting legitimacy to the continued construction of Iran's nuclear power, a power which adversely affects Israel's strategic position.

And the main issue is the pressure with regard to Arafat. According to Sharon's perception, on this point the administration has moved from ignoring to undermining. Bush and Powell pressured Sharon to authorize the Peres-Arafat meeting. When Sharon objected to a meeting under fire, they pressured Arafat to halt the terrorism. However, ever since Peres and Arafat had their joint photograph taken the Americans have disappeared. They stopped pressuring Arafat, who of course got the hint, and loosened the leash.

On Thursday, Sharon was at the Shikmim Farm. The news he received was grave. After the terror attack on the settlement of Elei Sinai, the firing at the square outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the shooting on the Ramot road in Jerusalem, came the terror attack in Afula, and on another level the terrible news of the plane downed over the Black Sea.

The Palestinian Authority issued a condemnation of the terror attack at Elei Sinai. Merely hours later, a Fatah activist entered the Afula central bus station and murdered civilians. "After all that," said Sharon, "Arafat is praised by the whole world for deigning to issue a condemnation. That is completely out of line."

Sharon decided to cancel his attendance at an event at Menehmia in the Galilee, and instead to convene a press conference in Tel Aviv. The reason was the plane disaster. But when Sharon sat down to write his opening statements, he was thinking mainly of the Americans and Arafat.

The statement, including the mention of Munich, was written in his own hand, without prior consultations. Sharon erased only one sentence before stepping up to the microphone. The original statement said that he had decided to lower the flags in Israel to half-mast as a sign of mourning for the passengers who died in the plane crash. Sharon checked with the ministerial committee on ceremony, and was told that the Jewish customs preclude mourning during a holiday. Therefore, the flags remained flying at full mast.

"I held off and held off," Sharon said. "I permitted the meeting between Peres and Arafat. After that, the Americans wanted Abu Ala and also Saeb Erekat. I allowed it. But there's a limit. The moment a war begins, there will be an American delegate here with a program, and Israel will be presented as sabotaging the war effort."

Sharon chose to reprimand the administration publicly instead of doing so quietly, over the telephone. "Since when do we give the Americans speeches in advance?" he said.

On Friday, Sharon received information that the American ambassador to Tel Aviv, Dan Kurtzer, was briefing ministers against him. The ambassador explained that the prime minister's speech was damaging to Israeli-US relations. Sharon also heard that Kurtzer was supposedly involved in briefings that were given to American journalists that included harsh criticism of the prime minister. The two spoke on the phone on Friday. Sharon reprimanded the ambassador. "Imagine," he told him, "that I were to call the Number Two of your embassy and speak against your actions to him. It would never occur to me to do that." Kurtzer expressed regret.

The adversaries of the Sharon government in Washington, who have gained strength in recent weeks, do not perceive Sharon the way he perceives himself. They emphasize Sharon's internal political problems, his increasing difficulty to maneuver between his government and the Left, and Binyamin Netanyahu breathing down his neck, and maybe also the police investigation about his campaign finances that is about to begin.

Sharon has a good many reasons to be angry with the Bush administration. He is convinced that the coalition that the Americans are trying to found will not come into being, and even if it does, it will not help the Americans in their fight against terrorism. To the Americans, the price that Israel is being asked to pay is perhaps very small, but to Sharon it is unbearable.

But it is doubtful whether he chose the right time for a confrontation with the President, and he certainly did not choose the right way. He could have planned a complex process, mobilizing Israel's friends in the administration, Congress and the media or, alternatively, he could have tried to persuade Bush in private conversation. But Sharon chose to be right, not smart.

Sharon says that he does not regret his statements. "The supposed argument is behind us," he said yesterday. If the United States opens fire on Afghanistan soon, it might be that he is right. The Munich crisis will be swept away, together with many other topics, in the great current of the war.

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Doha/Qatar October 10th Wafa (Official Palestine News Agency), President Yasser Arafat emphasized today, the importance of materializing the alert status of the International community and their positive attitude towards the Palestinian issue, by launching an urgent UN resolution to oblige Israel to ceasefire and stop its aggression against the Palestinian people.

Addressing the Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Countries, OIC, convention, in Doha/Qatar, H.E. said that Israel keeps violating the International laws and resolutions by its breaches of the ceasefire and rejecting the implementation of the signed agreements, including the Mitchell Report Recommendations and the Tenet understandings.

H.E. also emphasized the importance of setting a mechanism for observing the ceasefire, by sending International observers to the Palestinian lands in order to stop the bloodshed from both sides, which is an important move to secure the area for resuming the peace process based on the Israeli withdrawal from the all Palestinian and Arab occupied lands, returning to the June 4th 1967 borders, and implementing the UN resolutions 242, 338, 425, and 194, stopping the international double standard policy committed towards the area and some parts of the world.

H.E. emphasized the Palestinian choice of peace as a strategic option, and the peaceful negotiations as the only way to solve disputes, although being targeted with the most vicious and barbaric assaults and attacks while the entire International community is busy with fighting against the heinous International terrorism.

H.E. concluded as saying that the Palestinians are ready to deal positively with the USA and the International position that meets the Palestinian expectations, in order to be free and be able to establish their own independent state, ending the occupation of the Palestinian lands and the holy sites of the Muslims and the Christians.

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Bin Laden's first serious meeting with the Palestinians came in The early '80s. In December 1979 he arrived in Afghanistan immediately After the Soviet invasion and was one of the founders of the Islamic Salvation Front, the volunteer army made up of Moslems from all over the world who joined the fight against the Communists. In the mountains of Afghanistan he met Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian from the village of Yabed next to Jenin, who was a leader of the Moslem Brotherhood in northern Samaria.

Azzam, who became Bin Laden's deputy, was an ideologue who called to Unite the Kalachnikov and the Koran in the war against the Soviets Specifically and in the war against the infidels in general. He was perhaps more of an influence than anyone else in Bin Laden's process of radicalization.

Abdullah Azzam was killed in a mysterious explosion in his car, and his men accused the CIA of responsibility for his death.

In 1990 Bin Laden established the "Jihad Front Against the Jews and the Crusaders" -- in effect, the international arm of his Al-Qaida organization. In order to give the stamp of religious law to his actions against Jews and Israel, a fatwa (religious ruling) was published in 1998 by religious authorities numbered among his supporters, according to which "All Moslems have the duty to kill the Americans and their allies anywhere on earth, without differentiating between military personnel and civilians, with the goal of liberating the el-Aksa mosque and the holy mosque in Mecca from the hold of the infidels, and in order to drive the American army From the lands of Islam."

One of the first recruits to the new organization was Nabil Oukal, a Hamas operative and a resident of the Gaza Strip, who came to Pakistan to study. There he was drafted into the organization and sent to a training camp in the mountains of Afghanistan. During his training he met one of Bin Laden's senior aides. When he returned to Gaza, Oukal met with Sheikh Yassin and reported to him on his training. He received from Yassin $10,000 to be used to train suicide bombers. To this day it is not clear if there was a direct or indirect connection between the sheikh and Bin Laden to facilitate this cooperation. Instructions were sent to Oukal By e-mail by another one of Bin Laden operatives in Britain who was Supposed to arrive in Israel to carry out terror attacks. Oukal himself was arrested on June 1, 2000, on his way to a training camp in Pakistan.

In the year 2000 other Palestinian recruits of Bin Laden's were arrested -- Sayid Hindawi from Halhoul and Basel Abu-Daka from Tulkarm, both of whom had studied in Pakistan.

The security establishment believes that Bin Laden has several "sleeper" terrorist cells in the territories, and that they could begin to operate when the directive arrives from Afghanistan or from one of the secret headquarters in Europe

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Despite sanctions, terrorists like Osama bin Laden are able to use the international banking system to finance vast and expensive networks.

In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last week, Michigan Sen. Carl Levin explained how the money moves.

Levin has introduced the Money Laundering Abatement Act to tighten protections against such international money laundering. For a full text of his testimony, go to the web at levin.senate.gov/issues/money.htm.

In the welter of events following the bombing of the World Trade Center in February 26, 1993, few noticed that the first man arrested, Mohammed Salameh -- the poor, unemployed illegal immigrant -- offered $5 million for bail.

Where could he get this kind of money?

The judge refused bail. But was the source of Salameh's offer the same as the one that funded the eight men -- arrested shortly afterward -- who planned to blow up Manhattan's tunnels and bridges and to assassinate public officials?

Were the same money sources behind the final attack on the World Trade Center on September 11?

Now, a frantic search to identify funds belonging to radical Muslim terrorist organizations is on. Osama bin Laden has been accused of being the source for both attacks on the World Trade Center, as well as the Pentagon. President George W. Bush has declared that "Al Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to organized crime." But it is more than that.

Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, is an elaborate international criminal organization and a much bigger threat than the Mafia.

"We have tougher laws against organized crime and drug trafficking than terrorism," Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee,on September 24th. And he went on to outline the Bush administration's proposals for changes in U.S. laws dealing with terrorism, incorporating some of the same legislation that has been used against organized crime and drug trafficking organizations for decades.

The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were another wake-up call to the West about terrorism and its elaborate financing.

For a long time, there has been evidence that terrorist, international drug trafficking and criminal organizations use the same fund-raising methods to enrich themselves.

Yet no one seemed to connect the dots. And no one seriously tried to crack down on their financing.

Bin Laden's is only one among many hostile international criminal organizations, often state-sponsored, that will do whatever they can to diminish the status of the United States as the only superpower.

According to a State Department report, the Taliban, who are at bin Laden's service, has the advantage of controlling the world's largest heroin production and distribution in the world.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, the heroin production soared to hundreds of tons each year. In 1999 alone, the world production of heroin was estimated at 500 metric tons; 400 were produced by the Taliban and available to fund bin Laden and his associates worldwide.

The writing was on the wall on July 5, 1991, when the Bank of England shut down what was the most important Islamic bank in the world, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). This criminal entity was created by the Pakistani Aaga Hassan Abedi "to fight the evil influence of the West"; to help with the creation of the "Islamic Bomb"; to finance all Muslim terrorist organizations; and to launder the money that was generated mostly by illicit drug trafficking and other illegal activities, including arms trafficking.

When BCCI went belly up, we learned from thousands of documents that Abu Nidal -- the notorious Palestinian terrorist organization that now enjoys the hospitality of Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hezbollah and bin Laden -- had accounts in the bank.

By the end of the 1980s, the "special services" provided by BCCI included access to Western humanitarian and international development funds, as well as drug money laundering, secret transfers of cash and bribes.

A "Black Network," a special enforcement unit supported by Abu Nidal and other terrorist organizations, operated from Pakistan. The same Pakistan that harbored bin Laden for many years while its officials told the United States that they didn't know his whereabouts. And the same Pakistan that for decades, even according to the State Department's annual report, had been a major drug trafficking and money laundering center.

Yet, now more importantly, we also discovered that the American and British governments knew and kept the bank open for a long time. The bank "that would bribe God" was able to get away with its criminal activities for decades due to Abedi's clever portrayal of the Muslim nations as victims of Western -- and particularly U.S. -- "imperialism." And when the bank was shuttered, the accusation in the Muslim/Arab and Third World countries was that the U.S. and the United Kingdom governments closed the bank to curtail the growing fiscal power of Muslim countries.

Like Abedi, anti-American, anti-Western terrorist and radical Muslim states and organizations, such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, Iraq and Iran, use Western democratic rhetoric to their advantage. But it is the willful blindness, mainly toward the growing volume of drug money laundering, exercised by Western bankers on the one hand and Western politicians on the other, that makes money laundering possible, despite the many laws and international conventions to control this phenomenon.

The BCCI was the first warning to the West. The second warning about the abuse of European and American financial markets by terrorist organizations, as well as their involvement in the illicit arms and drug trade, was made in February 1994 by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS).

The Organized Crime Unit of the NCIS warned that Middle East terrorist groups and states were targeting the financial centers of London, Frankfurt and other Western countries, and that they favor illegal drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud.

The reaction in the United States and other Western countries was a barrage of anti-money-laundering regulations and allegedly better banking supervision. A new anti-money laundering industry sprung up, and billions were spent on the development of new technologies and many instruments to monitor these illegal activities.

Yet the ease with which bin Laden Inc. was able to prosper and bilk the markets just before their attack on America is strong evidence that the anti-money-laundering measures and insider trading laws are largely ineffective. It also proves that technology alone is not the answer, that human intelligence is necessary to fight this, like other wars.

It also brought home the realization that laws and regulations are not worth the paper they are written on without the political will to implement them.

Testifying on money laundering and terrorism before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on September 26, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., warned that "the evidence is clear that terrorists are using our own financial institutions against us."

This is not surprising, since the terrorists have been using our democratic system to undermine it and destroy our way of life all along.

The naive U.S. attitude that our successful capitalistic democracy, combined with financial and technical aid negotiations, would bring around the radical Muslims failed miserably.

Despite its stated policy of not negotiating with terrorists, the Clinton administration went out of its way to appease a few of the 20th century's most notorious terror groups: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the PLO and the Irish Republican Army. All are heavily involved in the drug trade.

On the eve of the 1993 handshake on the White House lawn between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service estimated the PLO's ill-gotten gains to total between $8 billion to $10 billion, with an annual income of about $1.5 billion to $2 billion from "donations, extortion, payoffs, illegal arms dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, etc."

Since then, Washington has only aided and abetted the PLO. Since the start of the Oslo process, Arafat has received at least $3 billion more from the United States and the international community, without any serious demand for accountability, according to a report this year to Congress. Arafat, in well-documented instances, has been systematically skimming off portions of these funds, as he has with monies given to him on behalf of the refugees in the camps.

The PLO was in the drug trafficking business almost from the beginning.

Operating from Lebanon, under Habash's able leadership and assisted by a PLO-owned shipping company SUMUD, the organization exported hashish, opium, heroin and cocaine, first to Europe and later even to the United States and Australia. In return, it obtained weapons for their war against Israel and the West, and amassed a massive treasure trove. In addition, the PLO and Arafat, who enjoy the financial and strategic support of Hussein and bin Laden, have the distinction of being the organization that promoted "suicide bombers" as a weapon.

Yet the Clinton administration subsidized a multitude of radical Palestinian groups, ranging from Arafat's Fatah branch of the PLO and its military wing, the Tanzim, to the socialist-nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), headed by George Habash, all with close ties to bin Laden, Iraq and Iran.

The Bush administration seems destined to repeat the same mistake as its predecessor, dismissing verbal Palestinian leadership attacks on the United States as a need for internal "propaganda." It fails to understand, even after the terrible attacks, that all terrorist organizations are the same.

Thus, it is difficult to comprehend that the administration has just offered to remove Damascus from the State Department's list of terrorist sponsors if Syria joins the U.S.-led coalition against bin Laden. It was the Clinton White House that, despite evidence to the contrary, removed Syria from its list of the drug trafficking countries, to entice Syria to join the "peace process" in the Middle East.

The failure of that process and the compromises the United States has made to maintain an illusion of peaceful prospects had no doubt added to the Muslim radical terrorists' resolve to attack what they see as a naive and vulnerable America.

In another example of self-delusion, in 1999, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright suggested a U.S.-led coalition to negotiate with the FARC and supported Colombia President Pastrana's "land for peace" initiative, despite a report from the General Accounting Office that the FARC is running a major international criminal enterprise that, among other things, supplies hundreds of tons of cocaine and heroin to the U.S. black market.

This second Clinton "land for peace" initiative gave half of Colombia to the narco-terrorist FARC, while doing nothing to diminish its violence or appetite to control the rest of the country.

Instead of re-evaluating this misguided policy, the Bush administration, even after declaring war on terrorism, appears to be drifting toward embracing it -- by giving some regimes that sponsor terrorism a pass for their cooperation in a U.S. coalition.

More difficult to comprehend is the omission of two of the most vocal radical Muslim, anti-American terrorist organizations -- Hamas and Hezbollah -- from the presidential order to freeze their assets.

Even if America receives help, it will remain important to follow and cut off the money supply to terrorist groups and their state sponsors.

The United States may achieve a short-term goal of finding bin Laden and perhaps unseating the Taliban, but there will remain plenty of anti-U.S. terrorists prepared to take their place.

The West has already had several warnings. If it doesn't try to choke the financing of terrorism now, it invites another tragedy like the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- probably with even deadlier weapons.

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