Via DEBKAfile

1. The length and state of his hair indicated he had not seen a barber or even had a shampoo for several weeks.

2. The wild state of his beard indicated he had not shaved for the same period

3. The hole dug in the floor of a cellar in a farm compound near Tikrit was primitive indeed – 6ft across and 8ft across with minimal sanitary arrangements - a far cry from his opulent palaces.

4. Saddam looked beaten and hungry.

5. Detained trying to escape were two unidentified men. Left with him were two AK-47 assault guns and a pistol, none of which were used.

6. The hole had only one opening. It was not only camouflaged with mud and bricks – it was blocked. He could not have climbed out without someone on the outside removing the covering.

7. And most important, $750,000 in 100-dollar notes were found with him (a pittance for his captors who expected a $25m reward)– but no communications equipment of any kind, whether cell phone or even a carrier pigeon for contacting the outside world.

According to DEBKAfile analysts, these seven anomalies point to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein was not in hiding; he was a prisoner.

After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more, which would have accounted for his appearance and condition. Meanwhile, his captors bargained for the $25 m prize the Americans promised for information leading to his capture alive or dead. The negotiations were mediated by Jalal Talabani’s Kurdish PUK militia.

These circumstances would explain the ex-ruler’s docility – described by Lt.Gen. Ricardo Sanchez as “resignation” – in the face of his capture by US forces. He must have regarded them as his rescuers and would have greeted them with relief.

From Gen. Sanchez’s evasive answers to questions on the $25m bounty, it may be inferred that the Americans and Kurds took advantage of the negotiations with Saddam’s abductors to move in close and capture him on their own account, for three reasons:

A. His capture had become a matter of national pride for the Americans. No kudos would have been attached to his handover by a local gang of bounty-seekers or criminals. The country would have been swept anew with rumors that the big hero Saddam was again betrayed by the people he trusted, just as in the war.

B. It was vital to catch his kidnappers unawares so as to make sure Saddam was taken alive. They might well have killed him and demanded the prize for his body. But they made sure he had no means of taking his own life and may have kept him sedated.

C. During the weeks he is presumed to have been in captivity, guerrilla activity declined markedly – especially in the Sunni Triangle towns of Falluja, Ramadi and Balad - while surging outside this flashpoint region – in Mosul in the north and Najef, Nasseriya and Hilla in the south. It was important for the coalition to lay hands on him before the epicenter of the violence turned back towards Baghdad and the center of the Sunni Triangle.

The next thing to watch now is not just where and when Saddam is brought to justice for countless crimes against his people and humanity - Sanchez said his interrogation will take “as long as it takes – but what happens to the insurgency. Will it escalate or gradually die down?

An answer to this, according to DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, was received in Washington nine days before Saddam reached US custody.

It came in the form of a disturbing piece of intelligence that the notorious Lebanese terrorist and hostage-taker Imad Mughniyeh, who figures on the most wanted list of 22 men published by the FBI after 9/11, had arrived in southern Iraq and was organizing a new anti-US terror campaign to be launched in March-April 2004, marking the first year of the American invasion.

For the past 21 years, Mughniyeh has waged a war of terror against Americans, whether on behalf of the Hizballah, the Iranian Shiite fundamentalists, al Qaeda or for himself. The Lebanese arch-terrorist represents for the anti-American forces in Iraq an ultimate weapon.

Saddam’s capture will not turn this offensive aside; it may even bring it forward.

For Israel, there are three lessons to be drawn from the dramatic turn of events in Iraq:

First, An enemy must be pursued to the end and if necessary taken captive. The Sharon government’s conduct of an uncertain, wavering war against the Palestinian terror chief Yasser Arafat stands in stark contrast to the way the Americans have fought Saddam and his cohorts in Iraq and which has brought them impressive gains.

Second, Israel must join the US in bracing for the decisive round of violence under preparation by Mughniyeh, an old common enemy from the days of Beirut in the 1980s. Only three weeks ago, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal, the terrorist mastermind himself was seen in south Lebanon in surveillance of northern Israel in the company of Iranian military officers. With this peril still to be fought, it is meaningless for Israelis to dicker over the Geneva Accord, unilateral steps around the Middle East road map, or even the defensive barrier.

Third, Certain Israeli pundits and even politicians, influenced by opinion in Europe, declared frequently in recent weeks that the Americans had no hope of capturing Saddam Hussein and were therefore bogged down irretrievably in Iraq. The inference was that the Americans erred in embarking on an unwinnable war in Iraq.

This was wide of the mark even before Saddam was brought in. The Americans are in firm control - even though they face a tough new adversary – and the whole purpose of the defeatist argument heard in Israel was to persuade the Sharon government that its position in relation to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat is as hopeless as that of the Americans in Iraq. Israel’s only choice, according to this argument, is to knuckle under to Palestinian demands and give them what they want. Now that the Iraqi ruler is in American custody, they will have to think again.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem - Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. Arabs have only had control of Israel twice - from 634 until the Crusader invasion in June 1099, and from 1292 until the year 1517 when they were dispelled by the Turks in their conquest.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. There are vague references to Jerusalem in the Hadiths - stories about Mohammed - that he stopped his night journey at ''the edge'' - at the edge of the Temple mount.

7. King David established the city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Some Muslims (i.e. those between Israel and Saudi Arabia) pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees - In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict - The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs - Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

via Middle East Facts

As you know from our repeated meetings over many years, we have repeatedly done our best to accommodate your incessant demands regarding employment, compensation, housing allowances, health benefits, and other items of mutual interest as we have endeavored to work together on "Project Peace in the Middle East."

We have, with your agreement and assurances of a better performance, given you time, money, professional help, medication and a more than reasonable offer of land for you to live in while you work out "your issues." In the course of these meetings we feel we have been more than forthcoming in our attendance to your "special needs."

From time to time we have accepted your written word that, given adequate resources, you would be working to resolve "your issues." We note, for the record, that at no time has your word proven to be worth the paper which we both so ceremoniously signed. Indeed, it has been our bitter experience that the working out of "your issues" most often involves explosive episodes on the streets of our country.

It has come to our attention, through a continuing rain of the body parts of our citizens onto our streets, that "your issues" do not seem to be resolvable through considered and mutually agreeable negotiations. The outcome of these 'negotiations' in the recent past seems to us to be one of we give and you take and then you kill us. We have decided that this is not a program that we wish to continue.

Indeed, it would seem to be the case that your "central issue," although internally generated within your institutions and religion, seems to be the eradication of the state of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people here and abroad. We mention 'abroad' since it would seem to us that your goal is to first create a base that includes the entire state of Israel, kill the Jews within those borders, and then use that land as a base to kill Jews throughout the world. Perhaps we are wrong in this but we find that a people is best known by the company they keep.

We have had a similar experience with this "central issue" as a "final solution" towards the middle of the last century. We discovered, after millions of us had been slaughtered, that mollification, negotiation, and submission was not a successful policy. Indeed, we created the state of Israel around the central concept of 'Never again.'

Please note that after no little reflection and soul searching, we have decided to return Israel to this concept as the foundation of our internal and international policy from this moment forward.

Because we are a reasonable people we have decided to issue this memorandum in order to give you one chance to reform yourselves and become fit to be included in the human race. Should you choose not to pursue this path, we will at least have a record that you were notified in a fair and timely manner before termination.

"Never Again" was our first principle and is now our final position. This memo serves to note the end of all negotiations with the Palestinian People.
Your problems and your issues as of this date are yours and yours alone. You must solve whatever bipolar instability and manic-depressive disappointment and psychotic tendencies towards homicidal violence plague your society among yourselves. You will not, from this date forward, use the People of Israel as targets for your own internal demons.

Your "issues" will no longer be allowed to become our "episodes."
Should you choose act out, even once, we, the People of Israel, hereby notify you that we are prepared to and shall, without any further notice, over-react towards all Palestinian people and interests within our sphere of influence.
Bear in mind that we have not in recent memory over-reacted against your unremitting efforts to exterminate us. We have been patient and measured in our responses, cognizant of a watching world and not wanting to seem, even for a moment, to be as savage and violent as those who have been waging a coward's war against us for decades. We have, at all points, been as honorable in war as possible -- even when the wars in which we were engaged were not fought by honorable adversaries.

As you know, our military power, both conventional and nuclear, is immense. We won't detail here the helicopters, missiles, tanks, aircraft, and troops which we can mobilize and move to the west as far as the shores of the ocean if we wish.

Mere mention of these items has not gotten your attention.
The restrained use of these items has not gotten your attention.
Because we are weary of having our streets used as your martyr's mausoleums, because we are extremely angered when we must place the shredded bodies of children into body bags, because we would feel a lot better getting up in the morning if we knew we'd be coming home at night, we have decided we must, regretfully, engage in methods which will, finally, either get your attention or leave you without the capacity for attention in the first place.

This then is your single choice:

If you know of those among you who seek to kill even one of us by any means, you would be well advised to render them incapable of killing anyone immediately. Should you wish to ever have a bit of land to call your own and you are aware of an organization of any kind that seeks to take our land outright, you would be well advised to render them powerless forthwith.
Should you fail to do so and, as we stated above, even one more of our citizens should be killed by the cowardly methods you have perfected over the years, we will conclude that your entire society values martyrdom more than life and peace and endeavor, to the limit of our ability, to supply you with same.
We will begin our program of over-reaction without delay and without reference to our allies or world opinion. We will deal with that in the days that follow the completion of our strategic exercises in what you quaintly term "the occupied territories." Please notify those whom you consider your allies that, should they chance to intervene, we have sufficient resources to deal with them expeditiously.

Should individual Palestinians feel that these terms are unrealistic, we would advise them person to seek an exit visa and to remove themselves as far from 'the occupied territories' as is feasible and as quickly as possible. When we over-react to the west we will not be checking ID cards.

Please reflect upon these conditions as seriously as we have in drafting them.
Remember, in the final analysis, we are a people with no little experience of genocide.

Sincerely,
The People of Israel
CC: USA, EU, UN and others whom it may con

Assad, Nasrallah and Abu Ala Scale up Threat Levels

DEBKAfile Special Report

October 29, 2003, 3:34 PM (GMT+02:00)

A shrill chorus of threats has been emanating from Syria, the Palestinians and the Hizballah as the Middle East heads toward another bleak winter.

President Bashar Assad is still smarting from Israel’s October 5 retaliatory air strike against a terrorist training camp at Ein Hatsav 15 miles from Damascus – the deepest Israeli raid inside Syria since the 1973 war. It followed the deaths of 19 Israelis in a suicide bombing in Haifa and Israeli accusations of Syrian support for terrorist groups and activities.

Not content with the warnings issuing from Syrian officials every couple of days, Assad dispatched his military chief, General Hassan Turkmani, and deputy chief of staff general Ali Habib – widely regarded as the Syrian army’s most professional commander -- to Beirut on Monday, October 27 for some straight talk with Lebanese leaders. They notified President Emil Lahoud, army chief of staff General Michel Suleiman and military intelligence chief General Michel Azar in no uncertain terms that any future Israel strikes would bring forth Syrian reprisals. In such a contingency, Lebanon would be required to stand shoulder to shoulder with Syria in a united front.

Syrian foreign minister Farouk a-Shara had already spelled out Syria’s intentions. In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, he said: “Syria will strike back if Israel attacks again and could hit Israeli settlements on the Golan Heights. Our people will not stand for another attack and we will have to carry out the will of the people.” He added: "We have many cards that we have not played. Don't forget the many Israeli settlements in the Golan. I am not exaggerating but describing things as they might happen."

Israel captured the Golan Heights in 1967 after Syria joined a combined Arab offensive on its borders and was thrown back. The two countries are still at war.

For Damascus, artillery or missile attacks against Israeli targets on the Golan Heights would be regarded as legitimate military action inside Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. Hizballah uses a similar argument to justify its shelling attacks in the disputed Har Dov/Shebaa Farms region which remained in Israeli hands after the UN approved the pullback of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon to the international frontier in May 2000. On Monday, October 27, the Lebanese Shiite terrorists aimed several rounds of missile and shell fire at the Golan as well as at Israeli positions on Har Dov. Israel hushed up the incident, but Hizballah publicized it a day later.

According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence and military sources, the Syrian military visitors extracted from Beirut prior and unrestricted permission for the Syrian air force to use Lebanese airspace and for Syrian troops to redeploy in the central and southern Lebanese positions they have been evacuating in the past four months. This change in the strategic situation on its northern frontiers not only poses a challenge for Israel but represents a dramatic reversal for Washington’s efforts to stabilize the Lebanese government and strengthen its pro-US leaders, such as prime minister Rafik Hariri. The Americans based progress towards their goal of weakening Syrian and Hizballah influence in Lebanon on the phased withdrawal of the Syrian army. It now looks as though Syrian troops leaving through Lebanon’s front door are reentering from the back.

Palestinians

On this front, prime minister Ahmed Qurie, better known as Abu Ala, has decided to stay on after forging a seven-point pact with Yasser Arafat, according to which he will form a permanent government on November 4, when the mandate of the emergency cabinet expires.

DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources reveal the key points of the pact:

1. The Palestinians will refuse to join Israel in peace negotiations as long as construction of Israel’s separation fence continues. “Its continuation makes any talk of a Palestinian state farcical,” our sources quote Abu Ala as saying.

2. Any Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire agreement must be based on terms quite different from the conditions of what Abu Ala calls “Abu Mazen’s failed hudna”.

3. The Palestinians will demand the evacuation of settlements as condition number one for a ceasefire.

4. The Palestinians will insist on advance notice of all of the Sharon government’s actions in relation to the Palestinians.

5. A ceasefire will be phased, taking effect in one zone after another.

6. No Palestinian administration will accept the demand to dismantle terrorist infrastructure.

7. Palestinian security forces will go into action only against ceasefire violators.

Arafat made the important concession of allowing Qureia to appoint a security affairs minister with real authority.

On the strength of this pact, Abu Ala asked to meet Hamas leaders to discuss a truce, sparking rumors that the way was clear for General Nasser Yousef to assume the security post.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that Abu Ala dismissed suggestions that he travel to Washington or a European capital. He told his associates that, unlike Abu Mazen – who was eased out by Arafat last month – he preferred to cast his lot in with the “rais” (boss) and does not seeks relations with the Americans or Europeans.

Hizballah

German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told visiting Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom last week that Hizballah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah believes Israeli prime minister Sharon had backed away from most of the points agreed in the German-mediated Israeli-Hizballah negotiations on a prisoner swap, especially those covering the repatriation of Lebanese prisoners and detainees held by Israel.

Nasrallah listed the top five men he wanted: Jawad Caspi, Hizballah’s operations officer, Anwar Yunes, Omas Balahis, Ali Baro - a drug dealer who fled a death sentence in Egypt in 1998 and was given an 18-year jail term after being caught by Israel – and Samir Kuntar.

In 1979, Kuntar was part of a four-man Palestinian terror squad which carried out a particularly savage attack on a civilian family in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. The four broke into the Haran family apartment. One terrorist used his rifle butt to smash in the skull of 4-year old Einat Haran and then joined another team member to murder her father, Danny Haran aged 32. Her mother accidentally smothered two-year old Yael Haran to death to keep her from crying out in their place of hiding in an attic. Rescuers killed two of the raiders and captured the remaining two, one of whom was turned loose in a 1985 prisoner exchange deal. Kuntar stayed in jail and his release is now demanded by Nasrallah.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Nasrallah warned the German mediators he was giving Sharon one last chance to carry out the exchange as it stood in relation to the Lebanese prisoners. Otherwise, the Shiite group would resume its attacks against Israel, including kidnaps of soldiers and civilians. Official Israeli sources do not credit the Shiite extremist’s claim that the barrage Hizballah loosed on Monday was unrelated to the prisoner issue. Tuesday, October 28, Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz stated: “Israel has very deep information of the Hizballah’s intention to carry out a major attack in the north”.