| |
Israelis
targeted in ominous new terror trend
By B Raman
An explosion ripped through an Israeli-owned hotel on Thursday near Mombasa,
in Kenya, killing a number of people, while at about the same time
two missiles were fired - and missed - at an Israeli chartered passenger plane
departing from Mombasa, once again raising questions of possible al-Qaeda
complicity.
Those slain at the Paradise Hotel in Malindi, a popular spot with Israeli
tourists, included two Israeli children and several Kenyans, officials said.
Men in a jeep apparently crashed into a barrier to gain access to the hotel,
and they detonated a bomb or bombs at about 7 am local time. Reports said two
attackers were among those killed.
And militants fired two
shoulder-launched missiles at a plane shortly after takeoff. The aircraft, belonging
to Arkia Israeli Airlines, was carrying about 260 passengers and 10 crew members.
|
|
Other available details are very sketchy, hence no definitive assessment is
possible on who might have been responsible for what appears, as of now, to be
coordinated terrorist strikes. Some tentative observations can, however, be
made.
It is quite possible that
many of the tourists staying at the Paradise hotel
were not Israelis. If only the explosion had taken
place, one would have been hesitant to say that
the strike was directed at Israeli
nationals.
However, the
abortive attack on an Israeli plane shortly before the explosion would show
that the two strikes were directed at Israeli nationals/interests.
|
The possibility of the strikes being the work of Palestinian terrorist
organizations is less than that of it being the work of either the al-Qaeda of
Osama bin Laden or Kenyan Muslim elements forming part of his International
Islamic Front (IIF). Palestinian organizations are not known to have an active
presence in Kenya. Kenyan intelligence has a long history of clandestine
cooperation with Mossad, the Israeli external intelligence agency, and the Shin
Bet, its internal agency, and the then government of Kenya secretly helped the
Israeli raid at Entebbe in 1977 to rescue hostages of a hijacked Air France
plane, by allowing refueling facilities as the Israeli planes were returning
after the successful raid. Mossad and Shin Bet even now have an active presence
in Kenya and closely monitor the activities of Palestinians living in and
visiting Kenya, as well as local Muslims suspected to be sympathetic to the
Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Al-Qaeda, though, has a much stronger presence in Kenya and has many
sympathizers in the local Muslim community, as was seen by its devastatingly
successful explosion near the US embassy in Nairobi in August,1998, which was
also carried out during the holy fasting period of Ramadan, resulting in over
100 deaths. There was local Kenyan Muslim complicity/involvement in that
explosion, and it was subsequently found that some Kenyan Muslims had visited
Pakistan and Afghanistan for training in bin Laden's camps.
When bin Laden announced the formation of the IIF in the beginning of 1998 and
issued its first fatwa, it designated the United States and Israel (the
crusaders and the Jewish people, as he put it) as the principal enemies of
Islam, and called for attacks on them. In many of his subsequent statements,
this characterization of the US and Israel as the principal enemies of Islam
has been a recurring theme.
However, despite this, al-Qaeda and the other components of the IIF had
confined their attacks mainly to US and other Western targets and avoided
attacks on Israeli nationals and interests, though some Jewish persons were
reported to have been killed in the terrorist strike by al-Qaeda in Tunisia
earlier this year.
This was due to the anxiety of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and
other organizations allied to it not wanting to be perceived by the US as
having links with al-Qaeda or the IIF. The PLO used to be of the view that
Palestinians would never be able to achieve their political objective without
the support of the US and, therefore, wanted the Palestinian organizations to
keep away from bin Laden. While some Palestinians do serve in al-Qaeda, no
Palestinian organization is a member of the IIF.
Bin Laden, too, respected the concerns of the Palestinian organizations and
avoided any terrorist strike against Israeli targets lest there be any
difficulties for the Palestinian organizations in their attempt to get the
political support of the West against Israel.
If indeed the strikes in Mombasa are established to be the work of al-Qaeda or
the IIF, this would show that this consideration no longer acts as a
restraining factor. Either al-Qaeda and the IIF have decided to strike at
Israeli targets without worrying about the concerns of the Palestinian
organizations, or they undertook the Mombasa operations with the approval or at
the instance of the Palestinian organizations, which have been disillusioned
with the failure of the US to restrain Israel and, therefore, no longer see any
need to keep away from bin Laden. If this is the case, more attacks on Israeli
lives and interests are likely.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of
India, and presently director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; member
of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India. E-Mail:
corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the counter-terrorism division of the
Research & Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, from 1988
to August, 1994.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
