ISRAEL - worries about a growing Palestinian arsenal

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Israel worries about a growing Palestinian arsenal

By Jason Keyser, Associated Press, 5/9/2001 15:13

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) Anti-aircraft missiles and other weapons smuggled into the Palestinian territories pose a serious threat to Israeli cities and could be used to shoot down passenger airliners landing at Israel's international airport, a military official said Wednesday.

A navy boat off the coast of Haifa this week seized a fishing vessel carrying a cargo of weapons on what officials said was its fourth smuggling run to Gaza. Of greatest concern to Israel were four SA-7 Strela anti-aircraft missiles, a missile developed in the 1970s that has a range of about 5 miles.

The missile is ''accurate enough to take a jumbo (jet) out of the sky,'' said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the army's operations directorate. ''When an airliner that goes to land at Ben-Gurion airport or takes off, it's an easy target.''

Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh downplayed the threat, saying ''there is no evidence of anti-aircraft weapons in the West Bank.''

Also aboard the boat were a variety of mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, land mines, Kalashnikov assault rifles, and Katyusha rockets of the type that for decades were often fired from Lebanese territory at northern Israel. Such weapons are more powerful than any used so far by the Palestinians, who have faced off against Israel with little more than stones, automatic rifles and mortars. Israel has used tanks, artillery and attack helicopters in the conflict.

From the West Bank, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv would be within easy Katyusha range.

''This indicates that they want to initiate another stage of escalation against the Israeli population inside Israel,'' Harel said. He added that he feared the Palestinians already had weapons of the kind that were seized.

Israeli military officials worry that weapons of greater caliber and range are also reaching the Palestinian territories via fishing boats, trucks crossing the Jordan River and through crudely dug tunnels along the border with Egypt.

''If they have Strelas it would be very disturbing,'' said Yiftah Shapir, coeditor of the Middle East Military Balance, an annual report published by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

The confiscated weapons shipment was organized by a radical Palestinian group headed by Ahmed Jibril, a bitter enemy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Palestinian officials deny having ordered the shipment.

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2001


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