Hamas is still strong enough to initiate immediate attack
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 9/24/1997

Israel on Tuesday claimed a big victory by solving the mystery of the identities of four Palestinian suicide bombers who blew themselves up in West Jerusalem over the last two months, but warnings continued to flow in from senior officers in Israel saying that the Hamas infrastructure in the Palestinian territories and in the West Bank is still strong enough to enable the movement to initiate a new suicide attack on Israel within hours. Despite the winds of optimism that Israel tried to air along with the announcement, strict precautionary measures were taken to abort anticipated attacks by Hamas.

The release by Israel of classified material on the identity of the perpetrators of the last two suicide bomb attacks in West Jerusalem had culminated a long process of misinformation campaigns between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel, the peak of which was Palestinian claims that the perpetrators of the attacks had come from abroad while Israel insisted they came from within the PNA areas. Evidently, the four suicide bombers had come from Assira Ash-Shamaliya , a village near Nablus, which is still defined as Area B under the interim agreements where security control is fully in Israel's hands.

Since the last July 30 suicide bomb attack in Mahane Yehuda market in West Jerusalem, the Israeli secret service, better known as the Shin Bet (Hebrew for General Security Services) has been busy arresting scores of Hamas members and affiliates in the West Bank but news of the arrest and the identities of those detained had been suppressed and denied to the media. When the second suicide bombing wrecked the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in West Jerusalem early in September, Palestinian claims that the perpetrators of the two suicide attacks came from abroad prompted Israel into releasing part of the intelligence information it had considered classified until this week, though not with full accuracy ,with the apparent aim to discredit the PNA as being responsible for the two attacks in a way that it failed to prevent the suicide strikers from carrying out their mission.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tipped journalists off during his visit to Austria when he said that those who perpetrated the last two suicide attacks had come from the West Bank. His statement had irritated many in Israel's top military and security echelon who saw in Netanyahu's words as an unnecessary way to show off that led him to reveal classified information. Netanyahu failed to clarify whether the suicide bombers had come from within the PNA areas or from the rest of the West Bank areas that are still under Israel security control. Again, his apparent reason was to continue, to the last moment, the campaign of misinformation.

The revelation of the identities of the four suicide bombers followed an intensive investigation by the Shin Bet, the Biology Laboratory of the Forensic Medical Institute, the Israeli army and police and was based on DNA tests of the five bodies of the suicide bombers.

The four, all residents of Assira Ash-Shamaliya village, were identified as Mou'awiya Mahmoud Ahmad Jara'a, Bashar Mahmoud Asaad Sawalha, Tewfiq Ali Mahmoud Yassin, and Yousef Ahmad Shouli, whose identity is still being checked by Israel. They all had been declared wanted by the Shin Bet for questioning regarding alleged involvement in the shooting attack at an Israeli military vehicle in Wadi Al Badan near Nablus in December 1996. In that attack, an army doctor and a soldier were wounded. They had also been arrested by the PNA during the arrests that followed the series of suicide attacks in February and March last year. In September 1996, the four escaped from the Palestinian prison in Nablus and since then until their death in the two attacks, they had been fugitives wanted by both the PNA and Israel.

Previous Stories:
  Netanyahu contradicts his chief intelligence officer   (9/23/1997)
  PNA to Israel: Fight Jewish Terror   (9/22/1997)
  Whether kidnapped, killed, or hiding, rumors abound for missing Hamas leader   (9/15/1997)

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