The much anticipated “shock and awe” of the coalition operation to route Saddam Hussein’s regime from Iraq has settled in among terror groups, according to former intelligence agents interviewed by the Jerusalem Post.
“Right now, they are in shock,” Reuven Merhav, a Middle East commentator for Israeli television Channel 10 and former Mossad official told the paper. “This a huge blow to the prestige of those who backed Saddam Hussein.”
During the early phase of the war Palestinians demonstrated their support for Saddam by rallying in the streets of Ramallah and Hebron, and families in Nablus named their newborn males “Saddam.”
As WorldNetDaily reported, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, the largest faction of the PLO, dispatched hundreds of Palestinians living in Lebanon to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks against American and British soldiers.
“What is happening in Iraq is the battle of the Palestinian people first and the Arab and Muslim nation second,” Col. Munir Maqdah, one of the Fatah’s top commanders, told the Nazareth-based as Sennarah weekly.
Iraq claimed the Palestinians were among 4,000 suicide bombers prepared to “martyr” themselves by killing U.S., British and Australian troops.
Military sources tell Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin that Palestinians and Jordanians engaged the U.S. Army’s 3rd infantry division in fierce battles south of Baghdad last week using rocket-propelled grenades, suicide trucks, artillery and sniper fire.
But the subsequent toppling of the Baathist regime has hurt both the morale and organizational ability of Palestinian terror groups, according to security experts interviewed by the Post.
“Without Saddam’s money, the terrorist groups will now have a hard time buying equipment, enlisting people and funding missions,” said Merhav. Before the war, Iraq doled out some $30 million to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers participating in the uprising against Israel.
But experts told the paper the groups may be down, but they’re not out. Most expect Hamas and Islamic Jihad will lay low for three to four weeks.
“Then they will strike out to prove that they have not been defeated,” said MK Ehud Yatom, a former senior Shin Bet official.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders in the Gaza Strip appear to be in denial over the course of events in Iraq and an Hamas official called upon the Iraqi people to rise against the West and install an anti-Israel Islamic government, reported Israel Radio.
“The wave of Islamic fundamentalism is very strong,” Yisrael Shai, a former Shin Bet agent, told the Post. “Unless the world unites and cracks down on terrorists and supports moderate Muslim clerics, this phenomenon will be around for a long time.”
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