I do not intend to make a practice of re-posting news articles--there is more than enough of that on Usenet and Yahoo groups, etc.--but we need to avoid losing sight of the fact that the whole "arms ship" incident of several weeks ago may well be a Jewish hoax. - HAC

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The strange affair of Karine A

Israel's official account of the Palestinian Authority's connections with a ship found loaded with weapons makes little sense, writes Brian Whitaker

Monday January 21, 2002
The Guardian

At a select gathering in London last week, Israeli intelligence officers briefed journalists on the strange affair of Karine A, the ship seized by Israeli commandos with 50 tonnes of weapons on board.

I know it was a select gathering because I was one of those selected by the Israeli embassy NOT to attend - on the grounds that they disliked what I had written about the affair in the Guardian (including a World dispatch from last Monday).

That, along with several abusive emails in response to last week's article, encourages me to return to the subject this week. Although most of the Arab world dismisses the story as an Israeli fabrication from beginning to end, the basic outline of what happened is, so far as I know, true: the Karine A, captained by a man with connections to the Palestinian Authority, and laden with a variety of weapons including rockets and mortars, sailed from the Gulf to the Red sea, where the Israelis intercepted it.

But the official version, as told by Israeli spokesmen and spoon-fed to selected journalists, makes little sense when it moves on to the questions of who did it and why.

The ship and its voyage

Israel has so far failed to substantiate its crucial claim that the Karine A belongs to the Palestinian Authority. If true, that would provide a direct link to the Palestinian Authority's leadership, including Yasser Arafat.

It is now clear that when Israel made this claim its intelligence service had not checked the ship's ownership with the registration authorities - a relatively simple matter - and was relying on something said by the ship's Palestinian captain, Omar Akawi, under interrogation. The original army press release on January 4 said that "preliminary investigation of the team members arrested revealed that the Karine A ship was purchased by Adel Mughrabi in Lebanon." Its document described Mr Mughrabias "a major buyer in the Palestinian weapons purchasing system".

On the same day, "senior Israeli officials" told the Washington Post that Mr Mughrabi had not bought the ship in Lebanon, but in Greece or Bulgaria.

Although the army had been careful to point out that its information was "preliminary" - and therefore tentative - numerous Israeli spokesmen and politicians immediately treated it as established fact.

On January 7, for instance, the defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, met the two senior European envoys, Javier Solana and Miguel Moratinos. He told them that "the ship was purchased by the Palestinian Authority after September 11" and that "the whole operation was managed and funded by the Palestinian Authority in cooperation with Iran and other sources".

One of the conclusions they were supposed to draw from this was that the EU should reconsider its funding of the authority.

Unfortunately for Mr Ben-Eliezer, on the day of his meeting, the shipping newspaper, Lloyds List, published documents showing that the legal owner of the Karine A is an Iraqi passport holder named Ali Mohamed Abbas.

Mr Abbas had given the registration authorities an address and telephone number in Yemen, but he has so far not been traced. The Israeli version of the ship's voyage is also confused.

According to the original army statement, it sailed first to Sudan and picked up normal cargo.

Members of the smuggling team replaced the original crew and in November it sailed to Hodeidah in Yemen. In December, according to the army, it sailed into the Gulf, "to the beaches of Iran near Qeshm Island".

"There a ferry approached it, most likely arriving from Iran, from which the weapons stored in 80 large wooden crates were transferred and loaded on to the ship."

This account appears to have come from interrogation of the crew rather than high-technology tracking.

The army now says that the island concerned was Kish, not Qeshm. Asked to explain the discrepancy, a spokesman at first denied that Qeshm had ever been mentioned. He later said Qeshm appeared only in English-language versions and was presumably a mistranslation from Hebrew.

The Israelis say the Karine A loaded its weapons in the Gulf on the night of December 11-12. Its interception by commandos in the Red Sea, 300 miles south of Eilat, was not until January 3 - almost three weeks later.

That is an extraordinarily long gap, which has not yet been fully explained. According to the army, the ship "had to divert to Hodeida port in Yemen due to technical problems".

The role of the Palestinian Authority

Apart from claiming that the ship belongs to the Palestinian Authority, Israel says that "senior figures" in the PA were involved in the smuggling, and that the weapons were intended for use by the authority.

Given the stringency of Israeli security measures, this is the part that many people find most unconvincing. Would the Palestinian Authority really be so stupid as to imagine that it could successfully import the weapons in this way?

Assuming the ship had not been stopped in the Red sea and had passed through the Suez canal without being caught by the Egyptians, the problem would be how to sneak its weapons into Gaza without the Israelis noticing. At current levels of surveillance, the chances of that happening are almost nil.

Moving the 62 large rockets within Gaza would also be extremely difficult because of Israeli checkpoints. The rockets' range is only 12 miles, so in order to attack Tel Aviv and most major Israeli cities, they would have to be moved out of Gaza and into the West Bank - which is well nigh impossible.

The four "senior" Palestinians who have been identified so far are not exactly household names, and the extent of corruption in the Palestinian Authority will make it difficult to establish whether they were acting in an official capacity or as part of a private racket.

Last week Michael Jansen, writing in the Beirut newspaper, the Daily Star, questioned whether two of them were still connected with the authority. He quoted Palestinian sources as saying that Omar Akawi, the ship's captain, "left Gaza nearly two years ago with his family and has made no contact with the Palestinian Authority since then".

In interviews after his arrest by the Israelis, Akawi said he had served as an officer in the Palestinian naval police and later worked as a naval traffic adviser for the Palestinian transport ministry. He claimed to be still employed by the authority.

Adel Mughrabi (aka Adel Awadallah and Adel Salameh) is described as the head of the smuggling project and is said to have bought the ship. According to the Daily Star, he was a member of Arafat's staff until the early 1980s, "when he was dismissed for conducting private business which conflicted with his official status".

The role of Hizbullah

Shortly after the smuggling operation came to light, American officials suggested that the weapons were intended for Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shi'ite organisation, rather than the Palestinians.

Israel initially dismissed the idea, but defence sources later told Ha'aretz newspaper it was "certainly possible that some of the arms were earmarked for Hizbullah," - though they insisted that most "were clearly bound for the Palestinian Authority".

Either way, both Israel and the US agree that there was some level of Hizbullah involvement - for example when the weapons were loaded on to the ship. Hizbullah already has a well-established route for acquiring weapons from Iran: they are sent by air through Syria.

If the weapons on the ship were really for Hizbullah, why risk such a hazardous sea voyage when there were safer and simpler delivery methods? In the absence of a satisfactory answer to that question, it would be reasonable to conclude that the weapons were not for Hizbullah.

But there may be an explanation after all. According to Ha'aretz newspaper, Hizbullah's air route was shut off last year when "Turkey began intercepting Iranian aeroplanes delivering weapons to Damascus".

Syria's current attitude to the weapons flights is also uncertain. President Asad has been trying to appear co-operative in the "war against terrorism" and it would not be surprising if the Americans - who formally outlawed Hizbullah last November - had been pressing him to stop the weapons flights.

If Hizbullah does indeed have problems flying weapons in, smuggling them by sea would make more sense. Last week (at the select gathering for journalists in London), Israeli intelligence wove a new Lebanese villain into the plot: Imad Mughniyeh, who is said to be the "mastermind" of the smuggling operation.

Although little has been heard of him since the 1980s, his inclusion may stimulate British and American interest in the affair. He is on the FBI's "20 most wanted" list (accused of the 1983 bombing of the US embassy in Beirut and the hijacking of a TWA airliner) and is blamed for the kidnapping of two Britons in Lebanon, Terry Waite and John McCarthy.

He was reportedly expelled from his refuge in Iran after the September 11 attacks, but the Lebanese authorities denied that he had returned to Lebanon.

The role of Iran

Israel maintains that the weapons came from Iran. If this is true - and there is no good reason to doubt it - what does it indicate?Many Israeli politicians see it as evidence of a new strategic alliance between the Palestinian Authority and the Iranian government. But most non-Israeli observers of Iran ridicule the idea totally, for a variety of historical, political and religious reasons. It also conflicts with the foreign policies adopted by President Khatami.

The trouble with Iran, though - as one Iranian exile remarked last week - is that it has two governments and 10,000 leaders. If you are going to pin blame, you have to determine which one is responsible.

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz newspaper suggests that the arms shipment cannot have had full backing from the Iranian authorities. If it were officially approved, the Karine A would not have picked up the weapons at night from another ship near Kish: it would have gone straight to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and loaded its cargo openly.

Loading secretly near Kish could point to involvement by a section of the Revolutionary Guards or one of the wealthy religious "foundations" that operate largely outside state control.

The source of the weapons might be easier to identify if we knew whether the primary motive behind the smuggling was political or financial, or a bit of both. Israeli estimates put the value of the weapons at anything between $10m and $100m. Was the recipient supposed to pay for them, or were they a donation?

What does it all mean?

The only thing we can say with confidence is that when the full picture
emerges it will be a lot more complex than the current official version.

There are still many pieces in this jigsaw that don't fit, but Israeli politicians have already decided what the finished picture should look like and tailored it to reinforce Israeli policies.

The Karine A affair has already been invoked as grounds for the overthrow of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and for not resuming the peace process.

Binyamin Netanyahu, former Israeli prime minister and probably a future contender for power, said last week that it means there cannot be a Palestinian state ... ever.

"With its own independent port, such a state would receive shiploads of arms, day and night, and we would find ourselves facing a terrorist state, armed to the teeth," he said.

Meanwhile, the Hizbullah connection can be used to push Hizbullah - and, by extension, Lebanon and Syria - to the top of America's anti-terrorism list.

And the Iranian connection, even if it does not really involve the Iranian state, can be used to stymie hopes of a rapprochement between Tehran and the west.

None of these goals will contribute anything to peace and stability in the Middle East. But you can be sure that Israeli embassies around the world will be working hard to promote them at select gatherings of diplomats and journalists.