The United States government has been provided with concrete evidence that the Israeli Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services have been involved in a 13-month effort to "recruit" an Israeli-run, phony "al Qaeda cell" among Palestinians, so that Israel could achieve a frontline position in the U.S. war against terrorism and get a green light for a worldwide "revenge without borders" policy. The question: Does the United States have the moral fiber to investigate?

Evidence of the Israeli dirty tricks burst onto the public scene on December 6, when Col. Rashid Abu Shbak, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Services in the Gaza Strip, held a press conference revealing the details of the alleged plot, as his agency had put the pieces together.

The revelations undermine the "big lie" that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has used to justify new brutal attacks on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and other occupied areas. Sharon claimed on December 4 that Israeli intelligence had "hard evidence" of al Qaeda operations in the Gaza Strip. Now, the top Palestinian leadership has shown the United States and other nations how Israeli intelligence entities were creating that al Qaeda link!

American leader Lyndon LaRouche, a Democratic Presidential pre-candidate in 2004, commented that these revelations, if confirmed, could be "of strategic importance" in stopping the American, British and Israeli warhawks pushing for a Middle East war, beginning with an invasion of Iraq. A war would justify the Sharon government's plan to annihilate the very idea of a Palestinian state.

LaRouche warned that if institutions of the American Presidency and the international community successfully block an American pre-emptive war on Iraq, the biggest danger would be that a "mega-terror" attack, blamed on Palestinians, or an "Iraqi-linked" al Qaeda, would be staged by Israel's ruling Jabotinskyite fanatics, to put the war back on the agenda.

News about the Mossad-run attempt to create an al Qaeda cell came when well-informed intelligence sources based in Washington had already told the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) that there are many doubts about the Mossad's hasty declaration that "al Qaeda" had been responsible for the November 28 attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, where three Israelis were killed, and the failed rocket attack on an Israeli chartered jet that was departing from Mombasa airport.

There was no identification of the bombers within the first five days of the incident, the sources pointed out, yet Sharon's government ministers went on an immediate propaganda rampage announcing worldwide revenge. Authorities in Kenya also denied the al Qaeda link. But the usefulness of blaming al Qaeda, for the Israeli right, was palpable, when Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Kenya attacks "a golden opportunity" to prove to the United States that Bush's war on terrorism, and Israel's war with the Palestinians is the same thing. Netanyahu's faction has violently rejected the Palestinian Authority's revelations, and so far, the American and European press have followed suit, despite the dramatic nature of these charges, and the documents that the Palestinians have provided to the international press.

Chronology of the Revelations

On December 7, the British news service, Reuters, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV network, all reported that the Palestinian Authority had accused the Mossad of creating a phony al Qaeda cell in the Gaza Strip. Ha'aretz reported, "the head of Palestinian Preventive Security" in the Gaza Strip, Col. Rashid Abu Shbak, said on December 6, "that his forces had identified a number of Palestinian collaborators who had been ordered by Israeli security agencies to 'work in the Gaza Strip under the name of al Qaeda.' He said the investigation was ongoing and evidence would be presented soon." Al-Jazeera TV added that the Palestinian authorities had arrested a group of Palestinian "collaborators with Israeli occupation" in Gaza, involved in the operation.

Reuters' reporter Diala Saadeh, under the headline, "Palestinians: Israel Faked Gaza al-Qaeda Presence," quoted a number of Palestinian Authority (P.A.) senior officials, including President Yasser Arafat, who told reporters at his West Bank Ramallah headquarters, that Sharon's claims of al Qaeda operations in Palestinian territories "is a big, big, big lie to cover [Sharon's] attacks and his crimes against our people everywhere." P.A. Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo detailed the case: "There are certain elements who were instructed by the Mossad to form a cell under the name of al Qaeda in the Gaza Strip in order to justify the assault and the military campaigns of the Israeli occupation army against Gaza."

Palestinian officials promised to provide detailed evidence, and did so on December 8, in a press conference addressed by Colonel Shbak, and by Palestinian Minister for Planning and International Cooperation Nabil Shaath. Shbak told the international representatives that, "Over the past nine months, we've been investigating eight cases in which Israeli intelligence posing as al Qaeda operatives recruited Palestinians in the Gaza Strip." Colonel Shbak said that three men were under arrest, and 11 had been released.

He explained that those released had voluntarily provided information going back to May 2002, about the contacts that had been made asking them to operate as an "al Qaeda" group. The alleged al Qaeda recruiters were traced to Israeli intelligence, said Colonel Shbak. He detailed incidents, some of which were described in official documents, of cell phone calls and e-mails, where Palestinians were asked to "join al Qaeda." Shbak said, "We investigated the origin of those calls, which used [wireless phone] roaming, and messages, and found out they all came from Israel," reported the publication IslamOnline. He said that the potential "recruits," had been given money and weapons, "although most of these weapons did not even work." He also noted that the money for these targeted Palestinians "was transferred from bank accounts in Jerusalem or Israel."

Minister Shaath announced at the press conference that the P.A. had "handed ambassadors and consuls of the Arab and foreign countries, documents revealing the involvement of the Israeli intelligence in recruiting citizens from Gaza Strip in a fake organization carrying the name of Qaeda." He said the ploy was intended "to create a new excuse to escalate the aggression on Gaza Strip."