DAR AL HARB - ISRAEL: HAMAS IS SENDING GAZANS TO IRAQ FOR TRAINING

Hamas sends Gazans for military training in Iraq, Israeli security aide says
Shin Bet chief sees a 'strategic danger'

TEL AVIV: The Islamic movement Hamas has sent "tens" of men from Gaza for weapons and military training in Iran, Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, the internal Israeli security service, said Monday.

"We know that Hamas has started to dispatch people to Iran, tens and a promise of hundreds," Diskin told a small group of correspondents here in a rare on-the-record briefing. The training would last months, perhaps years, he said, adding: "I see this as the strategic danger more than any weapons smuggled into Gaza."

Diskin's agency is charged in part with understanding the Palestinian world, and in his view, the main Palestinian secular faction, Fatah, is continuing to fragment under weak leadership from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and would lose another election, if held today, to the radical Hamas movement, which refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to exist.

"I'm not optimistic about Fatah," Diskin said. "Fatah is disintegrated and nearly destroyed, with no strong leadership."

He had harsh words for Abbas, known as Abu Mazen.

"Abu Mazen is a good negotiator but doesn't know how to deal with internal party affairs — he has done nothing to revive Fatah, either its institutions or its military power," Diskin said. "He wanted to become the national leader of the Palestinian people, but he forgot that he needs a strong Fatah to do it."

The international isolation of Hamas and an embargo on direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority it runs has convinced Hamas that it cannot govern alone without any international legitimacy, Diskin said. "But it also drove Hamas toward Iran," he said, adding, "One of the bad fruits of the isolation of Hamas is the influence of Iran and its money."

He predicted that, despite their current difficulties, Fatah and Hamas would agree on a unity government as laid out in principle in an agreement in Mecca on Feb. 8. He said that Hamas had "succeeded in all its goals in Mecca," co- opting Fatah and retaining key ministries. He estimated the chances of reaching a unity government at 70 percent, but noted that both factions were rivals for power and wanted different things from such a government, which may not last.

"This is the ticking bomb inside the unity government," said Diskin, 50, a former army commando and Shin Bet field operative. He said that clan rivalries could also rip a new government apart, but also predicted that the unity of the international community in boycotting a Hamas-led government would begin to crack.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Hamas sends Gazans for military training in Iraq, Israeli security aide says