October 23, 2002
Iraqi Support of Palestinian Terrorism

The IDF has captured documents, videocassettes and computer disks in the "Arab Liberation Front" (an organization under Iraqi patronage) and the Iraqi Ba'ath organization Headquarters in Ramallah, which shed light on Iraqi aid to Palestinians and families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The captured documents uncover the existence and the operational methods of a "terror industry" -a wide ranging bureaucratic network, engaged in money transfers to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The families of suicide terrorists receive enlarged grants from Saddam Hussein ($25,000 for such a family, in contrast with $10,000 for the family of an "ordinary" killed Palestinian terrorist). The fact that such large sums of money, in Palestinian terms, are distributed to the families of suicide terrorists (about nine years of work, from all the aid bodies) encourages the suicide phenomenon.

The IDF uncovered photos of checks, which were given to the families of Palestinian terrorists. Two of the check found were given to the families of two Hamas terrorists, who blew themselves up in Zion Square in Jerusalem on December 1, 2001, killing 11 Israelis and wounding 152.

Iraqi aid is an expression of Iraq’s policy to escalate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to strengthen Iraq' s status among the Palestinians and in the Arab world and to divert international attention away from Iraq in order to delay US attack plans against Iraq.

The captured documents reveal that the central figure in the Iraqi leadership, responsible for the Iraqi aid to the Palestinian terror in the PA is Taha Yassin Ramadan, President Saddam Hussein' s deputy. In a secret handwritten letter, signed by him, Taha Yassin Ramadan transfers instructions for establishing the Ba'ath party infrastructure in the PA areas and exploiting the Intifada events for achieving "the complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea."

Arrested PLF activists confessed that they were sent for military training in Iraq. During the training they were instructed by a senior PLF activist to carry out terrorist attacks against both Israeli military and civilian targets. This training was carried out in coordination and with the direct support of the Iraqi Government. A member of one of these squads kidnapped and murdered Yuri Gushchin, a 19-year-old student from Jerusalem, and laid an explosive charge at the "checkpost" junction, in a highly populated area, north of Haifa.

The Iraqi aid uncovered in the captured materials is a central component in the external military, financial and logistic aid circles, which constantly nourish Palestinian terror. Such large-scope financial aid, as demonstrated in the documents captured in Operation Defensive Shield, is also provided by Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The financial aid is a central tool for encouraging terror in general, and suicide terror in particular. This external aid has a strategic significance, and, if not stopped, or at least significantly reduced, it will be difficult to end the violence and the terror produced by the PA and Palestinian society.

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