-Caveat Lector- 11/24/00 The end game http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,41011,00.html Israeli analysts predict that the Middle East is one third of the way towards Armageddon. Sam Kiley reports Deep in the bowels of Ha Kiryah, the Israeli Ministry of Defence headquarters whose bristling antennae dominate Tel Aviv�s skyline, a small and elite team of computer wizards, military analysts and political experts are playing a war game. It could be called Doom or Armageddon. But the simulations are no fun. They are playing out the worst case scenarios of a Middle Eastern meltdown in which everyone, and they mean everyone, is a loser. The conclusions of the geeks who live in a virtual world are based on reality. About a third of the End Game scenario has already been played out. The analysts are not alone in fearing that what began as a semi-popular, semi-spontaneous uprising of Palestinians against continued Israeli occupation has already mutated into a mini-war of growing intensity which now threatens to spin out of control and suck the whole of the Middle East into its vortex. United Nations diplomats, William Cohen, the United States defence secretary, moderate and immoderate Arab leaders, members of the Israeli cabinet and Yassir Arafat�s senior advisers can agree on little. But they are unanimous in the fear that the region is teetering on the brink of an unthinkably horrible abyss. What has brought the Middle East to the edge? What parts of the doomsday scenario have been fulfilled, and what is to come? Strap on your 3-D goggles and peer into the future. But brace yourself for the worst because by the end of the �game� you could be waddling to work wearing a chemical and biological warfare suit. This is what the cyber-warriors have already punched into their computer model: �History is made by men with swords not bureaucrats clutching the UN Charter on Human Rights�. A bit of a sweeping statement but difficult to disagree with, especially if you take a quick dip into the recent history of the Middle East and the foundation of Israel. For seven years the conquered people have watched their leaders blast hot air around the negotiating table while what is left of the land they lost in 1967 has been steadily stolen by Jewish settlements. Disappointed and distrusting of their own leadership the final insult came in July at Camp David, the US presidential retreat. Palestinians believe that what they were offered at the Camp David summit was nothing short of an insult � they would have been left with a bastard mutant state in five different bits still subjected to Israeli fiat. Their own leadership, and Arafat in particular, they consider weak, corrupt, venal and incompetent. Two months ago they turned their anger on the Israelis, who still occupy more than 80 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli army used live ammunition and snipers to control rioting teens. More than 70 children were killed � many of them in full view of TV cameras.Another 180 Palestinian adults, some of them innocent, some of them gunmen, were also �taken out�. Meanwhile, sensing that he could either surf the popular wave or drown, Arafat slyly slipped open the doors of his jails and released scores of some of the Islamic world�s most dangerous bomb makers and urban guerilla experts from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Then he forged an alliance with the extremist groups and gave them seats in his decision-making bodies. After a decade of of internecine squabbling and outright fighting, the Palestinians now stand together. Their stated goal: an independent state. Their policy: to drive the Jews out of the illegal West Bank and Gaza settlements, to kill Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories and force Israel to recognise past UN resolutions which, in their view, demand a complete withdrawal of Israel to behind the 1967 Green Line. Their real aim, many Israelis believe, is to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. To rid the Middle East of the �cancer� of Zionism, scrub Israel from the map and return the land to its original Palestinian owners. The clumsy and callous Israeli response to the al Aqsa Intifada has fanned the violence into a furnace. The Palestinians have shifted their tactics from riots and demonstrations to guerrilla warfare. And if Arafat doesn�t have the mettle for this final fight, then the Palestinians will ignore his ceasefire orders. The Israelis have reacted with �restraint� by their standards. Using helicopter gun ships and guided missiles they have �carefully� rocketed buildings used by Arafat�s Fatah movement, his Preventive Security Service (secret police) and the Voice of Palestine. On Monday it was in retaliation for the Palestinian bombing of a bus load of Jewish children from a Gaza settlement. Two adults died and nine people were wounded including five youngsters. Every day the atrocities and the rage mount steadily. Meanwhile, leaders in the Muslim world are under increasing pressure to support the Palestinians. Yemen has called on Arabs to send arms, men and ammunition. Egypt has withdrawn its ambassador to Tel Aviv. King Abdullah of Jordan, whose wife and 60 per cent of his subjects are Palestinian, is vulnerable. His police have already had to drive thousands of Palestinians away from his borders with Israel using water cannon and tear gas. Lebanon, which hosts 250,000 Palestinian refugees and is under Syrian occupation, also hosts Hizbollah, the Party of God which is backed by Iran and Iraq. The radical Islamic organisation has already kidnapped three Israeli soldiers and an alleged spy. This week senior members of the Israeli Prime Minister�s staff said that they had intelligence that Hizbollah, which drove Israel out of Lebanon in May, was �planning something big on our side of the border�. Five different ceasefires have failed. Diplomatic initiatives keep being sabotaged by Palestinian guerrilla organisations bitterly opposed to any negotiations with the �Zionist entity�. Support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Hizbollah-like movements is growing by the day. This feeds a deep existential terror among Israelis. If they give the Palestinians all of the West Bank and Gaza, they ask, would that be enough? Or would a Palestinian state be a Trojan horse in the vanguard of massed Arab armies bent on the destruction of the Jewish state? So what next? A likely scenario is: in the dying days of his presidency Bill Clinton manages to call a summit with Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat. A lull in the fighting lasts until Arafat arrives in Washington. Then Islamic guerrillas detonate three bus bombs inside Israel, killing close to 100 people including many children and deliberately blowing away any hope of a ceasefire, much less a permanent peace. The Israelis see red. Barak orders his jets and gunships to pound Arafat�s home and offices to dust. Most of the buildings used by the Palestinian National Authority are wrecked. And a stray missile kills a dozen Palestinians recovering in hospital from wounds inflicted in earlier confrontations with the Israelis. Hizbollah hits back. Within 24 hours of the bus bombs and before Arafat can fly home, the Party of God is raining Katyusha rockets on northern Israel. Huge Islamist demonstrations of support for the Palestinians and of Hizbollah�s tactics sweep across the Arab world. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is reluctant to upset his American backers and Saudi Arabia�s royals try to keep their heads down. But Iraq and Iran send military supplies to Hizbollah via Damascus and Beirut. Syria meanwhile sends a brigade of troops to south Lebanon as Israelis mass on their side of the border, preparing to recreate a south Lebanese �security zone� to protect the north of the country from the Islamist artillery. US spy satellites also pick up Iraqi troop movements towards Jordan and Syria and note that Damascus has deployed its mobile Scud missile launchers. Israel bombs Beirut after another round of Hizbollah missile attacks and hits Syrian army bases in Lebanon while commandos begin reconnaissance for the new security zone. Syrian artillery pieces open up on the Golan Heights and Israel�s early warning base on the top of Mount Hermon. Israeli jets criss-cross Arab skies hunting down the artillery and Scud batteries. Israel annexes all major roads and settler towns on the West Bank, and abandons Gaza entirely. Enraged and emboldened, 40,000 of Jordan�s Palestinians decide to return and march towards the Allenby Bridge. Jordanian police cannot hold them back and are overrun. The Palestinians, some of them armed, charge the Israeli border post at Allenby killing soldiers and security personnel, many of them women. By the time an amateur video of the rape and torture of the Israeli women is aired, Israel has shelled the Palestinians and driven them back with infantry. Hundreds are killed. The Jordanian army then charges across the river and takes up �defensive positions� in the Jordan valley. Faced with the choice of fighting Israel or being deposed, King Abdullah allows Iraq to use Jordanian airbases. Two Iraqi jets manage to get through Israeli air defences and fly themselves into Tel Aviv apartment blocks. Hundreds of Israelis are killed and right-wing groups march throughout Israel shouting �We Want War� and �Death to all the Arabs�. Israel invades south Lebanon and attacks Jordan�s airfields knocking out most of the kingdom�s air force. Saudi Arabia and Egypt can stay out of the conflict no longer. The Saudis send tanks to protect Jordan�s borders. Egypt sends a brigade of armour to �secure Gaza�. Both columns are attacked from the air but get through despite heavy casualties. Then the CIA sends Israel an alarming message. Two Iranian submarines have been spotted off Haifa. To rub it in, a unit of 20 unknown Islamist commandos lands at a deserted north Israeli beach at night. The next morning they massacre a group of Western tourists visiting Ceasarea before vanishing. Sensing that the murders will have driven the West firmly into Israel�s camp, the Jewish State appeals to America and her Nato partners to come to her aid. Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia cut off oil to the West. The price of a barrel surges beyond $100, stock exchanges start to wobble and crash as investors get out of paper and into gold and aerospace. Syrian Scuds hit West Jerusalem. Israel responds by bombing the presidential palaces in Latakia and Damascus, hitting the Syrian Ministry of Defence and arming its long-range Jericho missiles with nuclear warheads. Unaware of the threat, Saddam Hussein cannot resist temptation. He fills the tip of a Scud with nerve gas and a cocktail of his favourite plagues, and sends it on its way to Israel. It is shot down over Syria and Israel is blamed for unleashing chemical and biological weapons against innocent Arab civilians. Meanwhile British and US warplanes attack Saddam�s network of �palaces� which have doubled as bomb factories and rocket launching pads. A cell of young British Islamic militants run by Osama bin Laden is set up by the global terrorist. He orders them to deliver a car to Birmingham which is to be used in a bank robbery. It explodes, killing its three young idealists. Its boot has been filled with Sarin gas which kills half a dozen shoppers. Two days later the city�s hospital is overwhelmed by an outbreak of botulism and a flesh eating incurable e-coli infection. Rumours spread that Saddam and his mad doctors have perfected an airborne variant of Ebola. Army surplus stores are flooded. Panic stricken, people refuse to enter buildings with air conditioning and they walk the streets wearing World War II gas masks, fearful that their innards will be turned to mush in the name of a Free Palestine. The US and Europe can no longer tolerate the wave of Arab terrorism so. . . Baghdad gets nuked. Of course, there is no real need for this awful scenario to come true. After all, it is the vision of the nutty End Timers who camp on the Mount of Olives waiting for the Messiah and have been predicting Armageddon since the turn of the millennium. But one has to admit that the giant bomb that is the Middle East has been primed. Disposing of it means solving some tricky riddles including how to persuade Israel that the Palestinians would end all their territorial claims at the 1967 Green Line � they refused to do so at Camp David. And how can Israel be persuaded to to give back all of the West Bank and Gaza, evacuate the settlements or swap them for more land and give Arafat a country that looks like a country and not a blobby patchwork Bantustan, when Israel refuses to contemplate a Palestinian state that is beyond her control? Meanwhile Israel�s Jews would also have to be persuaded that somehow the Arab world has had a change of heart and no longer wants to annihilate the Jewish State. But the Jews know that if the Arabs said that, they would be lying. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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