© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
THURSDAY
MAY 24
2001

The penetration and radicalization of the Palestinian "Intifada Movement" topped the agenda of an arcane gathering on the Greek island of Corfu, according to international intelligence service DEBKA.

The participants in the "secret" meeting stole onto the island in disguise, according to the intelligence report, landing in small groups and mingling with the hordes of tourists so as to stay in the shadows of the militant terrorist conspiracies they mastermind.

The convention, taking place in the first part of May, was a secret spin-off of the Conference of Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada held in Tehran in the last week of April. Its agenda and general tenor were laid down in preliminary meetings in Tehran by its sponsor, Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who also sent the largest delegation.

Its most prominent members were seasoned hands in the terrorist game, Mohamed Nurani, who as charge d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Bonn from 1986 to the early 1990s established and managed pro-Iranian terrorist cells in Europe; Col. Mohamed Awae'i, who set up the first Hezbollah training camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley in the early 1980s and reportedly led the TWA hijack in 1985; and the most mysterious figure of them all, intelligence colonel Sarnji Snandajy, top field commander for operations outside the Middle East under the Hezbollah's external operations chief Imad Mughniyeh, as well as contact man between Khamenei and the Egyptian Jihad Islami. Mughniyeh himself, the movement's ace abductor, flew in from a European country, probably Germany, to join the conference.

The hardliners shaped a new blueprint based on the premise that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, cannot be trusted to shun peace diplomacy and fight Israel to extinction, like the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas. Their agents have begun infiltrating the ranks of his Fatah under cover of the Palestinian leader's operational partnership with the Hezbollah.

At least one leading light of the Palestinian Fatah Tanzim militia was secretly present at Corfu, as well as three delegates close to the Hezbollah's fire-eating Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, two Qatar-based Palestinian Hamas militants and two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad who are based in Damascus.

Corfu was chosen as venue for the first time, instead of the traditional meeting place in a suburb of Athens owned by an Arab businessman, so as not to alert the delegates from 35 Arab and Islamic countries in Tehran at the time. Moreover, the grand patron of Iran's terrorism export drive, Ayatollah Khamenei, feared that Iranian intelligence, which supports President Mohamed Khatami, getting wind of the plan and either aborting it or using it as a bargaining chip to get Khatami re-elected in the June 8 presidential election.

In his message to the gathering, Khamenei stressed the importance of a high degree of coordination and cooperation among the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, and the recruitment of all Palestinian and non-Palestinian organizations for the jihad to defeat the "Zionist entity," drive it out of Palestinian areas and liberate Jerusalem by force of arms.

He held up the Hezbollah's achievement in driving the Israeli army out of southern Lebanon, urged a repetition of its war of attrition and proclaimed Iran ready to finance and support anyone who joins the jihad.

The initial sum of $10 million was allocated.

Iran promised to enhance its financial, logistical and military support for the Arab uprising, providing military advisers and fostering cooperation between the Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian organizations. In special training camps, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah instructors will improve the Palestinian groups' skills in surveillance, monitoring, infiltration, booby-trapping cars and suicide operations. The Palestinians are to receive special instruction in the use of Katyusha surface rockets, which the Iranians find more effective and less risky than the mortars in current use in the Gaza Strip and also harder to locate for return fire.

Iran and Hezbollah announced they would help smuggle large amounts of rockets from Lebanon to the Palestinian Authority, offering Sager, TOW and Katyusha rockets, including the latest model with a range of 70 kilometers.

The Intifada, the Iranian officer went on to explain, would need long-range missiles in the next stage of its confrontation in order to expand the war from harassing settlements to striking at Israeli's inner cities.

At least one other intelligence source suggested to WorldNetDaily, however, that all of the anti-Arafat rhetoric could be a cover to elevate the Palestinian Authority leader's stature as a "moderate" force in the Mideast.