DEBKAfile Exclusive: Hamas – and its Syrian and Iranian sponsors – capture priceless Palestinian Authority intelligence archives in Gaza putsch
The Fatah-led general intelligence and security services caved in too fast to shred, wipe or burn documents, computer disks and archives. The entire collection fell into Hamas’ hands when they seized Palestinian Preventive Intelligence HQ at Tel Awa (henceforth Tel al-Islam) and the Palestinian General Intelligence center near Gaza port.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources say: Never before has a bonanza of Western intelligence secrets on this scale ever reached an implacably hostile Islamist terrorist gang. The US, British and Israeli intelligence services may have suffered their greatest debacle in the war on Islamist terror. It will take them many years to recover.
[What was Fatah doing with this stuff in the first place?]
Hamas has taken possession of hundreds of thousands of documents cataloguing the clandestine operations of Western intelligence services in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the oil emirates. It is now the owner of complete archives of Palestinian undercover links with foreign intelligence services going back decades, with names of spies, political collaborators and double agents. The documentation covers the secret ties Palestinian intelligence maintained from the 1970s, when Yasser Arafat was based in Lebanon, with the Americans, the British, the French, the Israelis and many others.
Most intelligence experts say Israel should have bombed the two buildings and destroyed their contents rather than letting them fall into the hands of an organization and country dedicated to its eclipse.
For Hamas, this booty is priceless – and not only as the repository of bombs for planting under Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts. The Palestinian group’s Syrian and Iranian sponsors will pay a king’s ransom for this unique collection of explosive secrets hidden by many a Western intelligence agency and government. Damascus and Tehran will be hugely empowered with the means to stay a jump ahead of American moves in the region and tools to sabotage US policies at any time. They will have a store of national secrets and compromising information to hold over the heads of Western leaders and officials, lists of undercover agents, and records of covert operations carried out by the Israeli Mossad, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence, CIA, British MI6 and other Western agencies. Iran, Syria and Hamas will know the names of politicians, including Israelis, who worked secretly with Palestinians and their shady deals.
One intelligence expert said that the Gaza hoard left in enemy hands by Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan are the crown jewels compared with the Saddam Hussein’s intelligence archives.
In the Palestinian security service building, Hamas found computer hard disks covering years of undercover activity and a complete set of sophisticated wiretapping and surveillance equipment and sensors which the CIA and MI6 gave Mahmoud Abbas and his forces. It was all in perfect condition ready to switch on.
After the Nazi regime was defeated at the end of World War II and Eastern Germany fell in the 1990s, there were officials willing to make a desperate effort to destroy or hide their intelligence treasure. Palestinian intelligence officers did not burn a single page.
It’s been a long time since I read Debka, I think they learned their trade from the National Enquirer. How on earth would Fatah acquire such a ‘treasure trove’, and should they have been able to do so would they not have shared it by now with Iran or Syria? Or acted on it? Nah, the whole story is just silly.
If Fatah had been in possession of sensitive information that could hurt Israel or anyone else, they would have used it by now – it is not as if Fatah was in the business of protecting the interests of Israel; we know that the opposite is true.
On the TV news this evening some of those papers seemed to be blowing in the wind. I am sure that the black-hooded Hamas terrorists are looking to loot mostly material property – they can’t even grasp the importance of greenhouses that were left to them courtesy of Israel after the pullout so I doubt that they care much about printed material – in the Palestinian version of life the future means nothing just as life means nothing – theirs or ours. Also, Hamas was an integral part of the government and I am sure that whatever was in those files would have been shared with Hamas – these two groups are only enemies when it comes to sharing international aid money and some minor disagreements on the amount of Islam that will be allowed to infest government, they are not enemies when it comes to their shared hate and determination to destroy Israel.
If anything is amiss it is the fact that Israel did not secure the back door to immediately begin a punishing embargo which would force citizens out of the Islamic Republic of Hamastan. I mean, Israel must be in a state of denial if they think that this is a self-contained problem that does not require a quick and vigorous response. I really don’t understand the politics/strategy behind Israeli indifference to this new circumstance.
By the way – why do those cowards wear black hoods? Do they fear being identified and targeted? And what about the irony of those Hamas goons stepping on the poster of Arafat, wasn’t that a fitting image along with the black hoods sitting in Abbas’ office making mock phone calls to Ms. Rice telling her that she would have to talk to them now. Talk about an oedipal complex on a pathological and massive scale – Arafat taught these freaks all they know (but they have upped him by putting their agenda on the fast track).
My first thought echoes Gary, the information is only useful in the “right” hands, whoever that is was already supplied with it. There are two reasons why: 1. They hate the West 2. Such information would be worth money; how long will anything last among the Palestinians if it can be sold for a dollar?
It is probably irrelevant what documents they have in their possession because all they read is the Koran and bomb-making handbooks.
Anyway, Russia, some European countries, Pakistan, North Korea, etc, give them all the expertise, weapons and intelligence they could possibly want – there is probably nothing in those files that the Arab and Persian world do not already know about given the leaks and double agents in the West willing to undermine the West for a few bucks. That is why the Islamists are winning the war for world domination at the present time…everything in the West is up for sale but nothing in Islam is open to change or compromise.