Al-Qaeda working with West Bank terrorists
by Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post
Global Jihad and Al Qaeda based in Jordan have stepped up their attempts to infiltrate Israel and were in close contact with Palestinian terror cells based in West Bank, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh revealed on Wednesday.
“We recently caught several local terror cells that were in touch with the international Global Jihad based in Jordan,” Naveh told a closed meeting at the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs. Naveh would not say for certain that the al-Qaeda camp in Jordan worked under the direction of the movement’s Iraqi leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, but, he said, “Al Qaeda was working to tighten its grip on the ground” in Jordan and Israel.
Jordan, the high-ranking officer said, should be particularly concerned with the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian Authority. Naveh predicted that Hamas would spread out to the other side of the Jordan River and might even succeed in toppling the Jordanian government…
“Zarqawi and his men are trying to get a better grip in Jordan,” Naveh continued. “They are in the midst of trying to create ideological and religious cells in Gaza and the West Bank and their next stage is to connect themselves to local terror cells.”
Palestinian terror groups, he said, received funding, sometimes up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, through Western Union branches in the territories. While Islamic Jihad would escalate is terror activity to try and vanguard the Palestinian struggle, the Fatah, the commander predicted, would also step up its attacks against Israel to “try and become legitimate in the eyes of Hamas.”
