Tehran pulls wires of latest Palestinian terror cycle

Israel's big threatening neighbor.

[sic]that Syria is making a bad mistake by fostering the Hizballah and letting Iran strengthen its mastery over the extremist Shiite group.

This assertion left a question mark over the Israeli side of the equation – and for good reason. Israel’s passivity in contending with the Hizballah is part and parcel of its failure to come to grips with Yasser Arafat and his escalating campaign of terror.

Last Thursday, November 21, the day a suicide killer from Bethlehem murdered 11 Israeli women and schoolchildren on a Jerusalem bus in Kiryat Menahem, Hizballah secretary general, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a Ramadan address in which he dodged adroitly around admitting his group’s involvement in the latest outburst of Palestinian anti-Israel terror. But denying it would have invited awkward questions about his inaction. He therefore hinted at a Hizballah role in the suicide attacks this month at Hermesh, the Karkur Junction, Kibbutz Metzer, Hebron, Kiryat Menahem - and the failed El Al hijacking attempt – which together cost 29 Israeli lives and left hundreds seriously injured. Urging the aggressive dissemination of “the suicide culture” worldwide, he was clearly congratulating himself on being astute enough to help make life in Israel a living hell without exposing Lebanon to Israeli reprisals.

In Gaza, the Jihad Islami leader, Abdallah Shami, stood up to deny any connection between his organization, which claimed most of the recent murderous assaults on Israelis, and al Qaeda, dismissing it as “a typical Zionist libel”.

Israeli leaders, for their part, have not hinted at the real culprit behind this latest cycle of terror, except for dire warnings that its ferocity can be expected to increase - and run even to mega-attacks.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror experts affirm that these veiled hints, unrelated denials and suggestive silences add up to a curtain that all the parties concerned have an interest in drawing over a single name: Iran. The ayatollahs in Tehran have called in their many ties in the murky world of terror – from Hizballah to al Qaeda, Yasser Arafat and his “security” organisms to the Jihad Islami and, indirectly, Syria, to unleash the latest round of deadly terrorist attacks against Israelis.

According to our experts, these attacks, culminating Friday in the explosives boat off the Gazan coast - blown up with its two suicide killers by an Israeli gunboat - are the work of Iranian Revolutionary Guards members based in Lebanon, Palestinian terrorists whom they trained and al Qaeda fugitives from Afghanistan, 150 of whom went to ground in south Lebanon.

This operation has two relevant elements:
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