- (AFP) -- Israel was bracing for what its army chief predicted
will be an "earthquake" in the region if the United States attacks
Iraq, amid fears of more Palestinian attacks inside Israel.
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- As the US administration was pounding the drums of war
louder by the day, General Moshe Yaalon warned that a US offensive on Iraq
would drastically reshape the region whatever the outcome.
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- "In the coming weeks, an US attack in Iraq will
trigger a regional earthquake, which will reshape" the Middle East,
Yaalon said in an interview with the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily.
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- "A successful US offensive will have positive consequences,
by strengthening the pragmatic elements in the region," he explained
Friday.
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- "However, if it is perceived as a failure, it will
have negative consequences for us," Yaalon added in reference to Israel's
conflict with the Palestinians.
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- Despite the ongoing violence of the 28-month Palestinian
uprising, Israel's attention was very much focused on the looming threat
of war only 250 miles (402 kilometres) from its borders.
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- On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented
to the UN Security Council what he called "irrefutable" evidence
that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had flouted UN resolutions and had
not destroyed his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
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- Israeli analysts said after Powell's key address that
the conflict was now a certainty and that it could start within days.
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- Both the Jewish state and its Arab neighbours fear the
other could take advantage of a conflict to forward its goals.
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- Beirut expressed its fears Thursday that Israel will
"exploit a war in the region to expel Palestinians to Lebanon,"
while the Palestinians have also stressed the risk of seeing Israel use
the Iraqi conflict to deport Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
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- On Friday, Israel also hinted that it was expecting more
attacks inside Israel by radical Palestinian groups.
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- After Israeli security forces foiled a planned Palestinian
suicide attack inside Israel, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
told AFP that Israel was preparing for a fresh spate of Palestinian suicide
attacks.
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- "This story is an example of the various Palestinian
organisations' determination to carry out a spectacular attack in Israel,"
Avi Pazner told AFP.
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- He was referring to the arrest Thursday night of two
militants from the hardline Islamic Jihad group at a surprise roadblock
between Nablus and Tulkarem in the northern West Bank.
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- According to police sources, they were on their way to
carrying out a suicide bombing on the other side of the Green Line and
the explosives belt which was meant to be used for the attack was found
in a mosque in an Israeli Arab town north of Tel Aviv.
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- The incident was likely to put further pressure on already
strained relations between Israel's Jewish and Arab communities and came
two days after a Bedouin mosque in the southern Negev Desert was demolished
by the army on the grounds that it had been built illegally.
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- In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army continued its crackdown
on the Palestinians, destroying several buildings in the central town of
Deir al-Balah, Palestinian security sources said.
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- Early on Friday morning, three Israeli bulldozers backed
by armoured vehicles staged a brief incursion in the autonomous area adjacent
to the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom and demolished a building which
used to house the local Palestinian intelligence services, they said.
- The army also demolished two shops and razed farmland,
the sources added. in a continuation of the controversial policy which
the army says is carried out for security reasons but many local and international
rights groups denounce as collective punishment.
- Copyright © 2002 AFP.
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