Arafat's Heir Comes to Gaza

Steven Stalinsky wrote in JWR s this column reported last week, the Tunis-based head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Farouk Qaddumi, whose official position on Israel is that it should be destroyed, will move into Gaza this summer. He is a possible successor and key rival to the Palestinian Authority's current leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Qaddumi will be bringing with him a "volunteer popular army" of at least 1,500, according to Saudi press reports from August 3.

When they begin launching rocket attacks on Israel, and when Israel counter-attacks, hopefully they will be able to wipe him and his 1,500 member army out in one major attack.

Mr. Qaddumi confers often with terrorist groups and regimes. At a September 4, 2003, meeting in Lebanon with the head of Hezbollah, Shiekh Hassan Nasrallah, Mr. Qaddumi announced "a cohesion between the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance." Over the last decade, he repeatedly met with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership in Damascus to plan "the liberation of Palestine." He also has served as a point person between Palestinian Arabs and the Iranian regime. In an interview from Iran with Al-Jazeera broadcast on December 20, 2004, Mr. Qaddumi noted that Yasser Arafat was the first Arab leader to visit Iran after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 - a slight directed toward America. The PLO chief said on-air that the purpose of his visit to the Islamic Republic was to strategize with the regime on the "liberation of Palestine." When asked if it was true "that Iran is infiltrating the Palestinian ranks, as far as Gaza, through the Hezbollah Cadres, or the Palestinian Islamic organizations in Iran," he responded that it was "good" and "truly positive" and that the PLO "welcomed all Arab and Islamic organizations to infiltrate." In a December 12, 2004, interview on Iran's Al-'Alam TV, he said the "cooperation between the PLO and Iran" includes working "to liberate Jerusalem."