Analysis / Hezbollah's terror factory in the PA

The conventional view of the Hezbollah in Israeli eyes is of a professional, focused, secret organization; terrorist professionals conducting a well-planned campaign against the IDF - so successful that it forced the army out of south Lebanon in May 2000.

There's quite a lot of exaggeration in this description when it comes to Lebanon. When it comes to the main terrorist arena in which Hezbollah now operates against Israel - the territories - it is simply untrue.

Senior defense officials monitoring Hezbollah activity, which include sending money and instructions to Palestinians in the territories during the last two years, describe a very different picture. The Shi'ite organization runs a conveyor-belt operation in the territories. Its goal is to create as many small terrorist cells as possible, and Hezbollah is happy with even the smallest attacks.

It's the "launch and forget" method. If a network's efforts don't work, Hezbollah moves on to another network. Hezbollah is not even providing specific tactical instructions to its West Bank and Gazan operatives. It makes do with general instructions.

Palestinians, despite the temptation of the high pay offered by the Lebanese group, are well aware of the ramifications of the system. A Fatah activist from the Tul Karm area who was arrested by the Shin Bet security service said that he regarded his contact with Hezbollah as deadly - a short-lived, fatal framework that would lead him to doom. Hezbollah, he told his interrogators, pushes people to ever more operations, even at the cost of their lives. And the chances of getting out of the "contract" safely are nil.

The hard data shows a steep rise in Hezbollah involvement in Palestinian terrorism. In 2002, the Shin Bet identified seven Palestinian groups operated by the Hezbollah. In 2003, there were 14, and in 2004, there were 51 such groups. Only some of those groups were neutralized.

The lion's share of last year's Hezbollah-connected armed cells were Fatah-affiliated - 38, mostly in the West Bank. Six cells were associated with Islamic Jihad, three with Hamas and at least four with the Popular Front, a secular Marxist organization having nothing in common with the fundamentalist Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's takeover of the armed Fatah cells in the West Bank is nearly absolute, with nearly every Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade unit on its payroll. Last year, 68 attacks were initiated by Hezbollah, some 20 percent of the attacks over the Green Line. Twenty-four Israelis - soldiers and civilians - were killed in these attacks.

Hezbollah is devoting significant resources to the war against Israel. Most of these resources come from Iran. Hezbollah sent an estimated $9 million into the territories in 2004 out of an overall budget of $100 million. Since a terrorist attack costs an average of NIS 5,000, clearly some of that $9 million ended up in the pockets of the cells in the territories. The current bonus paid for a dead or wounded Israeli is NIS 4,000.

Hezbollah has a reputation for abandoning its wounded in the field. In many cases, Hezbollah promised financial help to families if attackers were killed or arrested, promises that were not kept.

The Shin Bet, Military Intelligence and the Mossad, are still collecting data on Hezbollah's involvement, trying to create a flow chart showing the new terrorist channels.

As has been proven to be the case in the past, a key figure is Imad Fayez Mugniyah, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general in charge of its international section, who is also wanted by the U.S. He has been invested much effort in the Israeli arena, putting activists under his direct command to work on creating Palestinian cells. Among the activists known to Israel are Kais Obeid, an Israeli Arab from Taibe who was directly involved in kidnapping Elhanan Tannenbaum. Obeid is not the most senior of the cell operators; his colleagues are Lebanese.

Hezbollah's command in Beirut wants to forge unity between the various groups in the West Bank, unifying bomb makers, suicide bombers and those who dispatch attacks into one organization. But it has apparently stopped trying to send a senior bomb expert into the territories. Instead, it uses couriers who carry instructions on computer disks. That's no way to create a successor to Ihiye Ayash, but if the goal is quantity of attacks and not quality, its apparently enough for Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah, under instructions from Iran, has targeted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, even to harm him physically, to prevent any accommodation between Israel and the PA.