Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

 Top members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah organization have made a strategic decision to start a “popular uprising” against Jewish settlements in the West Bank, informed Fatah militant sources told this column.

  The “popular uprising” is to consist of what the sources termed low-grade attacks against West Bank Jewish communities, specifically throwing rocks, homemade fire bombs and Molotov cocktails by young Palestinian men.

  The uprising is in part aimed at increasing pressure on Israel to evacuate the West Bank. Israel is widely expected to offer the vast majority of the strategic territory to the PA in talks which were initiated at last November’s U.S.-backed Annapolis summit. Israel and the PA agreed in Annapolis to “make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.”

  The Fatah sources also said the uprising is meant to appease hard-line members of Fatah who have been calling on the organization to step up attacks against Israel in the West Bank so it doesn’t look as though Fatah is colluding with Israel and the U.S. in obtaining the territory. Hard-liners also want Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group to increase its role in “liberating” the West Bank from Israel using violent means.

  Israeli security officials said they are concerned that Israel’s response to the uprising could be used by terrorists as an excuse to launch a new intifada, this time directed at West Bank Jews.
  The PA has long used violence as a tool to pressure Israel into concessions. The last intifada started in 2000 when Israel retaliated in response to an orchestrated attack in which Arabs threw stones on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. Then-PA President Yasir Arafat used the retaliation as an excuse to launch the second intifida, in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered.

  During the past few days the IDF has killed three Palestinians who tried to throw firebombs at Jewish settlements in the West Bank. All three incidents took place near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, just outside Ramallah, and all involved young Palestinian men throwing firebombs at either IDF soldiers or settlers. Other incidents occurred outside the Jewish community of Kadumim.

  A senior official in a sensitive post in one of the PA’s major U.S.-backed security organizations was arrested in recent days on suspicion he was working for the Hamas terror organization.

  WorldNetDaily has learned that the man in question served in a top post of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Force 17 Presidential Guard units. Palestinian security sources said the suspected Hamas spy was involved in formulating and carrying out Force 17’s plans to fight Hamas in the West Bank as well as in working with the U.S. in recent months to reform the PA’s security organizations.

  The purported spy’s alleged collaboration with Hamas include interfering to release Hamas elements imprisoned in PA jails and defending Hamas members who were involved in money transfers from the terror group to its fighters in the West Bank, particularly in Ramallah, security sources told WND.

  The sources said the man in question is accused of receiving “tens of thousands of dollars” per month from Hamas. The PA, they said, took action to arrest him only after Israel and the U.S. provided strong evidence of his collaboration with Hamas.

  Israeli security sources said they fear the recent arrest is only the tip of the iceberg with regard to Hamas’ infiltration of PA security forces. They also said they fear Hamas may eventually mount a takeover of the West Bank similar to its seizure of the Gaza Strip last summer.

  Members of Fatah were arrested this week for allegedly leading a 2006 anti-Christian attack in which gunmen set fire to the Young Men’s Christian Association in the West Bank city of Qalqiliya, this column has learned.

  Following the arrest of four militants in conjunction with the attack, Rabih Elkhangy, the Fatah mayor of Qalqiliya, held a press conference in which he claimed the arrested attackers were from the rival Hamas terror organization.

  But informed sources said that of the four arrested, two are Fatah members, one is a Fatah sympathizer and the fourth is a member of Jihadiya Silafiya, a Palestinian Islamist organization ideologically allied with al-Qaeda.

  Libyan leader Muammar Khaddafi said during a televised national rally earlier this year that Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim of Kenyan origin who studied in Islamic schools and whose campaign may have been financed by people in the Islamic and African worlds.

  “There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama,” said Khaddafi in little-noticed remarks he made at a rally marking the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. air raid on his country.

  The remarks, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), were aired on Al Jazeera in June.

  “All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” continued Khaddafi. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.

  “We are hoping that this black man will take pride in his African and Islamic identity, and in his faith, and that [he will know] that he has rights in America, and that he will change America from evil to good, and that America will establish relations that will serve it well with other peoples, especially the Arabs.”