By Jerry Smith Jan 24 2011
assangewatch.blogspot.com
Not yet officially released on the WikiLeaks site, but confirmed by Israeli newspaper Yediot Acharonot, Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor that was still in the construction phase.
The incident took place during the Bush era, and Condoleezza Rice was the Secretary of State. The cable was sent to all U.S. State Department representatives world wide, and according to what Rice wrote in the cable, Syria went to some lengths both to clean up the site and destroy any evidence that would show what was being erected.
It was not a reactor but a military installation, according to Syria.
The report clearly shows that the USA was involved in the mission on the intelligence side.
Julian Assange said that Wikileaks will be releasing more files related to Israel. “There are 3,700 files related to Israel and the source of 2,700 files is Israel,” he told Al-Jazeera on December 22. “The Guardian, El Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel.”
Wikileaks had “no contacts with Israel, but I am sure Mossad is following our activities closely like Australia, Sweden and the CIA”, Assange said.
Many of the cables leaked so far, from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, consist of U.S. diplomats repeating Israel's warnings of the nuclear threat from Iran. Some others consist of diplomats saying these warnings are blown out of proportion and should be taken 'with a grain of salt'.
Another significant revelation is the deliberate planning that has gone into creating the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.
A 2008 cable outlined the plan to keep Gaza’s 1.5 million people destitute: “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (US embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
The cables also confirm that Israel was responsible for the January 2010 assassination of Palestinian resistance activist Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai.
Israeli assassins used cloned passports and stolen identities from friendly countries, and because of this, the leaders of some of those countries felt obligated to give Israel a rare public 'hand slapping'.
Despite the public rebuke towards Israel, the cables show leaders support Israel. For example the official US position has been for a halt to the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank. But another cable refers to a secret US-Israeli accord to seek “to continue the ‘natural growth’ of Israeli settlements in the West Bank”.
Another example is the outward push for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The cables show that the U.S. are fully aware that the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks it pushes cannot succeed, as “there is too wide a gap between the maximum offer any Israeli prime minister could make and the minimum terms any Palestinian leader could accept and [politically] survive”.
Wikileaks has also exposed several Western-supported Middle Eastern dictators' private support of Israel, while using passionate anti-Israel rhetoric in public.
In July 2006, invading Israeli troops fought to a stalemate with resistance fighters affiliated with Hezbollah and other Lebanese opposition parties. The Israeli invasion killed 1200 Lebanese civilians.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments publicly applauded this rare Israeli defeat. Wikileaks cables reveal that in private discussions between US diplomats and Saudi leaders, they took the opposite position.
In 2008, the Saudi regime even offering to initiate an Arab military force to invade Lebanon, with US naval and air support, and crush Hezbollah.
A March 2008 cable from Lebanese defence minister Elias Murr to US diplomats gave his advice on how Israel could be more successful next time it attacked his country. Part of the defence minister's advice was to 'avoid targeting Christian communities', which is Murr’s electoral base.
He also expressed concern about how to prevent the Lebanese army from defending Lebanon against an Israeli attack.
The cable said: “Murr was especially concerned for members of the 1st and 8th Brigades in the Beka’a valley. Murr thinks that these units will be cut off from HQ support while Israel is conducting operations against Hezbollah."
“They will have to turn to the local populace for food, water etc. Since the populace is mainly Hizballah supporters, Murr is afraid that these two units could be dragged into the fight, the ultimate disaster Murr hopes to avoid.”
The cables also confirm that Egypt is a willing partner in the siege of Gaza, that the Palestinian Fatah organisation, which controls the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA), asked Israeli intelligence to assist it during its 2007 attempt to overturn the elected Hamas government in Gaza, and that some Fatah leaders went as far as to ask Israel to attack Hamas.
The cables also indicate that Israeli intelligence has a “very good working relationship” with the Fatah-run PA, and that it “shared almost all the intelligence it collects” with Israel.
Wikileaks cables also revealed that both Egypt and the Fatah-led PA were consulted by Israel before the 2008 assault on Gaza and that the Egyptian-brokered peace talks between Fatah and Hamas were only held with the intention of isolating Hamas and legitimising Fatah.
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