THE BEAST BEGINS TO EAT ITSELF
LIVE BY THE SWORD, DIE BY THE SWORD...
Palestinian Authority officials here expressed deep concern over the weekend about reports that al-Qaida was planning to assassinate top PA leaders. The threats have prompted PA security forces to take strict measures to guarantee the safety of the leaders, including PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whose villa in Ramallah has been completely cordoned off. The latest measures were taken after a hitherto unknown group calling itself al-Tawhid and Jihad [Unification and Holy War] distributed leaflets in the Gaza Strip threatening to kill a number of senior officials belonging to Abbas's Fatah party.
This is the first time that the group, which is believed to be headed by Jordanian arch-terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, has issued a leaflet in Gaza, indicating that al-Qaida elements had begun operating in the area. Radical Palestinian groups have generally avoided issuing direct death threats against PA leaders, but PA leaders say that with the recent disclosure that al-Qaida has managed to establish cells in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they feared that its members would target Abbas and other Fatah leaders. The leaflet specifically mentioned the names of five Abbas loyalists who it said would soon be "slaughtered" as apostates: Muhammad Dahlan, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Samir Mashharawi, Nabil Amr and Abu Ali Shaheen. "We hereby declare that we have begun operating in Palestine," the leaflet said, heaping praise on Zarqawi and al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. "We have decided to revive the sunnah [one of the sources of Islamic jurisprudence] of slaughter against these people to avoid dissension."
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