Israelis Claim Fatah Terrorists Tried To Assassinate Olmert

Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the cabinet Sunday that on June 6, a group of gunmen affiliated with Fatah attempted to hit Olmert's convoy as travelled from Jerusalem to Jericho for a meeting with Palestinian President Arafat II Abbas. Thye were likely from the al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, `moderate ' Mahmoud Abbas' own terrorist militia and were also apparently members of the Pa security forces, so they knew the convoy's route in advance.

The Israelis apparently brought the story to light when the Palestinians released the three suspects they had arrested as part of the plot.

To give you an idea of exactly how loose Abbas' hold on the West Bank is, a seperate Fatah spokesman, Ahmed Abdul Rahman denounced the story as `false' and urged the media to ignore the Israeli story even after Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and PA Intelligence Chief Tawfiq Tirawi confirmed it!

Personally, I think Ahmed Abdul Rahman may be onto something. I mean, why would the Palestinians want to kill Olmert when he's helping them as much as he can to destroy Israel?

Olmert,of course has his own problems to deal with aside from getting whacked. Not only is he the subject of three seperate criminal investigations ( he's already been indicted) but he's having coalition problems, to the point where he was forced to go public today and announce that the forthcoming Annapolis `peace' conference was "not meant to be an event on its own or an event for an agreement or a historic breakthrough".

Which of course leads to another question: why bother?

Apparently the revelations by Olmert's top negotiator,Haim Ramon about displacing thousands of Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria, re-dividing Jerusalam and giving the Arabs control over Judaism's most sacred sites including the Western Wall is meat too strong even for the stomaches of even Shas and the Israel Betainyu parties, who warned both Olmert and US Secretary of State Condi Rice that the type of far-reaching strategic surrenders the Palestinians are demanding would cause the government to fall as they pulled out of it and Isreal to go immediately to new elections.

For that matter, given Olmert's lack of any significant support at home, I doubt that the current government would dare to commit to anything major without going before the Israeli people for a referendum...which essentially means new elections anyway.

Far better for Shas and Avigdoer Leiberman's Israel Betainyu to pull out now and end this farce. It's long past time.