DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
March 18, 2009, 9:25 AM (GMT+02:00)
New pro-Saudi terror militia in South Lebanon
DEBKAfile's military sources disclose that Saudi intelligence services are deep in recruitment for a new radical Islamist terrorist militia in the southern Gaza Strip towns of Deir al Balakh, Khan Younes and Rafah, with Egyptian blessing. More than 1,000 Palestinians have joined up in two weeks, poached from the extreme Hamas fringes and the Salafi sects.
Recruiters promise greater militancy against Israel than Hamas and Jihad Islami combined.
The new Gaza group is intended to complement the pro-Saudi organization established in southern Lebanon in January, part of a new Riyadh project to establish a chain of Islamist, Taliban-style fighting cadres under Saudi control for combating the pro-Iranian and al Qaeda terrorist organizations strung across the Middle East.
The Saudis are pumping into southern Gaza weapons, cash and dozens of military instructors for a strong infrastructure. This flow could not have taken place through Egyptian territory without Cairo's knowledge and approval.
DEBKAfile's Middle East sources disclose the hand behind this grand design is the Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin Abdul Aziz. He has used Hamas leaders' absence and their preoccupation in Cairo with prisoner swap negotiations with Israel and Palestinian unity talks to lay the groundwork for the pro-Saudi Palestinian terror group in the Gaza Strip.
The organization up and running in S. Lebanon, dubbed the Arab Islamic Resistance Organization, soon challenged pro-Iranian Hizballah's domination of South Lebanon by becoming the first non-Hizballah element ever to stage a comprehensive "war game" close to the Israeli border without Iran's proxy interfering.
Exercises included chemical warfare drill, a sign that the Saudis are preparing to arm their new terrorist network with sophisticated means of war.
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5970