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Col. Miri Eisine: Israel fighting terror

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Eisine is a senior intelligence officer with the Israel Defense Forces.  


Editor's Note: CNN Access is a regular feature on CNN.com providing interviews with newsmakers from around the world.

(CNN) -- Israeli forces Tuesday night said they found documents inside the compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that Israeli leaders contend show a link between the Palestinian's Authority's finance minister and a request for money from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Palestinians say the documents are forgeries.

CNN anchor Bill Hemmer interviewed Col. Miri Eisine, a senior intelligence officer with the Israel Defense Forces, about the documents and their reported discovery.

HEMMER: The Palestinians say in no way are these documents true. They say they are flat-out fake. Your response to that?

EISINE: When we entered into the compound, and of course we haven't gone into Yasser Arafat's offices, we entered into Fouad al-Shoubaki, who is the chief financial advisor and senior officer in finances of the PA (Palestinian Authority). Within his office we took boxes of documents. Those documents have been translated, and only one of them at present have we presented out.

The document ... isn't a fake, it is a document which is written from them. It actually has in it handwriting on it that was added within the office and it needed a request for money. It is actually debts incurred. I'd call it a terrorist invoice, in which we are looking at a document which requests money for the families of the suicide bombers, the shahids.

And there is a specific request there for the money to make bombs. ...They need the money for each of these different bombs. A bomb costs 700 shekels. It was posed in shekels, and they need five to nine bombs a week. And this isn't our wording: It's in Arabic. We presented that.

HEMMER: Palestinians say the Martyrs Brigades would never put their headline on a piece of stationery, but indeed that's the document I saw.

EISINE: The document itself is authentic that we took out of the offices. We have other documents. This document itself, which was in Shoubaki's office, was found there. We don't fabricate lies.

HEMMER: When will journalists be able to see these documents?

EISINE: These documents were given yesterday, handed out to journalists. We have said already that anybody who would like to see the original, we will let them see the original document itself. We found, as I said, boxes of documents within the compound -- that, by the way, were being readied to be destroyed. The Palestinians were the ones who felt that they had something to hide.

HEMMER: What more, then, will we learn if you are going to release more paperwork sometime soon?

EISINE: As we go along and understand we will present these documents. We of course have interest to show the connections between somebody like Fouad al-Shoubaki -- who we, of course, remember not only as the chief financial adviser, but the one who was running the entire smuggling boat operation. The funding of it was entirely done by him, and we are looking for more things like that.

HEMMER: Let's talk about the ongoing military activity. Jenin was entered last night, so too another small town: There is talk of Nablus is being the next target on the list. Is that true?

EISINE: We don't talk about the present military operations as they go on. We do try to address, any time that we can, the different lies that we have been hearing everyday that the Palestinians say -- for example, the lies now within Bethlehem. But I won't address at moment the present operations as they go.

HEMMER: In Ramallah late yesterday, the U.S. actually stepped in and help mediate a truce between 400 Palestinians inside the security compound and Israeli troops on the outside. Is there the possibility that mediation may be able to end the current standoff in Bethlehem?

EISINE: Certainly, and that is certainly something that helps. I'd like to say again on that side, there were only 200 people within that compound and not 400. That is another example of something that was said. They said that all of them were unarmed within the compound. Yesterday in Ramallah, 184 came out, in which we found six top-wanted terrorists, and there were many arms in there.

If we talk about Bethlehem at the moment, if they would put down their arms, we have armed terrorists within the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. If they put down the arms and let the priests, the nuns that are inside, together with the dozens of militants to come out -- because as I said, they are presenting it that Israel won't let them out -- we will only go in we want to get out. We are not interested in being in there.

HEMMER: You stated at the very beginning that you wanted to root out and find terrorists suspects that had been on an Israeli list for some time. In the Church of the Nativity, how many are inside that you want?

EISINE: I can't give that exact list. Of course those are numbers we are interested in.

HEMMER: Do you know?

EISINE: We can say that there are definitely highly wanted terrorists within the structure.

HEMMER: In a broader perspective, in these half dozen towns throughout the West Bank, how many have you located that you want to put in custody.?

EISINE: I am going to say dozens and dozens of terrorists. As you understand, we don't have a magic wand to be able to immediately see that every person is or is not a terrorist. We have to interrogate, and as of now, we are already talking about dozens.

HEMMER: Quickly, though, I want to be clear about this. You say dozens, yet 800 were apprehended in Ramallah. Clearly 800 are not on that list.

EISINE: I would like to differentiate between the fact that we are detaining people, interrogating, finding out if they are connected to terror and letting them go. We have already let hundreds go in Ramallah. Having detained, differentiating between the ones we detain and the ones we are continuing our investigation.

HEMMER: I am out of time, but I really think it is important to ask you the following question about the Lebanese-Israeli border. How much concern right there is there on behalf of the IDF that this could be an escalating conflict that could take you outside of this direct region?

EISINE: Again, what I would like to say on that is how terror is connected to terror. Because on the Lebanese border, we are seeing -- without any provocation on the Israeli side from an international, sovereign recognized border -- that they are firing into Israeli areas unprovoked. And what we have here are terrorists continuing the entire terror against Israel both from within the territories and now from Lebanon. And yes, this is an issue, and as you have heard on diplomatic levels, we are trying to as much as possible to take care of that.



 
 
 
 







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