Israel today accused the Palestinian Authority of planning to produce explosives in a secret Gaza factory for attacks against Israeli targets, after militants blasted a navy vessel off the coast, and just days after a suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem.
In a further blow to the Palestinian Authority's international standing, the Israeli daily Haaretzsaid the army had seized classified documents in a raid on a Gaza preventive security base last week linking it to the planned production of explosives to be handed out to all militant factions.
The documents found in the raid on the base at Tel al-Hiweh, just outside Gaza City, were addressed to Mr Rashid Abu Shbak, the deputy head of the security service charged with preventing such attacks, the daily said.
It said the factory was a "strategic project" aimed at bypassing the difficulties militant groups had in manufacturing explosives, which have been used to deadly effect against Israeli tanks and convoys of Jewish settlers, as well as in explosive belts used by suicide bombers.
Israeli defence analysts quoted by the paper said the explosives were to be distributed to all militant factions, including radical Islamic groups in opposition to Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA).
A leading Palestinian preventive security official in Gaza denied the charges, which he said were "part of a campaign by Israeli security services to undermine officers and members of preventive security."
"This campaign is aimed at covering up the failure of these security services, who have not succeeded in stopping resistance operations in Israel," he added, referring to anti-Israeli attacks by militant groups.
Under the 1993 Oslo accords which led to the establishment of the PA and limited autonomy, the acquisition or manufacture of explosives is strictly forbidden.
Mr Arafat's credibility with the main regional power-broker, the US, was critically undermined in January when Israeli commandoes seized a ship laden with arms which Israel said was bound from Iran for the Palestinian Authority.
AFP