DEBKAfile says intelligence reports warn that Yasser Arafat is planning to launch terror attacks in Israel on an unprecedented scale, to force international intervention: Arafat Plots Mega-Terror, Pushes PM-designate Qureia out of His Way.

Saturday, September 1, Israel switched to peak alert in readiness for the worst terrorist outrage yet. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s military and counter-terror sources stress that the state of readiness went well beyond the run-of-the mill alerts which Israel endures almost daily. All the national resources - the special operations units from all branches of the Israeli army, police and border guards - were recruited to repel suicide terrorists said to be heading into Israel for multi-casualty strikes on an unprecedented scale.

This time the source of the violence is not Hamas. The latest intelligence reaching Israeli quotes Arafat, who sits with his circle at a table in his Ramallah headquarters around the clock, as saying: “The struggle against the Israeli aggressors must not be influenced by what happens to me. Carry on with your sacred mission.”

These words were interpreted by his henchmen as an order to go all the way and carry out an attack so disastrous that it will force international intervention in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and show the world that he, Yasser Arafat, is the sole Palestinian interlocutor.