Olmerts "partner in peace" were up to blowing up a busstation

TEL AVIV, Israel – Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization were involved in planning a foiled attack targeting Tel Aviv's central bus station yesterday, terrorist sources told WND.

Information obtained also indicates specific Fatah terrorists granted amnesty in recent months by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert plotted the attack. That detail is significant because, according to Palestinian sources speaking to WND, Olmert is slated to announce the pardon of dozens more Fatah terrorists ahead of a Muslim holiday this weekend.

Yesterday, Israeli police, acting on specific intelligence, thwarted what they said would have been a large-scale terrorist bombing of Tel Aviv's bus station. Security forces here arrested a Palestinian resident of the West Bank city of Jenin who had infiltrated Israel. He was captured along with three other people at a house just outside Tel Aviv.

Following the Palestinian's arrest yesterday, the would-be bomber led police to a nearby city where he had hidden a bag filled with explosives reportedly meant to be detonated at the bus station.

Sources in Fatah's declared military wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, told WND yesterday their group planned the bombing alongside the Islamic Jihad terror organization in Jenin. Fatah is Israel's declared peace partner. The group is considered moderate by U.S. policy.

Nevertheless, the Israeli media and official Israeli government spokesmen, declared the thwarted bombing was an Islamic Jihad operation with no mention of Fatah and its Brigades.

WND has learned the original intelligence alerting security forces here to yesterday's planned bombing came with the arrest, just hours before the plot was halted, of Ahmed Amire, a Fatah Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade member in Jenin who had been pardoned by Olmert last June.

Also, the night before, the Israel Defense Forces, conducting an anti-terror arrest operation, killed Muhammad Abu Drei, another pardoned Al Aqsa member on suspicion he was plotting an imminent attack meant for central Israel. Drei was killed after he opened fire on Israeli forces. Amire may have provided the intelligence on the whereabouts of the Palestinian bomber, although security sources declined to divulge the information to WND due to an ongoing investigation.

Olmert issued amnesty to Amire, Drei and to over 100 of their Brigades colleagues on condition they disarm, refrain from attacks and spend three months in a PA detention facility. Following the three month detention, the pardoned Brigades terrorists would need to spend another three months confined to the city in which they reside, and then the gunmen would be offered full amnesty – meaning they would have complete freedom of travel throughout the West Bank and would be treated like an ordinary Palestinian.

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