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Jericho Casino--coming soon to a ruined Jewish community near you?
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Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, ex-con and vote-buyer
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Dov Weissglas, senior Sharon adviser
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| By Shlomi Whitbrod July 25, 2005 |
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| Whose deal? MK Omri and PM Ariel Sharon (AP file) |
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An Israeli businessman and ex-convict said Monday that he has been talking with Palestinian officials about building a casino in a Gaza settlement slated for evacuation after Israel pulls out of the territory next month, ynet and Arutz 7 reported.
Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, a former Knesset member and convicted criminal in two countries said that he planned to turn the Elei Sinai settlement in northern Gaza into a resort town, replete with a luxury hotel and casino.
"It's amazing there, it's paradise," he gushed. "The Palestinian Authority will help us obtain permits for a pool and a casino."
Avi Farchan, a resident of the town, said that the government was "gambling at the expense of the country." The casino plan, he said, showed how "Jews are motivated not by values of the land but by the values of money," expressing outrage that "My house will be used by dealers -- that is what's planned," Farchan said. "I understood that they would even leave the synagogue intact so that Israeli visitors to the casino would have a place to pray."
Flatto-Sharon said several Palestinian Authority officials, including cabinet ministers, had asked him to ask the Israeli government to destroy the settlement's 180 houses to save on casino costs, which could add up to millions, ynet reported.
"It works for the Palestinians. Now I need permission from the Israeli government. We want the Israelis to visit the casino as well and that's why I need a license from Israeli for security."
Flatto-Sharon said Las Vegas business tycoon Norbert Aleman plans to invest in the project and that he plans to approach others as well, the ynet report said.
A vote-buying, fraud-flaunting fugitive
Flatto-Sharon fled to Israel in the 1970's after being indicted on charges of embezzlement and fraud, fleecing French citizens of some $60 million. He sought to avoid extradition by running for the Knesset and thus obtaining parliamentary immunity. In the 1977 election, though he hardly spoke a word of Hebrew and had to read his speeches from a card, he campaigned openly on a platform of avoiding extradition to France.
In the grand tradition of Likud-vote-buying, as the Washington Post reported at the time, Flatto-Sharon promised to pay anyone who voted for him, following which "the switchboards were jammed by Israeli voters calling to find out how and where to apply for a bribe."
1977 was the watershed year that Labor's 30-year dominance over Israeli politics would be broken, and anti-French sentiment was riding high in Israel because France had refused - using a rather flimsy excuse - to extradite Abu Daoud, wanted by Israel in the murder of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich. The voters poked a finger in the eye of the French by electing Flatto-Sharon. He joined Menachem Begin's ruling coalition, and one of the first votes he cast was in favor of a 1978 law prohibiting the extradition of Israeli citizens.
Although he served in the Knesset for two years, Flatto-Sharon was ultimately convicted of vote-buying in connection with the 1977 election, sentenced to nine months in prison, and suspended from the Knesset. But he was never returned to France to serve his five-year sentence due to the French statute of limitations on fraud convictions.
Contemporary readers may be impressed by parallels between the prison-evading and vote-buying techniques of Flatto Sharon and the tactics for which Prime Minister Sharon is currently accused. In the just released Boomerang, respected journalists Raviv Drucker of Channel Ten and Ofer Shelach of Yediot Aharonot provide an insider's narrative about how Sharon cut a deal and pulled strings to avoid criminal prosecution by offering his disengagement plan in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Based on interviews with senior government and security officials, Drucker and Shelach report that Sharon decided in December 2003 to abandon his electoral platform, which opposed unilateral transfer of land to the Palestinians and rejected the expulsion of Israelis from their communities in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria for reason's that had nothing to do with Israel's national security interests.
According to Drucker and Shelach, Sharon's motivation for adopting the radical left-wing plan --overwhelmingly rejected in the January 2003 elections -- was to avoid indictment for his alleged role in corruption scandals for which police were already investigating him and his sons Gilad and Omri. They write: "In private conversations [Sharon] said he was convinced that [state attorney Edna] Arbel would try to bring about his indictment and his resignation from the premiership." Sharon's aides, first and foremost among them his personal attorney and chief of staff Dov Weissglas, told Sharon that to avert indictment he had to take a bold initiative "to change the public agenda away from the media's focus on the investigation."
The result was "the unilateral disengagement plan."
After Arbel, who had fiercely pursued the investigation, was neutralized by promoting her to the Supreme Court, Sharon made a move to avoid indictment by appointing a new attorney-general, Menachem Mazuz. Among Mazuz's first tasks was deciding whether to indict Sharon and his son Gilad in what came to be known as "The Greek Island Affair." The day after Mazuz came into office, Sharon invited Haaretz's left-wing stalwart columnist Yoel Marcus for a visit to his residence in Jerusalem, where he outlined his new plan to withdraw from Gaza. Marcus embraced Sharon's plan in Haaretz the next day, and the Left joined Sharon's bandwagon. Mazuz then closed the investigation on Sharon and Gilad.
In an interview on Channel 2 earlier this year Shelach said, "The people who are closest to Sharon told us absolutely that if it hadn't been for those police investigations, this decision [to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria] would not have been made."
The authors demonstrate that the disengagement plan was Weissglas's brainchild, concocted without staff work, discussion with the army, or debate by the cabinet. Weissglas presented it to then US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice without any discussion with or alert to the IDF, Shin Bet and against their vehement objections. To counteract the security establishment's fierce opposition, Sharon effectively fired the IDF chief of general staff, Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, and Shin Bet director Avi Dichter by not extending their tours of duty, as is routinely done for both positions. He then stacked the General Staff and the Shin Bet with commanders who, like Mofaz, owe their personal promotions to Prime Minister.
Weissglas and Jericho First
But the gambling connection doesn't stop there. According to Arutz 7 today, Cyril Kern, whose questionable donations of 1.5 million to the Sharon family are the subject of another police investigation, is one of the financial partners in the Gaza casino building scheme.
Kern is a war-buddy of Sharon and resident of South Africa. According to Arutz 7, he and a Saudi billionaire recently toured the area on which the casino/resort is to be built. He and Austrian financier Martin Shlaff were well known as major investors in the Jericho Casino.
In February 2005, an investigative report in Makor Rishon alleged that the ouster of Yaalon's ouster was directly tied to the desire of the Sharon government to reopen the Jericho Casino. "Ya'alon was reportedly critical of the recent set of security meetings between Mofaz and Mohammed Dahlan, Senior Advisor to Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former PA Gaza Preventative Security Chief. The Chief of Staff reportedly warned Mofaz against turning over Jericho to PA security control at this time. Ya'alon reportedly told Mofaz. 'What can Dahlan give you? He will not be able to secure the city.' Mofaz rebuffed the chief of staff reportedly telling him that 'the issue is a political one and not military.'"
According to a source close to the Palestinian Authority, Makor Rishon reported, Ya'alon's fierce opposition to relinquishing IDF security control over Jericho and Mofaz's and apparently Sharon's displeasure with Yaalon's warnings led straight to the doors of the Jericho Casino and also to some senior offices in Israel.
The source told Makor Rishon that Yaalon and other senior security figures had expressed concern in the past that Jericho's casino profits -- estimated at more than one million dollars per day even after the start of the Al Aksa terror war in 2000 -- allegedly used as a prime funding source for Palestinian terror activity against Israel.
On Channel One's Friday evening program in February 2005, journalist Uri Dan, a close associate of Sharon, said the Israeli underworld and their Palestinian counterparts were cooperating in the Jericho Casino racket. "The problem," Dan added, "is that the Palestinian underworld is also part of the current leadership of the PA."
Palestinian sources told Makor Rishon that returning Jericho to PA hands and its casino to full operation was "at the top of the Palestinian agenda." West Bank strongman Jibril Rajoub and former senior Arafat financial advisor Mohammed Rashid, known to control Arafat's several billion dollar portfolio -- top the list of Palestinians believed to have among the heaviest financial interests in the casino.
MK Omri Sharon, the Prime Minister's son and closest confidante and Dov Weissglass are long time associates of Rashid. Both were reportedly Rashid's guests at his swank Tel Aviv Apartment on the night of Sharon's election victory in February 2001, according to Israeli journalists Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff in their 2004 book, The Seventh War.
A very senior Israeli security source told Makor Rishon that he and others in the IDF remember "with a cynical smile the repeated approaches Weissglas made to the IDF and security establishment after the closing of the Jericho Casino in 2001 to convince them to reopen the casino. "It was well known to us that Dov Weissglass had personal interests in the Jericho Casino," the senior security source added this week.
It turns out that Weissglass is still actively associated with his law firm Weissglass-Almagor that until recently was the law firm of record representing the Jericho Casino and other interests of the Palestinian Authority, as investigative journalist David Bedein reported in September 2004, reporting that Weissglas even then was planning a casino for an evacuated Jewish settlement in Gaza.
According to Bedein, the law firm Weissglass-Almagor was at the time listed as representing the interests of Casino investor and European financier Martin Shlaff whose alleged financial contributions to Prime Minister Sharon's 1999 and 2001 campaigns are under criminal investigation.
Prime Minister Sharon's office responded angrily to Makor Rishon's request for clarification regarding the reported Mofaz -Ya'alon discussion and the statements by separate senior security sources regarding Dov Weissglass' connection to the Jericho Casino. The newspaper received an unsigned response from the office of the Prime Minister's media advisor: "The arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians was signed between Defense Minister Mofaz and his Palestinian counterpart. Mofaz is soley responsible for transferring (security control of Palestinian) cities and he and only he will decide when to transfer them. In addition, even if the city of Jericho is transferred there is no intention of allowing Israeli citizens to enter the city, in accordance with the standing orders of the Head of IDF Central Command. The hinted charges in your request for clarification are not only a complete lie but they also contain intentional slander. "
According to Makor Rishon, Weissglas himself issued a similarly angry response some years ago against Mendy Orr, former Coordinator of Israel's activities in Judea and Samaria. During the 1990's, Weissglass, who was not in Government service but represented the Jericho Casino, threatened to sue Orr for slander for his public charges that that the casino funded Palestinian terror groups.
Following Orr's statements that he made while in uniform, Weissglas dispatched a warning that if Orr did not retract his charges against the casino, Weissglass would sue him for slander. Orr ignored Weissglass' warnings, Makor Rishon reported.
Back to the Future, and the Tables
Omri Sharon is expected to be indicted tomorrow by Attorney General Manny Mazuz for breach of trust and illegal campaign contributions for misappropriating funds for his father's 1999 Likud primaries campaign and Sharon's 2001 campaign for Prime Minister, although the PM's sign is angling for a plea bargain or perhaps to "throw himself on the mercy of the judge."
The expected indictment is part of the probe into the Sharon family's connection to various illegal funding sources including none other than Martin Shlaff, the casino investor, who was reportedly a source of the illegal campaign contributions to Sharon. Shlaff's loan is believed by many to have been wired into the account of Sharon's South African connection and friend Cyril Kern before being transferred over to Sharon's account in Israel. All these issues are still under criminal investigation.
As well-known journalist Nadav Haetzni reported in Maariv, Schlaff was also a close friend of Yasser Arafat and to the elite of Palestinian corruption and terrorism and according to one report even used Arafat's private plane. He was a close associate of Yitzchak Rabin and to the rest of the Oslo stewards, taking an active role in furthering the agreements between Israel and Arafat.
Despite the raging violence of the Palestinian uprising, in April 2001, the Israeli press including Israel Insider was calling attention to the pressure that Shimon Peres and associate Yossi Ginossar, a former Shin Bet officer reportedly representing the interests of the owners, were applying to open the Jericho Casino before the 2001 election. Omri Sharon was reportedly there as well, accompanied by Weisglas.
If experience is any guide, the Sharon family may yet find a way to escape jail time for his alleged involvement in illegal campaign funding. If that is in fact the only charge he faces, he would be getting off lightly and protecting the highly placed international business colleagues involved in alleged money laundering with the easy profits from the Casino businesses, past and future.
As for Flatto-Sharon, he is in favor of the withdrawal and no wonder. "Personally, I am in favor of the pullout," Flatto-Sharon told ynet. "It's better to work with the Palestinians now about peace instead of wars. It's important to do business with them and organize a life in peace. We must think how we can work together -- enough wars."
Enough wars, but never enough illicit profits and dirty politics, trading the national interest for easy money, and lots of it.
Flatto-Sharon told Wolf that he has obtained a detailed map of Elei Sinai from PA minister Kadura Fares, who reportedly received it lately from the IDF. The former MK and ex-con said that half of the expected profits, which he calculates will reach a million dollars a day -- just like in the good old days in Jericho -- "will be donated to the poor and underprivileged... for instance, the local municipal council workers who have not received salaries for several months," Arutz 7 reported.
No wonder the IDF has reportedly been directly to evacuate Elei Sinai and other northern Gaza communities first. There's no time to waste to get those slot machines and roulette wheels spinning, for the good of the "poor and underprivileged" of course.
Perhaps Omri can do community service as a croupier.
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