Chris Toensing and Ian Urbina, 17 February 2003, Middle East Report
... the Bush administration, besides winking at Sharon's conflation of the Palestinians with al-Qaeda, seems to be moving ever closer to Sharon's view of counter-terrorism as solely a security matter to be addressed with military force. In May 2002, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's hawkish undersecretary for policy, made a much-publicized trip to Tel Aviv to talk to Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer. The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reported that the meeting covered "war games, intelligence sharing and other cooperation." Four weeks later, Israel's top two security chiefs, Brig. Gen. David Tzur and Uzi Landau, minister of interior security, went to Washington to propose the creation of a new US-Israeli office to combat terrorism. Tzur and Landau met Feith on June 27.
According to The Guardian, the joint office, to be located in Washington, would operate a communications link between the newly inaugurated Department of Homeland Security and the Israeli government for swapping visa policies, terrorist profiles and other internal security data. While countries like India and Pakistan regularly send representatives to bilateral "working committees on counter-terrorism" in Washington, no foreign country has a standing office within a department of the US government. In an interview with the Washington Times, Landau said that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) are "especially receptive" to his idea. (Feinstein's office confirmed her continued interest to Middle East Report.) Added the interior minister: "Israel is a laboratory for fighting terror."
