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Tags: Gaza blockade Hamas missiles Yuval Diskin

Shin Beit Director Yuval Diskin

debkafile‘s military sources report: The Shin Beit (internal security) director Yuval Diskin sternly warned Tuesday, June 15, that the steps embarked on by prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak to ease the blockade on Gaza gravely imperiled Israel’s security.
He raised the alarm at the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee after not a single security cabinet minister, including retired generals, had raised a hand to halt those steps.
Diskin said a “gigantic security breach” would open up for Israel if the Israeli Navy were forced to leave inspections of Gaza-bound freighters to international monitors or foreign ports.

He delivered his briefing the day after the prime minister and defense minister decided to allow international teams to inspect cargoes bound for Gaza on the high seas or in Greek or Cypriot ports (as debkafile disclosed Monday, June 14) . It was clear from Diskin’s words, that foreign inspections could not be relied upon to detect weapons or strategic materials in the ships’ holds – as abundantly proven in Lebanon, where in four years, international monitors and peacekeepers have had not the slightest effect in diminishing arms smuggling to Hizballah by land and sea.

Now the Israeli government was letting itself be squeezed into letting world powers, spearheaded by the European Union and Turkey and cheered on from Washington, grant Hamas the same indulgence they give Hizballah and its Syrian and Iranian munitions suppliers.
The Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas ruling the Gaza makes no bones about continuing its implacable war against Israel. The Shin Bet chief noted that Hamas and Jihad Islami continue to pile up missiles and rockets with no other target than their Israeli neighbor. The have 5,000 in stock – many homemade (from raw materials smuggled through tunnels). Most have a range of 40 kilometers, which is enough to menace the towns and villages of southern Israel, with a few capable of reaching the Tel Aviv region.
debkafile‘s military sources identify the long-range missiles as Iranian Fajr-5.
Their strategists still promote suicide killings as a method of war against Israel, said Diskin, although Hamas often relegates such attacks to its smaller allies.

The alarm raised by the Shin Bet chief reflects the extreme disquiet spreading through Israeli military and strategic circles over what they see as a prime minister and defense minister letting themselves be pushed around and guided in their decisions by an overwhelming urge to please the Americans and Europeans at the expense of concern for the fundamentals of Israel’s security and its defense forces’ capabilities.
debkafile quotes members of these circles as warning that Israel is falling back on its national goals – even those promoted public by Netanyahu himself – with no sign of the enemy in Gaza relenting by an iota on its designs. For instance –

1. The prime minister insists he is safeguarding the IDF’s freedom of action, whereas he is doing the very opposite: By giving up the siege of Gaza, he is depriving the Navy of its operational leeway and curtailing the IDF’s freedom to defend the South against attacks mounted from Gaza. Once this Palestinian enclave is rebuilt with outside help, Israel will have lost the option of proactive deterrence against terrorist attack.
2. Netanyahu has vowed an Iranian port must never be established in Gaza, whereas what he is doing is relinquishing Israel’s ability to prevent Iranian and Turkish ships from docking there.

This entry was posted on June 16, 2010 at 10:54 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.