WarSclerotic

Iran official: We have obtained the S-300 missile system – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Fars news agency says Tehran signs deal with Belarus after Russia reportedly refused to provide Iran with the surface-to-air system over recent UN sanctions.

By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

A semiofficial Iranian news agency says Iran has obtained four S-300 surface-to-air missiles despite Russia’s refusal to deliver them.

	A Russian-made S-300 missile
	Photo by: Kremlin

The Fars news agency said Wednesday that Iran has obtained two missiles from Belarus and two others from another unspecified source.

Russia signed a contract in 2007 to sell the missiles to Iran but said in June that new UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran prevent delivery. The sale would have substantially boosted the country’s defense capacities, raising Israeli fears it would tip the military balance in the Middle East.

In June, a senior Iranian official said that that if Russia persisted in its refusal “to deliver the systems, we are well capable of producing missile defense systems that are very much similar to Russia’s S-300 apparatus.”

Since the recently approved UN sanctions resolution against Iran, Russia has released several contradicting reports regarding it missile deal with Iran.

The senior Iranian official added that if Russia eventually refused “to deliver the systems, we are well capable of producing missile defense systems that are very much similar to Russia’s S-300 apparatus.”

Since the UN sanctions resolution against Iran was approved last Wednesday, Russia has released several contradicting reports regarding it missle deal with Iran. Russia said on Thursday it was in discussions with Iran on possible new nuclear power plants in the Islamic state, the country’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters
Israel and the United States have asked Russia not to deliver the missile systems, which can shoot down several aircraft or missiles simultaneously and could potentially be used to protect nuclear facilities.

Western diplomats in Moscow believe Russia is eager to keep the deal in reserve as a bargaining chip. Iran has expressed increasing frustration over the unfulfilled contract.

Ronen Bergman: Hezbollah and the Lebanon Dilemma – WSJ.com.

By RONEN BERGMAN

On Tuesday afternoon, several hours before a highly anticipated televised speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanese army snipers fired at an Israeli military detail that was trimming trees on the Israeli side of the border. The premeditated attack, which killed a colonel and left another officer severely wounded, came exactly four years since the end of the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The question now is whether this incident could spark a chain reaction that results in another war.

Despite its overwhelming military might, Israel emerged badly bruised from its confrontation with the Shiite militia in 2006. Since then, the Jewish state has repeatedly threatened that any act of aggression on the Israel-Lebanon border would be met with a punishing response. It claimed it would hold the Lebanese government—in which Hezbollah is a key player—responsible, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators.

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Associated Press

A Hezbollah supporter holds a poster of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a rally marking the fourth anniversary of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, Tuesday, Aug. 3.

The initial reaction of senior Israeli military figures to the sniper attack was to urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to implement contingency plans to bomb Lebanese Army camps, Hezbollah strongholds and Beirut’s power stations. But rapid diplomatic intervention by the United States and France prevented a resounding military response by Israel, which could have led to a wider conflagration. Instead, Israel opted for a small-scale response which killed two Lebanese soldiers and a journalist who had been invited ahead of time by the Lebanese army to witness the sniper attack.

Sources in the Israeli intelligence community and in UNIFIL (the U.N. peacekeeping force at the border) that I spoke to yesterday believe that the incident was instigated by a Lebanese Army brigade commander who is a Shiite and Hezbollah supporter. Whether or not he acted with the knowledge of his superiors, top Lebanese brass backed him after the fact.

The Lebanese government is in a bind. Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, son of the assassinated former prime minister, detests Hezbollah and would like nothing better than to see his father’s killers brought to justice. But Hezbollah is a key partner in his government, and is effectively able to veto any action he might take. The prime minister is also aware of the widespread support that Hezbollah enjoys among Shiites and Sunnis, and he is careful to avoid being seen as too closely aligned with the West. His control over the predominantly Shiite Lebanese Army is limited at best, particularly in the south of the country.

The more interesting question is whether the brigade commander at the border received prior approval from Hezbollah’s political chain of command. It’s hard to believe that the highly symbolic timing of the incident was coincidental. It was also convenient for another reason: The report of the international inquiry into the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri is expected to be published in a matter of days or weeks.

It is widely believed that the U.N. panel, composed of Lebanese and international lawyers and judges, will indict senior Hezbollah officials. As far as Nasrallah is concerned, a limited flare-up between Israel and regular Lebanese forces without his direct involvement would help divert domestic attention away from the indictments.

Syrian President Bashar Assad is also concerned about the panel’s report, since an initial investigation, released by the U.N. Security Council in October 2005, implicated his country. Syria, readers will remember, withdrew its forces from Lebanon following Hariri’s assassination. Yet it remains intimately involved in that country’s affairs through its intelligence agents and the large bribes it doles out to Lebanese politicians. To the extent that the panel’s final report is hostile to its interests, Syria might benefit from an Israeli-Lebanese border conflict, or even a limited renewal of civil war violence inside Lebanon itself. Intensification of almost any type of hostilities would enable Syria to further strengthen its hold on Lebanon.

Both Nasrallah in his Tuesday speech and Mr. Assad, who also gave a speech last week, threatened that the entire region would erupt in flames if indictments are issued against them. These are not empty threats: Conflicts within Lebanon have an unfortunate tendency of affecting wider trends in the Middle East. Whether it was the struggle between Iraqi and Iranian supporters in Beirut in late 1980 that presaged the Iran-Iraq war, or the appearance of Hezbollah on the Lebanese political scene in 1983-84 that heralded the dramatic rise of the jihadist movement in the Middle East long before bin Laden, the political fault lines of the region pass through Beirut.

What of the Islamic Republic, striving to become the Middle East’s hegemon? According to intelligence reports obtained by the Israeli military and Mossad, Iran doesn’t want Hezbollah to start a major war against Israel at this time. Tehran prefers that the organization hold its forces in reserve in case they are needed by Iran to retaliate for an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities. At the same time, however, Iran also has a clear interest in preserving Hezbollah as a central force in Lebanon. To the extent that Hezbollah’s political clout might be weakened by the indictments, Iran—like Syria and Hezbollah—might support a low-key conflagration as a diversion.

For its part, Israel has little interest in a war in Lebanon. It’s central concern remains the Iranian nuclear project. However, by promising to respond strongly to any provocation, it might find itself forced to act aggressively.

What’s more, in the past two weeks, after a long period of relative calm, Hamas has repeatedly fired rockets at Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and even from Sinai, which is Egyptian territory. Although there is no direct link between the incident on the Lebanese border and the rocket attacks in the south of the country, senior Israeli officials see them all as reflecting Iran’s desire to prevent direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Such Iranian involvement may increase Israel’s resolve to respond to these attacks.

Lebanon is a tinderbox. Whoever gave the command to the Lebanese snipers was playing with fire.

Mr. Bergman, a senior military and political analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, is the author of “The Secret War With Iran” (Free Press, 2008).

Are Israel and Hamas headed for another war?.

Theodore May GlobalPost

GAZA CITY, Gaza — Militants, allegedly in Egypt, launched several missiles into Israel Monday morning, joining a wave of violence between Israel and Gaza over the weekend that has led to the greatest escalation of conflict here in more than a year.

At 11:30 p.m. Friday night, in response to several mortar and rocket attacks out of Gaza earlier in the day, the Israeli air force launched three near-simultaneous attacks on targets in Gaza.

In central Gaza City, which has been spared much of the tit-for-tat violence that has persisted in the wake of last January’s war here, several intense blasts targeted a Hamas training facility. The attack was heard for miles and windows in surrounding buildings were shattered.

Hamas soldiers struggled to contain the surging crowd of onlookers as rumors that more Israeli attack planes were on the way induced further panic. One solider fired a warning shot into the air.

At Shifa Hospital, the scene was equally chaotic. Machine gun wielding police, families of the injured and an aggressive local press corps all jostled at the entrance as paramedics struggled to push stretchers through the door.

The Israeli attacks killed a Hamas commander in central Gaza and targeted smuggling tunnels in Rafah, a city on the Egyptian border. The rocket fired from Gaza Friday morning struck a populated area in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. No one, however, was injured.

While spurts of violence have not been uncommon since last January’s war, Hamas had mostly avoided deploying its more sophisticated rockets on Israel’s larger cities. In turn, Israel had mostly contained its air strikes to peripheral targets in Gaza, steering clear of city centers in an effort to reduce controversial civilian casualties.

This weekend’s violence came as the international community renews its push for the Palestinian National Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel to re-enter direct peace talks. The Israeli government said it believed the latest rocket attacks from Gaza are part of an effort to derail those talks.

The violence persisted all weekend. On Sunday night, an explosion at a house in the central Gaza city of Deir el Belah left 58 wounded, according to local hospital officials. Hamas has blamed Israel for the explosion. Israel denies the charge.

On Monday morning, rockets fired from the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt hit targets in Israel and Jordan, killing one. Israeli media reported that the rockets were in retaliation for the recent Israeli incursions in Gaza throughout the weekend.

Ahmed Bahar, a Hamas leader and speaker of parliament, attended the funeral of Issa Batran, the Hamas commander who was killed Friday night, using the opportunity to issue some of the most vitriolic rhetoric heard from Hamas.

Batran, he said in the eulogy, was “a legendary man, who was killed by rockets filled with treachery and betrayal.”

“There is no way we can leave our right to protect our Jerusalem,” he added, “and I say to you that victory is on our side.”

Israeli officials, in turn, have condemned the barrage of rockets coming from Gaza and Egypt, vowing to overcome the violence.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli media, called today’s violence a “criminal attack on innocent civilians in both Israel and Jordan [that] was instigated by terror groups who want to sabotage the peace process.”

While Hamas said the rocket and mortars fired into Israel on Friday did not come from them, Israel has previously said that it would hold Hamas, which effectively rules Gaza, responsible for any weapons deployed within the area’s borders.

Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has said it is committed to the destruction of Israel, took control of Gaza in a 2007 coup, which led Israel to enact a blockade against the coastal Palestinian territory.

Last January, Israel launched a major military operation inside Gaza after scores of rockets hit nearby Israeli towns in the months before. The three-week battle killed hundreds of Palestinians and largely stemmed the flow of rocket fire from Gaza.

This latest round of violence is largely seen as a distraction for Israel, which is focusing its attention on the threat coming from Iran, which Israel believes is seeking nuclear arms. Still, with violence at its highest point in a year and a half, it’s difficult to predict just how far the latest hostilities might escalate.

And Gazans aren’t optimistic.

“It seems like the violence is building to something worse,” said Ahmed Kassem, who had come to help friends dig out from this morning’s explosion in Deir el Belah.

The Greenroom » Attacks on Israel: Watch the South.

posted at 4:43 pm on August 4, 2010 by J.E. Dyer
[ Terrorist Attacks ]    printer-friendly

The attacks on Israel in the past week are remarkable for more than their number. No single political development seems to account for all of them. The rocket attacks in the south involved military-grade weapons of a kind rarely seen since before Operation Cast Lead. Those attacks, moreover, affected Jordan as well as Israel’s Negev, and according to some reports included an attack on the UN’s observation force (MFO) in the Sinai.

Tuesday’s clash on the border with Lebanon has gotten the most media attention. As Max Boot observes at Commentary’s “contentions,” UNIFIL’s acknowledgement of the facts points to culpability on the Lebanese side. He’s in broad company speculating that this provocation was intended by Hezbollah as a distraction from the UN tribunal’s impending report on the Rafiq Hariri assassination of 2005.  (See here and here also for good extended treatments of the border clash, including Hezbollah involvement.) Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made an impassioned speech yesterday, within hours of the border skirmish, in which he accused Israel of being behind the assassination and promised retaliation against Israel in the future.

But the rocket attacks near Gaza and in the south – on Ashkelon, which fronts the Mediterranean, as well as on the Gulf of Aqaba resort city of Eilat, and on Aqaba, Jordan – are potentially of greater interest.

The 29 July attack on Ashkelon involved a Grad-type military-grade rocket launched from Gaza. (The Grad, a former-Soviet battlefield-rocket design, is a variant of the generic Katyusha; the 29 July rocket was reportedly of Chinese manufacture.) This profile, reminiscent of rocket attacks in 2008, is an established Hamas attack pattern.

But the 2 August attack on Eilat and Aqaba came from the Sinai. Unlike an earlier rocket attack from Sinai in April 2010, it involved military-grade Grad rockets fired in a salvo, probably from the mountain range north of Sinai’s Taba resort area.

Google Earth map; author annotation

It’s possible the rocket attack from Sinai was mounted by Hamas in a cross-border operation, but I doubt it. This is an incident that must bolster the IDF’s growing concern about a “new front” being opened by global jihadists. The salvo launch may well indicate the use of a military multiple-rocket launcher: not something Hamas could easily sneak into the Sinai.  (The thousands of terrorist rocket attacks on Israel, including those from Gaza since 2005, have more typically been launched from homemade apparatuses rather than from military MRLs; the latter “scoot” handily, but are big and hard to hide.)

No responsibility has been claimed for the attack – in fact, Hamas has denied it – probably because one of the rockets hit Jordan. The IDF reportedly says the recovered rockets are of Iranian or North Korean manufacture, indicating the backing of a state sponsor (presumably Iran). But there are discrepancies that bear watching, with trying to make a “fingerprint match” to Hamas. It’s not ultimately a very good one.

The DEBKAfile report of a simultaneous attack on the UN MFO in the Sinai (near El-Arish and the border with Gaza) must be approached with skepticism. But another author makes a separate reference to that attack (not sourced to DEBKA); and if it did occur, the tally of attacks on 2 August is increasingly inconsistent with the apparent posture of Hamas: recalcitrant, certainly, but somewhat disorganized, and lacking a clear strategic direction of its own. The emerging focus on the Sinai is beyond the scope of the objective Commentary’s Evelyn Gordon attributes to Hamas in her well-reasoned piece: that is, wringing more concessions from Israel before agreeing to join talks.

But it’s what we would expect from Iran’s ongoing campaign of subversion in Egypt – involving the Sinai in particular – which achieved brief notoriety after an Egyptian security sweep in 2009. (For more on Iran’s long-term objectives, see here and here.)

Meanwhile, the momentum for political change in Egypt, gathering this summer with the Muslim Brotherhood’s endorsement of Mohamed ElBaradei’s opposition effort, makes Egypt a crucial battlefield for the competing Iranian and Arabist visions of regional hegemony. Saudi King Abdullah visited Egypt last week before the regional summit in Beirut, his first stop in a trip seen in Arab eyes as a “fence-mending” effort among Arab nations in advance of a U.S-Iran clash. The day of his arrival in Cairo, a bomb was detonated at an Egyptian residential compound near the country’s embassy in Beirut.

Things are likely to heat up further in the regional competition for Egypt’s future. From the Sinai, terrorists can affect both Israel and Egypt, a fact that Iran’s paramilitary planners have recognized for some time. Sunni guerrillas opposing the Iranian gambit will recognize it too. Iranian and Arab leaders, and the terrorists they sponsor, all anticipate a “coming storm” in the region; it’s not by any means too early to recognize that they are preparing to exploit the opportunities the storm will present.

I agree that Hamas has no intention of good-faith engagement with the peace process. But I don’t think the peace process – or the UN findings on the Hariri assassination – is the only driver of any regional actor’s strategy today.  I think they’re all looking ahead.  And we should be looking south – toward Egypt – as well as north

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Lt. Col. (Res.) Dov Harari, killed by Lebanese sniper

By launching a cross-border sniper attack on Israeli forces Tuesday, Aug. 3, and provoking a major clash, the 9th Brigade of the Lebanese Army laid down a new fact of life in the Middle East: The next war against Israel will be fought – not by the Hizballah militia, but by the Lebanese army, whose mission is henceforth merged into the radical objectives of the Iran-backed terrorist group.
By taking on Israeli forces, the Lebanese Army assumed responsibility for the volatile Lebanese-Israeli border and showed it was prepared to take the consequences of aggression. Never seen as capable of anything more than substandard police work and inclined to run a mile from combat situations, this army was described by debkafile‘s military sources as having astonished military observers by its performance against the IDF.
1.  Its commanders proved capable of catching the Israeli military unawares, in exactly the same way as Hizballah did when it kidnapped and murdered three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and, again, when it snatched another two Israeli officers in a cross-border raid in 2006.
In both cases, the terrorists stole across the border into Israel.
Tuesday, the Lebanese army showed itself to be not only an apt pupil of Hizballah’s tactics, but capable of going “one better.” Its snipers shot Lt. Col. (Res.) Dov Harari, 45, from Netanya, in cold blood as he stood well inside the Israeli border, and seriously injured Capt. Ezer Lakiya from Kfar Harif. Doctors are fighting to save his life by removing a piece of shrapnel from his heart.
Both were watching Israeli troops carrying out routine tasks on the Israeli side of the border fence.
2.  The Lebanese army was able to hoodwink Israeli military intelligence border scouts and keep its plan of attack dark. The fact that Hizballah was also out of the picture would have been cold comfort for the Israeli high command.
3.   Its commanders were not deterred by Israeli retaliation and rather than backing down raised the pitch of violence.
4.   Israel commanders judged that, by exacting a painful price, they could silence the enemy’s guns. They therefore bombed the Lebanese Army’s regional command center at Taybeh, torched an APC and left three soldiers dead. The enemy kept on shooting.
5.   The day’s combat ended with the Lebanese army’s 9th Brigade established as a new threat to the Israel Defense Forces from positions abutting the border.
Its presence in South Lebanon is moreover legitimate, unlike Hizballah, which moved men and weapons into the south although prohibited from doing so by the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006.
6.  The Lebanese army may decide to follow up on its attack, using one flimsy pretext or another. After all, the UN peacekeepers stood by idly when the snipers opened fire into Israel under the world body’s flag – even though their commander Wednesday admitted the force had been duly informed of the the IDF activity that day and passed the word to the Lebanese army command.
8.  The IDF’s response was disproportionately mild given the loss of two high commanders in an act of unprovoked aggression. But it was enough to allow Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah to pose as Lebanon’s great national unifier.
In the speech he delivered Tuesday night, he capitalized on the incident by saying he had ordered his militiamen not to interfere in the clash with Israeli forces, commended the Lebanese Army for its bravery in taking on the Zionist foe and let it be understood that his rockets and missiles would be made available for the next round of fighting with Israel.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Mysterious explosions at new Iranian petrochemicals plant

A massive explosion killed at least five workers at the giant Pardis petrochemicals complex in southern Iran Wednesday, August 4, at around 12:30 – just about the time an explosive device was hurled at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as his heavily secured armored convoy drove through the northern Iranian city of Hamadan. This is reported by debkafile‘s Iranian sources.
Ahmadinejad was unhurt although some of his bodyguards and bystanders were certainly injured. He made straight for Hamadan’s central stadium and began delivering a speech that was broadcast live by state television.
Assaluyeh, the site of the Pardis complex, is situated at the opposite end of Iran, on its southern Persian Gulf coast not far from the Bushehr nuclear reactor. Iranian officials admit that large sections of the complex were destroyed but attributed the blast to a ruptured gas pipe. debkafile‘s intelligence sources report that the plant was hit by five explosive devices. It was new, personally inaugurated on July 28 by President Ahmadinejad, who described it as a miracle of Iranian hi-tech.
Iranian spokesman were also trying to play down the attempt on the president’s life by a bomber present in the large audience surrounding his convoy. At first they reported that the target was the journalists’ minivan riding in his convoy. But their security services made haste to put the Hamadan and Pardis attacks together for a joint investigation. They suspect some enemy antagonist may have sought to prove it can simultaneously strike at two major targets in opposite ends of the country and get close to the president and also the Bushehr reactor.
Assaluyeh the town is a particularly sensitive place, because it is the hub of the Pars Special Energy Economic Zone whose industries are fueled by the natural gas piped in from the giant South Pars field.
Three days before the petrochemical complex was inaugurated, there was another mysterious explosion at a second energy plant, this one located on Kharg Island.
Iran’s security chiefs are beginning to suspect that one or more groups of covert saboteurs are at large on Iran’s coast opposite the Strait of Hormuz and are gunning for the strategic industries and facilities located there.

Hamadan’s population is incidentally purely Iranian Shiite with none of the ethnic or religious minorities persecuted by the regime. It was built at Biblical Shushan, the burial sites of Queen Esther and Mordecai, several hundreds kilometers west of Tehran.

Netanyahu: Hamas responsible for rockets on Eilat; we will retaliate – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

PM also blames Lebanese government for violence at border, days after Grad rocket salvo killed Jordanian man in attack from Sinai.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Israeli television Wednesday that Hamas was responsible for the deadly rocket fire on Israel’s and Jordan’s Red Sea ports on Monday, and that Israel would retaliate.

	Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking on Israeli television on August 4, 2010
	Photo by: Avi Ohayon

Earlier Wednesday, Egyptian officials also confirmed that the rocket attacks, which had killed a Jordanian taxi driver in Aqaba, had been carried out by the militant Palestinian group operating from Egypt, after days of denials.

“Over recent days we’ve witnessed three attacks against Israel,” Netanyahu said in a special announcement on Israeli television. “An attack from Gaza on Ashkelon, an attack by the Lebanese army on Israel Defense Forces troops carrying out a routine operation, and another attack from the Sinai peninsula at Eilat. I want to make very clear to Hamas and to the Lebanese government that we view them as responsible for the violent provocation against us.”

“Don’t test our determination to protect our citizens,” the prime minister went on to say.

“Israel will retaliate for every assault. Apparently there were those who understood that, and tried to avoid taking responsibility for these crimes. Three days after our retaliatory operation in Gaza, Grad rockets were fired from Sinai at Eilat and Aqaba by a seemingly anonymous organization. Several months earlier, on April 22, similar rocket fire came from Sinai. We investigated the two incidents – it became clear beyond a doubt that Hamas’ military wing in Gaza had perpetrated both attacks under disguise,” Netanyahu explained.

	Wreckage of cars damaged by a rocket attack is seen at a hotel area in the Jordan’s Red Sea city of Aqaba August 2, 2010.
	Photo by: Reuters

“I want to clarify that the use of a third country’s soil, one that seeks peace, in order to launch rockets at Israel, will not help Hamas escape culpability. Israel views the attacks against its citizens with extreme severity, as well as the attempt to destabilize Israel’s relations with Egypt and Jordan,” the prime minister continued.

“Whoever shoots at Israeli citizens, and it doesn’t matter from where, we will find them and hit them hard,” Netanyahu concluded.

Earlier Wednesday, an Egyptian security official said Hamas had fired seven rockets, including one which misfired and left debris near a security facility in the town of Taba.

The attackers fired Soviet-style Grad rockets of the type used by militants in Lebanon and Gaza, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The rockets hit a narrow area of the Red Coast where the Israeli and Jordanian ports are located side by side. One person was killed and four people were wounded.

Aqaba and Eilat are more than 300 kilometers from Hamas’ stronghold in the Gaza Strip. However, an unnamed Egyptian source told Egypt’s state MENA agency on Wednesday that “preliminary information indicates that Palestinian factions from the Gaza Strip are behind that operation.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri criticized the Egyptian claim, calling it politically motivated. “This sounds silly and does not depend on any actual reasonable evidence,” he said.

MENA quoted Egyptian security sources on Monday as saying rockets could not have been fired from Sinai since the largely empty, desert region was very mountainous.

“Egytian statements are conflicting,” Abu Zuhri said. “We doubt the credibility of these statements and believe they are unprofessional and politically motivated.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, when asked if he was convinced the rockets were fired by Hamas, told Israel Radio there could be a link.

“I do not want to say convinced, but it could be that there is a link between Hamas and this firing – perhaps not people who are part of Hamas in Gaza, perhaps a link that is a little more indirect,” he said.

Egypt has not indicated where the rockets were launched from, but said it was scaling up the investigation.

“Egypt will not accept the use of its land by any party to harm Egyptian interests,” the Egyptian security source said.

In 2005, rockets were fired at U.S. warships in Aqaba but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack.

Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through Sinai and killed three people at a bakery in Eilat, a tourist resort on Israel’s southern tip which has only rarely been touched by the Middle East conflict.

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace treaties with Israel. Those relations were frayed by Israel’s crackdown a decade ago on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Although Egypt had initially denied that the rockets were fired from its territory, security forces in Israel were certain that the rockets came from Sinai, as has happened in the past.

A number of terrorist groups are operating in the Sinai peninsula and are busy with smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip and efforts to penetrate into Israel.

Among the groups operating in the Sinai are those with links to Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaida and other global Jihadi groups.

A senior IDF source said yesterday that the rockets were meant to “embarrass Egypt.”
Israel’s long border with Egypt is relatively unguarded compared to the electric fences and advanced surveillance systems surrounding the Gaza Strip.

The presence of terrorist groups in the Sinai is one of the reasons for the serious travel warning issued by Israel’s Counter Terrorism Unit against Israelis traveling to Sinai and Egypt.
Senior IDF sources stressed that in the past year there has been significant improvement in the coordination activities with the Egyptian and Jordanian armed forces, but they also note that on the Egyptian side there is still some hesitation to confront the gangs in the peninsula head on.

Reuters AlertNet – Blood on the rocks by Israel-Lebanon tripwire.

<!– 03 Aug 2010 20:01:04 GMT ## for search indexer, do not remove –>

* Israel says Lebanon sniper ambushed colonel, officer * Forces only two hundred metres apart * UN presence did not deter lethal exchange of fire

By Douglas Hamilton

ISRAEL-LEBANON MILITARY ZONE, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Blood-stains mark the rocky ground by the entrance to a camouflaged army bunker where the Israeli military says one of its colonels was killed by a Lebanese army sniper team on Tuesday. “There were only two or three shots,” said an Israeli military spokeswoman. “They were standing there, where the blood is.” The battalion commander was hit in the head and a fellow officer struck in the chest and gravely wounded from a range of about 700 metres, she told Reuters at the scene of the brief battle. Israeli artillery fire, launched in retaliation at a Lebanese army post, left scorched hillsides on the Lebanese side of the steep valley that divides them.

The most serious incident since the July 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese Shi’ite movement Hezbollah — which lasted 34 days and cost 1,200 lives on the Lebanese side and 158 Israeli dead — led to the deaths of the Israel colonel and two Lebanese soldiers, along with a journalist on the Lebanese side. The Israeli officer was in serious condition. Like the ceasefire line between the two Koreas, this tense frontier laced with electronic sensor fences and studded with minefields has left a tripwire for a potentially open-ended Middle East war. Israel says Hezbollah, allied to Iran, has at least 40,000 rockets deployed close to the front line, in range of Israeli population centres such as the city of Kryat Shmona.

The United States expressed “serious concern” over Tuesday’s battle, and the United Nations appealed for restraint on both sides. In the aftermath on Tuesday afternoon, white armoured personnel carriers of the 13,000-strong UNIFIL peacekeeping force, manned by Indonesian troops with blue UN flags, patrolled the highway that marks the demarcation “Blue Line”. Israeli troops scanned the scarred hillside through binoculars, watched by television crews on the Lebanese side two hundred metres away, and observed by what Israeli soldiers said were Hezbollah spotter teams on the road just opposite.

NOT FAR AWAY

The distance separating the two is short enough to allow a shouted conversation. “The sniper fire probably came from one of those buildings over there,” the Israeli military spokeswoman said, indicating unfinished concrete-built homes on the opposite slope. “We are sure it came from the Lebanese armed forces.” The exchange began when the Israelis moved a cherry-picker crane next to their warning fence behind the demarcation line in order to trim a tree, whose branches were tripping the fence’s electronic anti-infiltration devices. Notice of this operation was given well in advance to UNIFIL and to the Lebanese army, the Israeli military said. It was begun in broad daylight, with Israeli media filming and photographing when the shots were fired.

The sniper attack came as a complete surprise, like an ambush, Israeli military sources said. Israel Defence Forces Northern Commander General Gadi Eisenkot called it a deliberate provocation. A senior Israeli military source said he had been contacted by senior Lebanese army officers as shooting erupted, trying to tell them that firing had not been authorised. Israeli analysts speculated that a renegade army unit sympathetic to Hezbollah had launched the attack.

The Lebanese army, however, said an Israeli patrol had violated the demarcation line, even though U.N. peacekeepers in the area told it to stop. The Israeli army said the pre-advertised tree-trimming took place within 100 metres (yards) of a permanent UNIFIL post, where a yellow Hezbollah flag flutters above the trees. The Lebanese army said its forces repelled the Israelis “using rocket propelled grenades. A clash happened in which the enemy forces used machine guns and tank fire targeting army posts and civilian houses,” it said. The United States said the accounts were confusing.

The editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds al Arabi, Abdelbari Atwan, wrote in his front-page column yesterday that the Arab region must brace for the “mother of all wars” that will change its political map.

Mr Atwan was responding to a statement on Sunday by Admiral Michael Mullin, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the US forces have a plan for an attack on Iran.

Previous wars with the US and Israel have taught the Arabs that the decision to wage war against them usually takes months before military operations are launched. These are preceded by demonising PR campaigns. The build-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 attest to that.

Now, there is a host of developments that may put the future of the whole region on the line. First, there is the international tribunal which is expected to accuse Hizbollah of the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri next month.

Second, there is the intensive (verging on bullying) US pressure on the Palestinian Authority to resume talks with the Israelis, the tradition being that the US and Israel wage wars only when the Palestinian-Israeli track is cleared. Finally, two days ago, mystery missiles hit Jordan and Israel.

Admiral Mullen was wise to say that he was “worried”.

Face to face with the Lebanese crisis figures

“Our plane landed in Beirut before that of the Custodian of the Holy Places,” wrote Tariq al Homayed, the editor-in-chief of the London-based newspaper Asharq al Awsat. “From there, we went straight to the presidential palace. We walked into the reception area, and there we came face to face with the key figures of the political crisis in Lebanon.”

Everyone was there waiting for the arrival of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the Syrian president Bashar Assad and their host, the Lebanese president Michel Suleiman, in a landmark tripartite summit last week.

“I wished there was a camera there to broadcast live the fringe meetings and the small talk, and how many Lebanese politicians know how to crack jokes while punching each under the belt with the utmost ease,” the editor wrote.

“For instance, you would hear a very well-known Lebanese figure say to the Iranian ambassador – and this I heard with my own ears: ‘How about that [person X]? Are you satisfied with him?’

“Then, while waiting at the reception, I told a friend: ‘Imagine if this room were to be shut off and, with all its Lebanese politicians, transported on a plane to a place very far away. What a relief it would be for Lebanon and its people?’ He retorted: ‘Others like them will come out in a month’, as he gave one of his opponents a hearty handshake and a big smile.”

Is Syria coming back to the Arab fold?

“Just as they wage their wars on our soil, they also conduct their reconciliations on it, in this tinderbox of a piece of land that duly sums up the degradation of the situation in the Arab region,” wrote Nayla al Tweini in the Beirut-based daily newspaper Annahar.

The past week teemed with official visits, meetings and calls for calm and dialogue in the Lebanese domestic scene. True, the Saudi King Abdullah’s tour in the Middle East was a goodwill gesture aimed at mending fences between the regional players, but it wouldn’t have succeeded if it weren’t for Syria’s recent “return to hide under the Arab cloak” following the Security Council’s sanctions on Iran and the possibility of an indictment by the international tribunal that might involve Syria or agencies affiliated with it.

In the last two decades, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and, more recently, Qatar have been exerting every effort to save Lebanon from various traps laid in the way of its stability. Syria, however, has always held the reins of true civil peace in the country. And if Damascus is to pass “the credibility test”, it must continue on the path of pacification and prompt its allies to opt for dialogue instead of confrontation.

Jordan will survive the petty acts of terrorism

This is not the first time Jordan is the target of “a cowardly terrorist act”, and it won’t be the last, the Jordanian newspaper Addustour stated in its editorial, following a mystery missile attack that killed one person and injured four others two days ago.

Terrorists seek to hurt the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in view of “its tough stances, steadfast adherence to Arab nationalist tenets and determination to support the brotherly Palestinian people in their legitimate struggle for their national and historical right to establish their independent state on their own national territory, with Jerusalem as its capital.”

King Abdullah II has managed to expose the “gangs of the occupation, their expansionist goals, their disingenuous commitment to peace and their use of negotiations to enforce the status quo and ratchet up settlement building and Judaisation projects.”

The newspaper said the attack “smelled of Zionism” and will not serve any “insidious agendas”, no matter how the perpetrators try to “scramble the cards”.
The fact that Jordan has been targeted twice in the span of several months will not move the kingdom one inch away from its political commitments.

* Digest compiled by Achraf A El Bahi

Barak to Lebanon: We won’t tolerate provocations – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Israeli warning: Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned the Lebanese government Tuesday against “continuing to provoke IDF forces,” following the deadly exchanges of fire in the north.

Barak said Israel would not tolerate any attacks on soldiers or citizens “within its sovereign territory” and called on the international community to condemn the “criminal act carried out by the Lebanese army.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also warned Lebanon, saying that it held the Lebanese government “directly accountable for this violent provocation against Israel.”

The attack on IDF soldiers Tuesday is a “blatant violation of Security Council Resolution 1701,” he said.

Earlier, Israel filed complaint with the UN Security Council over the exchanges of fire with Lebanese forces that left Lieutenant-Colonel (res.) Dov Harari (45) dead.

Israel files UN complaint

In the complaint it lodged, Israel said Lebanese soldiers opened fire despite the fact that the IDF had informed UNIFIL forces in advance of its plan to cut down a tree along the border fence, some 80 meters south of the border.

Speaking at a press briefing earlier Tuesday, Major General Gadi Eisenkot said Israeli troops operating near the border fence encountered a “planned ambush” by Lebanese forces.

“It was a planned ambush by a sniper unit…this was a provocation by the Lebanese army,” he said. “We view this fire was a highly grave incident. Our forces responded at once, and immediately after that we resorted to artillery and gunship fire.”