WarSclerotic

Why a New Gaza War is Possible, But Unlikely – Global Spin – TIME.com.

In a conflict that has raged for 63 years, all violence can be termed “retaliation”. Israeli warplanes and tanks pound targets inside the densely populated Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza in response to the dozens of rockets and mortars fired by militants over the past ten days; Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other smaller Palestinian factions fire rockets and mortars in the general direction of Israeli towns and kibbutzim citing the assassination of their fighters – 17 in the last month, one Hamas man told TIME this week. The first shots were fired so long ago that it’s usually the other side’s most recent ones that each side reaches for to explain their own.

But “retaliation”  offers a rationalization rather than an explanation for any outbreak of violence over the Israel-Gaza boundary fence. Even in exchanges of fire that both sides know they can’t “win” in any traditional sense of the term, Clausewitz’s logic still applies: “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

So, while the logic of retaliation – not simply revenge, but deterrence through making the other side pay a price for the latest attack – always has the potential, as some Israeli commentators warn to spiral in into an escalation that both sides have good reason to avoid, right now, it’s the political calculations of the various players on both sides that will determine whether the advent of Spring will bring a new war in Gaza — or a relatively rapid return to the unwritten cease-fire arrangement that has prevailed since the last Israeli invasion of Gaza ended in February of 2009.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defiance of Israel’s closest Western allies over ongoing construction of settlements on occupied territory has left Israel in its most diplomatically isolated position in two decades. Another major military operation along the lines  of the 2008/9 Operation Cast Lead — which, like that  one, would inevitably inflict heavy civilian casualties on the Palestinian side — is more likely to deepen that isolation than to break it. But Netanyahu’s domestic political rivals both on the right and the center of the spectrum are chiding him to respond with greater aggression, particularly after Wednesday’s terror attack in Jerusalem — which Israelis believe was not the work of Hamas — and Thursday’s Grad rocket attacks by Islamic Jihad that landed near the Israeli city of Ashdod.

Hoping to avoid another disastrous war in Gaza — for which Kadima leader Tzipi Livni has been agitating this week — left-wing Israeli analyst Dimi Reider
found himself unusually inclined to praise Netanyahu: “I still prefer a weak right-wing government that needs to prove it’s responsible to a strong centrist government that needs to prove it’s tough,” Reider told me. “Olmert and Livni would’ve been halfway through demolishing Gaza by now. But Bibi could still prove me wrong by the weekend, if people are actually killed by the rocket fire.”

For now, Netanyahu appears set on resisting domestic political pressure for escalation, vowing on Wednesday to act “assertively, responsibly and intelligently to preserve the quiet and security that has prevailed in the south over the last two years”.

The “quiet and security” of which he speaks, of course, relies on Hamas both refraining from mounting its own attacks, but also restraining rival factions such as Islamic Jihad from using Gaza to stage attacks. So, Netanyahu is in effect vowing to act responsibly to restore a de facto cease-fire with Hamas.

Curiously enough, some Israeli military correspondents put some of the blame for the recent escalation on their own side. Yediot Ahronot’s Alex Fishman, for example, said that while the IDF leadership’s insistence that it doesn’t want an escalation is negated by ongoing assassinations of key personnel on the other side: “A targeted killing is not just another step in an uncontrolled deteriorating spiral,” he wrote in Thursday’s Hebrew-language edition. “It is a clear evidence of a planned escalation.”

And Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff write in Haaretz that Hamas “actually has good reasons to believe that Israel is the one heating up the southern front. It began with a bombardment a few weeks ago that disrupted the transfer of a large amount of money from Egypt to the Gaza Strip, continued with the interrogation of engineer and Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi in Israel [ed. note: Abu Sisi, the engineer in charge of the main electrical power station in Gaza, has been held in Israel after being abducted in Ukraine], and ended with last week’s bombing of a Hamas training base in which two Hamas militants were killed.”

They note that following the weekend fusillade, Hamas refrained from firing as Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday even after Israeli mortar fire accidentally killed four Palestinian civilians on Tuesday, and also that Hamas leaders in Gaza are trying to convince Islamic Jihad to stop their escalation — although meeting little success there, it seems, given Thursday’s Grad strikes.

Islamic Jihad, of course, is a more militant rival to Hamas, and is widely viewed as the Palestinian group closest to Iran. Their interests, of course, are not necessarily the same as those of Hamas.

There was a time when sudden spikes in attacks on Israel were deemed to be efforts to “derail the peace process”, but that train long ago ran out of track and ground to a halt. The political calculations in Gaza may be more domestic. It’s possible that Islamic Jihad, and perhaps some more militant members of Hamas, are leery of efforts to broker a Palestinian unity government agreement between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. That’s an increasingly popular call coming from a protest movement, in both Gaza and the West Bank, inspired by the democratic rebellion sweeping the Arab world. But any such agreement would further constrain the ability of more militant elements to implement an independent strategic agenda. And a more democratically accountable Palestinian politics would also diminish the authority enjoyed by those responsible for running the armed wings of the various factions.

Some analysts even suggested that last weekend’s rocket fire resulted from an internal rift in the Hamas leadership over an invitation by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to President Abbas to visit Gaza, that was apparently issued without consulting Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. Even then, the fusillade of rocket fire was intended to be symbolic, rather than part of a Hamas plan to spark an escalation.

The problem, as Harel and Ischaroff note, is that while the main players have reason to avoid an escalation, they may not be able to entirely control it: “It seems Israel wants to strike the last blow in this round and then declare a halt,” they write. “The concern is that Islamic Jihad will refuse to play by Israel’s rules.”

And, as Reider notes, should the rocket fire from Gaza actually inflict casualties in Israel, Netanyahu’s political calculations would change. The deeper problem on the Gaza-Israel boundary is a political one, but it goes beyond domestic politics and cuts to the core of a 63-year-old conflict to which there is no military solution.

UPDATE: The International Crisis Group, for whose analyses I have the utmost respect, warns in an urgent briefing that despite the intention of both Hamas and the Israeli government to avoid an escalation, they could nonetheless find themselves carried along by its momentum in the context of the volatile regional situation. “Israelis’ anxiety is rising and with it the fear that outside parties might seek to provoke hostilities to divert attention from domestic problems and shift the focus back to Israel,” the ICG writes. “Hamas has been emboldened by regional events and is therefore less likely to back down from a challenge. The combination, as recent days have shown, has proven combustible.” And, they warn, the two sides appeared to be trying to avoid an escalation before the 2008 invasion, too: “As in the weeks preceding Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack on Gaza that commenced in December 2008, neither Hamas nor Israel seems intent on provoking an intensified or extended conflict. But the combination of civilian casualties, regional events and continued paralysis of Palestinian politics has created the conditions for a rapid deterioration toward the kind of clash to which neither side aspires, for which both have carefully prepared and from which they will not retreat quickly.” Their solution: Urgent international efforts to broker an effective cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, rather than the unspoken and easily transgressed arrangements currently in place. Couldn’t agree more: Pretending Israel can achieve any kind of peace without talking to Hamas has proven in the past to be a dangerous delusion.

Barak: Iron Dome missile defense system to be deployed next week – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The deployment of the missile defense system comes in response to heightened shelling and rockets launched from Gaza to Israel in the past week.

By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press

Israel is deploying its newly developed Iron Dome missile defense system for the first time to protect southern Israeli communities from Palestinian attacks from Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces announced Friday.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave the order Friday after a week in which Gaza militants fired dozens of mortar shells and rockets at Israel, which retaliated with air strikes.

	Ehud Barak and Benny Gantz meet with IDF officials, March 25, 2011.
	Photo by: Haaretz

Barak says he approved the deployment of the system as an operational experiment and the IDF has said it will be operational in a few days.

In a meeting with the IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and other defense officials, he praised the military’s reaction to heightened rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, saying “in the last ten days, the terror organizations in Gaza have been hit hard and lost 11 militants.”

He lamented the loss of civilian life in the strikes, but said that “it is not Israel’s intent to allow terror organizations to renew their efforts to break our routine,” saying that Israel will do whatever necessary to restore order.

Barak warned Hamas and other terror organizations of the consequences of further firing into Israel, saying that although the past 24 hours have been rocket-free, Israel is continuing to follow the situation closely.

The defense minister said he authorized the experimental deployment of Iron Dome, which will in all likelihood be in use initially for several weeks. He added that the mode and scope of deployment will be in accordance with the security situation in the South.

The system is a main component of Israel’s defense against the homemade and imported rockets fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza, as well as the longer range rockets in the hands of Hezbollah guerrillas on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Barak made clear that Iron Dome will be used in the event missiles are shot into the area in which it will be deployed, but the full deployment of the missile defense system will only be feasible in a few years’ time.

At least 23 said killed as protesters in Syria clash with security forces – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Protesters clashed with police and government supporters throughout Syria on ‘Friday of Dignity’; protesters have been reported dead in several cities.

By News Agencies

Security forces and anti-government protesters clashed at various locations in Syria on Friday, leaving at least 23 dead, witnesses said.

Syrian security forces opened fire in protesters in the town of Sanamein, killing 20 people, a witness told Al Jazeera television on Friday.

“There are more than 20 martyrs… they [security forces] opened fire haphazardly, the witness said.

Sanamein is 50 kilometers north of Daraa, the hub of the protests that came to a head earlier this week after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti against the government.

Security forces killed an additional three people in Mauadamieh suburb of Damascus after protests, sealing off the district’s residents.

An anti-government activist reported that an additional demonstrator was shot dead by security forces in the coastal city of Latakia, and another slain in the central city of Homs. He said several people had been hospitalized in Latakia, where more than 1,000 people marched in the streets after Friday prayers.

Clashes continued in the restive southern city of Daraa Friday after crowds set fire to a bronze statue of the country’s late president, Hafez Assad, a resident told The Associated Press.

Heavy gunfire could be heard in the city center and witnesses reported several casualties, the resident said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Earlier Friday in the south Syria city, thousands marched freely behind the coffins of protesters gunned down by President Bashar Assad’s forces, a day after the president, scion of half a century of Baathist rule, offered to consider granting political freedoms.

“Freedom is ringing out!” chanted mourners for some of at least 37 people killed on Wednesday, when security agents broke up a pro-democracy encampment at a mosque in Daraa.

Despite a continued heavy security presence in Daraa, close to the Jordanian border, thousands of protesters were arriving in the city from nearby villages, offering support to a movement which has tried to emulate Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

In the southern city, before the Friday midday prayers which are the high point of social interaction in much of the Arab world, a procession of cars coursed through the streets honking horns and raising pictures of the president. There were also pro-Assad congregations in other parts of the city.

Minarets in Daraa echoed throughout the morning with the calls of imams to the faithful to attend funerals of some of the civilians killed, most of them when security forces fired on demonstrators in the mainly Sunni Muslim city on Wednesday.

Journalists who tried to enter Daraa’s Old City – where most of the violence took place – were escorted out of town Friday by two security vehicles. “As you can see, everything is back to normal and it is over, an army major, standing in front of the ruling Baath party head office in Daraa, told journalists before they were led out of the city.

Daraa has been bolstered by solidarity of fellow countrymen as protests erupted throughout the country Friday after a Facebook page called Syrian Revolution called on people to gather on the “Friday of Dignity” after prayers, “in all mosques, in all provinces, in the biggest squares”.

In Damascus, the Syrian capital some 200 people shouted chants in support of the people in the south on Friday — “We sacrifice our blood, our soul, for you Daraa!” — before plainclothes police and other security officers moved in to arrest them. Several hundred people yelled pro-government slogans nearby, close to Damascus’s Old City.

People shouting in support of the Daraa protesters clashed with regime supporters outside the historic Umayyad mosque in the capital, hitting each other with leather belts.

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, a resident claimed that more than 50,000 people were shouting slogans decrying presidential adviser Buthaina Shaaban, who promised Thursday that the government would consider a series of reforms in response to a week of unrest in Daraa.

A human rights activist, quoting witnesses, said thousands of people gathered in the town of Douma outside the capital, Damascus, pledging support for the people of Daraa. The activists asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Security forces dispersed the crowd by chasing them away, beating some with batons and detaining others, an activist said, asking that his name not be published for fear of reprisals by the government.

In the city of Aleppo, hundreds of worshippers came out of mosques shouting “with our lives, our souls, we sacrifice for you Bashar and Only God, Syria and Bashar!”

Residents in Homs said hundreds of people demonstrated in support of Daraa and demanded reforms, and an anti-government activist said that in the northern city of Raqqa, scores marched and several people were detained.

In the western city of Zabadani, near the border with Lebanon, several people were reportedly detained after protesting.

On Jan. 31, Assad had said there was no chance political upheavals then shaking Tunisia and Egypt would spread to Syria.

Assad, who has strengthened Syria’s ties with Iran, has come under criticism for his handling of the protests. The United States described the shootings of protesters as “brutal”.

	Dara’a, Syria, March 22, 2011.
	Photo by: Reuters

Hamas supplies militias with mortars, rockets for attacks on Israel.

GAZA CITY — Palestinian sources said the Hamas regime has been equipping Palestinian militias with a range of missiles, mortars and rockets for attacks on Israel. They said some of the militias were trained to fire rockets with ranges of up to 45 kilometers.

“Hamas would rather have others claim responsibility for these attacks as this might avoid massive Israeli retaliation,” a Palestinian source familiar with the Hamas regime said.

The sources said Hamas has supplied 60mm and 81mm mortars as well as the C5K rocket to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They said the Popular Resistance Committees were also given the Hamas-origin Kassam-class missile.

“These attacks are in response to Israeli crimes in Gaza,” the PRC’s Nasser Salah Eddin Brigades said.

The sources said a Fatah wing loyal to Hamas has also received mortars and short-range rockets. They said Fatah and other Palestinian gunners underwent training over the last six months that would enable them to fire a range of projectiles. The militias were also undergoing exercises in the use of tunnels in combat.

The longest-range rocket attacks have been conducted by the Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad. Jihad’s Al Quds Brigades has fired the enhanced BM-21 Grad rocket, with a range of 45 kilometers, into such cities as Ashdod, Beersheba and Yavne. The attack on Ashdod, a port city, was the first since the Israeli war with Hamas in 2008.

“We are entering a new phase of bombing targets that are farther away,” Jihad said.

The sources said Jihad was supplied with the Chinese-origin Grad variants in 2010. Over the last two weeks, Jihad and other Palestinian militias have been given greater leeway in missile, mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli civilian and military targets.

Jihad was also believed to have received anti-tank guided missiles for strikes on Israeli military positions along the border with the Gaza Strip. They were said to have included the AT-14, AT-3 and the 9K111 Fagot, also designed by Russia and enhanced by China and Iran.

“From now on, there are no more red lines for the resistance,” Jihad said.

‘Syrian security forces fire on protesters: 20 dead’.

By REUTERS
03/25/2011 17:15

Gunfire heard in Deraa; security forces break up protest in Damascus; demonstrations spread through country; statue of Hafez Assad set ablaze.

DAMASCUS/DERAA, Syria – Protests spread across Syria on Friday, challenging the rule of the Assad family after their forces killed dozens of demonstrators in the south.

In the southern city of Deraa, which has been in revolt for a week, gunfire and tear gas scattered a crowd of thousands after people lit a fire under a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar has ruled since his death in 2000.

Al Jazeera aired comments by a man who said security forces had killed 20 people on Friday in the nearby town of Sanamein.

In Hama, in the center of the country, where the elder Assad put down an Islamist revolt in 1982 at a cost of many thousands of lives, residents said people streamed through the streets after weekly prayers chanting “Freedom is ringing out!” — a slogan heard in uprisings sweeping the rest of the Arab world.

The same chant had earlier marked funeral processions in Deraa for some of the at least 37 people killed on Wednesday, when security agents attacked pro-democracy groups at a mosque. In all, 44 deaths have been reported in the past week in Deraa.

Security men, on alert across the country during weekly prayers at mosques, quickly stifled a small demonstration in the capital Damascus. They hauled away dozens among a crowd of some 200 who chanted their support for people of Deraa.

In Tel, near Damascus, about 1,000 people rallied and chanted slogans calling relatives of Assad “thieves”.

Deraa violence

In Deraa itself, a bastion of the Sunni majority which resents the power and wealth amassed by the Alawite elite around Assad, a Reuters correspondent saw thousands rally unchallenged until the sound of heavy gunfire sent them running for cover.

Unrest in Deraa came to a head this week after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti against the government. In Damascus, a couple of protests by a few dozen people shouting slogans were broken up last week.

Among the targets of the crowd’s anger on Friday was Maher al-Assad, a brother of the president and head of the Republican Guard, a special security force, and Rami Makhlouf, a cousin who runs big businesses and is accused by Washington of corruption.

Allied with Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran against the Western powers and neighboring Israel, Assad’s Syria sits at the heart of a complex web of conflict in the Middle East.

His anti-Israel stance has protected him against some of the criticism aimed, for example, at Egypt’s deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, who defended a peace treaty with the Jewish state.

Demonstrators in Deraa turned that hostility to Israel against the government on Friday, highlighting the use of force against them and the failure of the Assads to take back the Golan Heights.

“Maher, you coward!” they chanted. “Send your troops to liberate the Golan!”

In Deraa, before the Friday midday prayers which are the high point of social interaction in much of the Arab world, a procession of cars coursed through the streets honking horns and raising pictures of the president. There were also pro-Assad congregations in other parts of the city.

Minarets in Deraa echoed throughout the morning with the calls of imams to the faithful to attend funerals of some of the civilians killed, most of them when security forces fired on demonstrators in the mainly Sunni Muslim city on Wednesday.

A Facebook page called Syrian Revolution called on people to gather on the “Friday of Dignity” after prayers, “in all mosques, in all provinces, in the biggest squares”.

Bashar al-Assad promised on Thursday to look into granting Syrians greater freedoms in an attempt to defuse the outbreak of popular demands for political freedoms and an end to corruption.

He also pledged to look at ending an emergency law in place since 1963 and made an offer of large public pay rises.

Syrian security forces pulled out on Thursday from the mosque where several people were killed. People later converged on the mosque to celebrate its “liberation”, setting off fireworks and honking car horns.

Southern Political Report.

By Matt Towery

March 25, 2011 — I can’t believe what I’m watching. Nation by nation, the hotbed of the world is melting down. It started with Egypt, now Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and others. A tumultuous region is getting more tumultuous. Is this a cheery debutante’s ball for emerging democracies? No way.
Anarchy and directionless armed conflict benefits those who are up to no good. Show me a riot, and I’ll point out the looters. Find a deadlocked election, and I’ll find you some stuffed ballot boxes.
And when it comes to the Middle East, when civil unrest in the “Arab Street” starts spreading like a contagion throughout the entire region, it often open doors of opportunity for nefarious nations or factions — in this case, Iran.
By condemning the West’s intervention in Libya, the Iranians have drawn mostly diplomatic scorn from nearby Arab nations. (Iran isn’t Arab, of course.) But as the Libyan situation gets messier and protracted — as these ventures almost always do — then the frustration of Arabs can present an opportunity to the most notorious opportunist in the region. Especially when radical Islamist factions in the Middle East and North Africa can potentially be exploited to further roil the waters.
The leaders of the nations under assault in recent weeks and months have been dictators. Should they all go? Of course. But it’s also true that both Moammar Gadhafi of Libya and especially Hosni Mubarak of Egypt have been, on the grand geopolitical stage, stabilizing forces in the region. By design or chance, that has effectively made them allies of the world’s unwilling constabulary nations, most notably America.
The Obama administration showed an inability to decide whether to support America’s traditional ally Mubarak or to get on the side of history and support his ouster. On Gadhafi, the White House looked even more confused until European allies all but forced its hand.
This “spread of democracy” is not what it seems. And it’s not going to end anytime soon. Nor will more moderate nations and forces in the Middle East be exempt from the movement’s reach. A combination of social media and well-coordinated dissidents are riding the same idealistic wave that brought Iran out of the dark repression of the shah of Iran — another American ally. Unfortunately, that easing into democracy morphed into a falling into the hands of an evil regime that has been in various stages of open or secret warfare with America in the three decades since it took over.
Naturally, stuck in the middle of this mess is America’s great ally and friend Israel. Make no mistake, the goal of those who will take advantage of this regional anarchy will first be to install radical, repressive Islamic fundamentalist regimes where they can. Then they will train their eyes — and maybe their guns — on Israel, seeking its utter destruction.
Egypt, because of the strength of its popular army that’s currently in charge, will be the last nation in the region to fall prey to this reactionary trend, not the first. But radical fundamentalists will have a much easier time taking down lesser nations in the region. Remember that many of these nations’ citizens know nothing but totalitarianism. They may get it again, and worse.
We face one of the gravest shifts in the stability of power among nation-states since the taking of Eastern Europe by the Soviets in the years after World War II.
Naturally, there is criticism of President Obama’s handling of the crisis. In some ways, it brings back memories of the Carter administration’s reaction to both the situation at the time in Iran and to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That is, an understandable reluctance to engage these problems openly, but one that looks to enemies like weakness to be exploited.
But this series of events goes beyond President Obama. It forces all of us realize — if we hadn’t already — that the attack on America of 9/11 was not the final gesture of a dying, ancient culture. The fanatics that seek to hijack the Muslim world have been breeding their ideology and their practical strategies in homes and slums and even caves. Many of them do so within Western nations, where they have for the most part been welcomed.
I am not one who views every Muslim as a radical or an extremist. But I am a student of history, and I can recognize a blazing geopolitical fire when I see one.
This destabilization can be expected to bring new woe to our own economic situation, even though our stock market has been comparatively strong of late. Already the travel industry is suffering from the turmoil overseas. And gasoline prices will continue to rise as speculation about these new conflicts runs rampant.
“No-fly zone.” Those are strong words, but they must be backed up by the full faith and military willingness of America. The United Nations may or may not give its stamp of approval to our actions, but the U.N. isn’t going to dig our way out of this mess.
We are fighting the wrong war, as we have been for years. With due deference to our new and suffering allies in Libya and beyond, Iran ultimately will prove to play the role of Japan and Germany in the 1940s. Iran will be the catalyst that thrusts us unwillingly into a scary, new 21st century world.
Matt Towery is author of  “Paranoid Nation: The Real Story of the 2008 Fight for the Presidency.” He heads the polling and political information firm InsiderAdvantage. To find out more about Matt Towery and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.