WarSclerotic

Israel deploys Iron Dome missile defense system for first time – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

System placed on desert terrain, expected to begin operating by Sunday afternoon; IDF has described the step as ‘experiment’, adding that the system alone won’t be sufficient defense.

By Anshel Pfeffer and Haaretz Service

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday deployed the Iron Dome anti-rocket system for the first time ever on Sunday in southern Israel.

Weeks of stepped-up rocket and mortar attacks have drawn fears of renewed war and led to new calls in Israel for the military to deploy the $200 million system.

	Anti-missile system Iron Dome, meant to protect Israeli towns from rocket attacks.
	Photo by: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems LTD.

The components of the battery – which include launchers, a radar, the control system and monitor – were each placed a few kilometers from one another on desert terrain, as soldiers from the Israel Air Force air defense unit began configuring the system.

The IDF said the system should begin operating on Sunday afternoon, but has described the step as an “operational experiment,” saying the deployment of the Iron Dome and beginning its actual use will take some time.

The army said that further anti-missile batteries would be deployed at others sites in the south, but did not specify when.

The Israeli-developed system uses cameras and radar to track incoming rockets and is supposed to shoot them down within seconds of their launch.

Security officials said the new barrage of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip and public pressure had led the military to deploy the system, which is still being fine-tuned. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss operational decisions.

IDF spokesman Capt. Barak Raz said the system was in an evaluation stage, as any new system would be.

The Israel Air Force has stressed that even the first two batteries will not be enough, and that at least three more will be needed to provide ample defense from Gaza rocket attacks.

Once deployed, however, the Iron Dome still cannot provide full protection to residents of Israel’s south, Home Front Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio on Sunday.

Palestinian militants have fired dozens of rockets at Israel over the last week, prompting Israeli air strikes against targeted areas in the Gaza Strip. The renewed hostilities have fed concerns of another large-scale Israeli military operation. In December 2008, Israel invaded Gaza in response to years of rocket and mortar barrages on its southern communities, killing 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 900 civilians, and causing widespread destruction. Thirteen Israelis also died in that war.

Israel says that Hamas, which suffered heavy losses in the fighting, has largely recovered from the fighting and restocked its arsenal with more powerful weapons.

Also on Sunday, the Israel Air Force killed two Gazans and wounded three more who were attempting to launch rockets at Israel.

The strike came a day after Gaza groups signaled that they would halt rocket fire at Israel if the IDF stopped carrying out targeted attacks as well.

Chaos in Syria and Jordan Alarms U.S. – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — Even as the Obama administration defends the NATO-led air war in Libya, the latest violent clashes in Syria and Jordan are raising new alarm among senior officials who view those countries, in the heartland of the Arab world, as far more vital to American interests.

Deepening chaos in Syria, in particular, could dash any remaining hopes for a Middle East peace agreement, several analysts said. It could also alter the American rivalry with Iran for influence in the region and pose challenges to the United States’ greatest ally in the region, Israel.

In interviews, administration officials said the uprising appeared to be widespread, involving different religious groups in southern and coastal regions of Syria, including Sunni Muslims usually loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The new American ambassador in Damascus, Robert Ford, has been quietly reaching out to Mr. Assad to urge him to stop firing on his people.

As American officials confront the upheaval in Syria, a country with which the United States has icy relations, they say they are pulled between fears that its problems could destabilize neighbors like Lebanon and Israel, and the hope that it could weaken one of Iran’s key allies.

The Syrian unrest continued on Saturday, with government troops reported to have killed more protesters.

With 61 people confirmed killed by security forces, the country’s status as an island of stability amid the Middle East storm seemed irretrievably lost.

For two years, the United States has tried to coax Damascus into negotiating a peace deal with Israel and to moving away from Iran — a fruitless effort that has left President Obama open to criticism on Capitol Hill that he is bolstering one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.

Officials fear the unrest there and in Jordan could leave Israel further isolated. The Israeli government was already rattled by the overthrow of Egypt’s leader, Hosni Mubarak, worrying that a new government might not be as committed to Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

While Israel has largely managed to avoid being drawn into the region’s turmoil, last week’s bombing of a bus in Jerusalem, which killed one person and wounded 30, and a rain of rocket attacks from Gaza, have fanned fears that the militant group Hamas is trying to exploit the uncertainty.

The unrest in Jordan, which has its own peace treaty with Israel, is also extremely worrying, a senior administration official said. The United States does not believe Jordan is close to a tipping point, this official said. But the clashes, which left one person dead and more than a hundred wounded, pose the gravest challenge yet to King Abdullah II, a close American ally.

Syria, however, is the more urgent crisis — one that could pose a thorny dilemma for the administration if Mr. Assad carries out a crackdown like that of his father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad, who ordered a bombardment in 1982 that killed at least 10,000 people in the northern city of Hama. Having intervened in Libya to prevent a wholesale slaughter in Benghazi, some analysts asked, how could the administration not do the same in Syria?

Though no one is yet talking about a no-fly zone over Syria, Obama administration officials acknowledge the parallels to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Some analysts predicted the administration will be cautious in pressing Mr. Assad, not because of any allegiance to him but out of a fear of what could follow him — a Sunni-led government potentially more radical and Islamist than his Alawite minority government.

Still, after the violence, administration officials said Mr. Assad’s future was unclear. “Whatever credibility the government had, they shot it today — literally,” a senior official said about Syria, speaking on the condition that he not be named.

In the process, he said, Mr. Assad had also probably disqualified himself as a peace partner for Israel. Such a prospect had seemed a long shot in any event — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown no inclination to talk to Mr. Assad — but the administration kept working at it, sending its special envoy, George J. Mitchell, on several visits to Damascus.

Mr. Assad has said that he wants to negotiate a peace agreement with Israel. But with his population up in arms, analysts said, he might actually have an incentive to pick a fight with its neighbor, if only to deflect attention from the festering problems at home.

“You can’t have a comprehensive peace without Syria,” the administration official said. “It’s definitely in our interest to pursue an agreement, but you can’t do it with a government that has no credibility with its population.”

Indeed, the crackdown calls into question the entire American engagement with Syria. Last June, the State Department organized a delegation from Microsoft, Dell and Cisco Systems to visit Mr. Assad with the message that he could attract more investment if he stopped censoring Facebook and Twitter. While the administration renewed economic sanctions against Syria, it approved export licenses for some civilian aircraft parts.

The Bush administration, by contrast, largely shunned Damascus, recalling its ambassador in February 2005 after the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Many Lebanese accuse Syria of involvement in the assassination, a charge it denies.

When Mr. Obama named Mr. Ford as his envoy last year, Republicans in the Senate held up the appointment for months, arguing that the United States should not reward Syria with closer ties. The administration said it would have more influence by restoring an ambassador.

But officials also concede that Mr. Assad has been an endless source of frustration — deepening ties with Iran and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah; undermining the government of Saad Hariri in Lebanon; pursuing a nuclear program; and failing to deliver on promises of reform.

Some analysts said that the United States was so eager to use Syria to break the deadlock on Middle East peace negotiations that it had failed to push Mr. Assad harder on political reforms.

“He’s given us nothing, even though we’ve engaged him on the peace process,” said Andrew J. Tabler, who lived in Syria for a decade and is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I’m not saying we should give up on peace talks with Israel, but we cannot base our strategy on that.”

The United States does not have the leverage with Syria it had with Egypt. But Mr. Tabler said the administration could stiffen sanctions to press Mr. Assad to make reforms.

Other analysts, however, point to a positive effect of the unrest: it could deprive Iran of a reliable ally in extending its influence over Lebanon, Hezbollah and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

That is not a small thing, they said, given that Iran is likely to benefit from the fall of Mr. Mubarak in Egypt, the upheaval in Bahrain, and the resulting chill between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

“There’s much more upside than downside for the U.S.,” said Martin S. Indyk, the vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “We have an interest in counterbalancing the advantages Iran has gained in the rest of the region. That makes it an unusual confluence of our values and interests.”

Hamas says it will withhold fire if Israel does the same.

Hamas officials said on Saturday that its members in Gaza had agreed to halt their rocket fire at Israel if Israel stops launching strikes against targets in the coastal territory.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Rudwan said after a meeting with faction heads over a surge in cross-border tensions, that Hamas was “committed as long as the occupation [Israel] was committed” to restoring a de-facto ceasefire.

Moments before the meeting started, a Kassam rocket exploded in the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries were reported and no damage was caused.

Earlier on Saturday, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo said on Saturday that “there is anarchy in Gaza and Hamas.”

Russo toured the house in the Negev that was hit Friday night by a Kassam rocket and stated that “it is difficult now for Hamas to turn the wheel back.”

Late Friday night a Kassam rocket exploded in Eshkol Regional Council area, causing damage to one house but no injuries.

A local official said authorities were searching for a second rocket that had fallen in an open area.

On Thursday, a rocket fired from Gaza exploded north of Ashdod. While there were no injuries, Magen David Adom crew treated a number of people for shock.

Earlier Friday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that he authorized the deployment of the Iron Dome missile defense system.

Speaking during a tour of the Gaza region, Barak said: “I authorized the IDF in the coming days to authorize the first operational deployment of Iron Dome batteries, here in the southern region.”

The test deployment, he said, “will continue for several weeks and the layout will vary with operational needs.”

The defense minister praised Iron Dome’s technology, calling it an “extraordinary development” by the defense industry. He cautioned, however, that it does not provide a 100 percent solution to the rocket threat.

The Iron Dome system will be part of the IDF’s solution to the barrage of rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza in the last week, a statement from the IDF spokesperson said.

Iron Dome is designed to defend against rockets at a range of 4-70 km and each battery consists of a multi-mission radar manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries and three launchers, each equipped with 20 interceptors named Tamir.