WarSclerotic

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.

Rocket fire increases; IDF may deploy Iron Dome next week.

As missile fire from the Gaza Strip escalated on Thursday, the IDF is preparing for the possible deployment of the Iron Dome counter-rocket defense system along Israel’s border with Gaza.

In late February, the Israeli Air Force held a test of the counter-rocket defense system, Iron Dome, which was supposed to serve as the final stage before declaring the system operational.

While a month has passed since then, the system is nowhere to be found despite the recent escalation and daily rocket and missile attacks against Israeli towns and cities in the South.

Officially, the IAF claims that even though the system successfully passed the final round of tests in February, it is still not ready for deployment. On the other hand, some defense officials have accused the IAF of getting cold feet and of refusing to deploy the system due to a fear that it might not work.

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

The main problem is that the Defense Ministry has so far only purchased and received two Iron Dome batteries, each of which can protect an urban area of approximately 100 square kilometers.

Since the escalation in hostilities in the South, Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh has held a number of discussions with IAF and Operations Directorate representatives in an effort to speed up the deployment and begin to use the system to protect Israeli civilians.

On Thursday, the IDF decided to speed up the deployment of the system, possibly as early as next Sunday or Monday.

On the other hand, some defense officials warned Thursday of the ramifications of deploying the system without the ability to protect all of the cities and towns that are under missile fire. As a result, until there are more systems, the IDF will likely use the existing Iron Dome batteries to protect IAF bases in the South to retain the air force’s operational freedom in the event of a larger-scale conflict.

“If the system is, for example, deployed outside of Sderot than the terror groups will figure it out and begin firing at other cities that are not protected,” one defense official said. “This could potentially cause more harm than good.”

PM in Moscow questions Abbas’ desire to end conflict.

Amid the worst violence Israel has faced since he came to power two years ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in Moscow Thursday that it was not clear whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas genuinely wanted to end the conflict with Israel.

“Abu Mazen [Abbas] speaks pace to the world, but domestically there is incitement and education toward hate,” Netanyahu said. “And who do they blame? The settlers. That is not the problem; The first thing that needs to be discussed is the root of the problem: that the Palestinians don’t recognize our existence alongside them.”

The prime minister said it was “nonsense” to think that the major problem in the region was the construction of two homes on a street where 100 homes already exist. “The settlement issue needs to be discussed and decisions made,” Netanyahu said. “But for that we need to sit and talk.”

Netanyahu’s comments came during his 24-hour visit to Moscow that included meetings with President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavorv, and top Moscow-based Russian journalists.

Regarding Abbas, Netanyahu said it was quite possible the person Israel wanted to make peace with today, could disappear tomorrow. The Prime Minister also said it was not clear with whom Israel was supposed to reach an agreement.

“The Palestinian population is divided into two,” he said, using a line first introduced last week during an interview with CNN. “There are those who say openly they want to destroy Israel, and those who don’ say that, but refuse to stand up against those who do say it.”

Referring to the visit to Moscow this week by Abbas, Netanyahu said he had no doubt that the Palestinian leader “spoke here about peace. . He did the same in Brazil, and also on Channel One on Israel Television. But on Palestinian television , and in the Palestinian textbooks, he is not prepared to say that.

“It is time to tell that man, ‘enough’,” he said.

Referring to Wednesday’s bomb attack in Jerusalem, Netanyahu told the Russian journalists that they know what terrorism is, because it has hit Russian theaters and airports.

“We are talking about the same irrational Islamic radicalism,” he said. He then told a story of the 4th grade classmate of one of his sons who was killed a few years ago in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. On the same street where the family lived at the time — Gaza Street – there were two attacks at around the same period, he said.

“I told my children, you are not leaving the house,” he said. “They replied, ‘what, we are not going to live normal lives.’ And I said that the reality was not normal. Then we built the security barrier to prevent the terrorists from blowing themselves up in our cites, and the Palestinians took us to the court in The Hague claiming we were carrying out war crimes. That is the crazy hypocrisy of the world.”

During the meetings in Russia — where some 30 million solders and civilians were killed in World War II — Netanyahu also focused on Iran, drawing comparisons between Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and arguing to the Russians that a nuclear Iran could very well attack them as well.

Saying that it is difficult for the world to understand the danger of a nuclear armed Iran, Netanyahu said it was also difficult in the 1930s for the world to understand the dangers of Nazism.

“That cursed government led to a disaster during which two-thirds of the Jewish people were killed, and 30 million Russian speakers. The madness is the same madness: for one it was race superiority, for the other religious superiority,” he said.

Netanyahu then compared Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei to Hitler, saying that while “‘Hitler first began conquering the world and then started to develop nuclear arms, Khamenei is going the opposite way.”

Understanding the Violence in Israel – By John Hannah – The Corner – National Review Online.

By John Hannah

One hopes that the Obama administration is connecting the dots in response to the sudden escalation of violence against Israel. Big Iranian weapons shipments seized off the coast of Gaza; an Israeli family of five slaughtered in their beds; a barrage of more than 90 rockets fired at Israeli population centers over the past few days. And yesterday’s horrific terrorist attack at a bus station in Jerusalem. These are not isolated events. Nor are they outbursts of random violence by otherwise peace-loving Palestinians driven to despair by a stalemated peace process.

On the contrary, these outrages are better understood as part of a strategic campaign by hardened terrorist groups, closely tied to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, to divert attention from the popular uprisings that have targeted tyrannical governments across the Middle East. While feigning confidence in the face of Jasmine revolutions that have toppled pro-American autocrats, Iran’s mullahs know full well that the bell tolls for them, as the contagion of popular uprising now at work across Muslim lands threatens to reignite the Green Movement that in 2009 shook the Islamic Republic to its core.

Thousands of young people in Gaza and the West Bank have already taken to the streets in focused anger at the dueling despotisms of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. In Lebanon, the recently deposed prime minister, Saad Hariri, has rallied hundreds of thousands calling for Hezbollah’s disarmament. And most recently, of course, the tremors of the earthquake that is the Arab Spring have erupted in Syria, where the residents of a heretofore unknown border town named Daraa, are courageously calling their countrymen to challenge the Assad dynasty and bring an end to Syria’s long Baathist nightmare.

Add to all this a U.S.-led military intervention on behalf of a Libyan revolt that threatens to topple Moammar Qaddafi, one of the charter members of the Middle East’s league of terrorist-sponsoring totalitarians, and you’ve got an awfully compelling reason for Iran, Syria, and their allies to want to change the subject as fast as possible. The easiest way to do that, of course, has always been to trigger a major dustup with Israel, preferably one that leaves in its wake as many innocent Palestinian or Lebanese corpses as possible. It’s the oldest ruse in the playbook, a murderous attempt to draw the moths of the international media back to the light of Palestinian suffering, and redirect the anger of mobilized Muslim masses away from their current laser-like focus on the brutal and ruinous regimes that rule over them.

One fervently hopes that this transparently cynical gambit will fail. As many others have remarked, for all their individual differences, the dozen or so mass movements that have emerged across the Middle East over the past three months have all been distinguished by the near total absence of anti-American or anti-Zionist sentiment. Even in the Palestinian territories, the issue has been less Palestine and more the pathological inadequacies of their own governing structures that make normal civic life largely unbearable.

But relying on the political maturity and sophistication of angry young Arab protesters will likely not be enough. American leadership and a strong U.S.-Israeli alliance are also essential. The Obama administration should, of course, be loudly condemning the Palestinian attacks. But it should also be working tirelessly to condition world public opinion and the international media to the pattern, context, and aims of this terrorist campaign, especially as it relates to the sabotaging of the Arab Spring. The Syrian regime, in particular, should be put on notice privately that we’re wise to its efforts to use Palestinian surrogates to create a diversion, at the same time that we turn up the heat publicly on the atrocities being committed by Assad’s forces in Daraa. Such a public diplomacy campaign will also help establish the legitimacy and necessity of Israel’s inevitable effort to defend itself, preserve its deterrent, and degrade Palestinian terrorist capabilities.

For its part, Israeli retaliation should, to the extent possible, avoid playing into the extremists’ hands. Israeli strikes should aim to do as much damage as possible against terrorist targets, inflicting maximum pain with minimal civilian casualties in as brief a time as possible. Yes, I know, much easier said than done at a time when tens of thousands of Israel’s people are being targeted by rockets on a daily basis. That said, while it may eventually become unavoidable, it’s hard to see at this point how Israel’s interests would be best served by another long, drawn-out ground conflict in Gaza, especially given the larger strategic transformation at work across the broader region — which, there is no doubt, now has the biggest enemies of Israel and America across the Middle East scared. Very scared. The Obama administration should be doing everything in its power to keep it that way.

— John Hannah is a former national-security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Israeli alarm grows amid Arab upheaval – UPI.com.

TEL AVIV, Israel, March 24 (UPI) — Amid a surge of terrorist attacks in recent days, Israelis are bracing for an escalation in violence and possibly a new invasion of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

There are strong suspicions, and not just in Israel, that Iran is seeking to provoke a confrontation as the Arab world is battered by unprecedented political upheaval that has brought about the downfall of two presidents since January and now threatens others.

As it is, Israelis are becoming increasingly concerned that the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Feb. 11 could lead to the unraveling of their 1979 peace treaty with Cairo, the core element of the Jewish state’s strategic outlook.

The turmoil in the Arab world also threatens stability in Jordan and the 1994 peace pact it signed. If the Hashemite monarchy crumbles, Israel would find itself again bordered by hostile Arab states.

The peace treaties are widely reviled by the general population in both countries and new regimes could respond to that and shatter the political stability in those states that has helped keep the peace, however cold it may be.

“This is a reason for concern, primarily because of the potential for an epidemic,” said Oded Eran, director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and a former Israeli ambassador to Amman. “We cannot afford dramatic change in Egypt or Jordan.”

Israelis’ abiding fear is that the upheaval will result in Islamist radicals taking power, or at least produce unfriendly regimes that aren’t willing to tolerate Israel’s war against terrorism.

“This is not like Eastern Europe in the late 1980s,” cautioned Eyal Zisser of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies in Tel Aviv.

“This is not a region where stable dictatorships can be replaced with stable democracies. Here the alternative means chaos, anarchy and radicalism.”

Mubarak, who fought Islamist extremists tooth and nail, aided Israel by blockading Gaza, where Hamas militants unleashed rockets into Israel and carried out other attacks.

He looked the other way when Israeli forces invaded the coastal strip in December 2008 and fought a 22-day war against heavily outnumbered Hamas fighters, killing some 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in the face of intense international criticism.

If Israel is contemplating invading Gaza again, it is unlikely in the extreme that the transitional military regime in Cairo will be able to live with that.

The recent upswing in violence began March 11 when five members of an Israeli family were killed, apparently by Palestinians, in their home in the West Bank settlement of Itmar.

On March 19, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired 54 Grad rockets and mortar shells at the southern cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, the heaviest barrage since Operation Cast Lead, the 2008 invasion of Gaza.

No deaths were reported but the Palestinian media quoted the Islamic Jihad group, which has close links with Tehran, as saying the salvo signaled a new campaign of attacking Israeli population centers.

Israel retaliated with airstrikes that killed a Hamas official.

Then Wednesday, a bomb exploded in Jerusalem, killing a 60-year-old woman and wounding 39 other people. It was the first terrorist attack in the holy city since 2008, which for several years was battered by a relentless Hamas suicide bombing offensive.

Compared to earlier bombings Wednesday’s was relatively minor but it shook Israelis badly by rekindling the terror of the suicide attacks.

Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom declared the army “may have to consider a return” to a new operation into Gaza. “I say this despite the fact that I know such a thing would, of course, bring the region to a far more combustible situation,” he said.

Iran has been blamed for covertly inciting riots in Bahrain, a Sunni-led Persian Gulf state where the majority of the population is Shiite. There are fears the trouble will spread to Saudi Arabia itself, as it has to Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, all major oil producers.

Iran’s main proxy in the Levant, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, brought down the pro-Western government in Beirut in January and is now forming a new government that is ringing alarm bells in Israel.

Hezbollah fought Israel’s military to a standstill in a 34-day war in 2006. Both sides have been bracing for another bout.

Maan News Agency: Netanyahu plays up Iran threat in Russia.

Published today (updated) 24/03/2011 20:01

Should Israel Prepare for War in the Middle East?.

The violence in Gaza is escalating. In the wake of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Palestinian militants continued firing rockets into southern Israel. Israel launched new airstrikes in Gaza.

Islamic Jihad, a Middle Eastern terrorist group, claimed responsibility for Thursday’s rocket fire. However, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the nation holds Hamas, a Sunni Muslim extremist group that won free elections in the Gaza Strip in 2006, responsible. Hamas said it wants to “restore calm” and would not attack. And Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that the nation will not be passive about terrorism.

Terrorism is nothing new to David Rubin, former mayor of Shiloh, Israel. Rubin was driving home from a dentist appointment with his three-year-old son, Ruby, when Palestinian terrorists opened fire on the vehicle just outside Ramallah many years ago. One tracer bullet hit Rubin in the leg. Another hit little Ruby in the back of the head. Doctors said surviving the drive-by shooting was a miracle.

Charisma magazine caught up with Rubin, author of the Islamic Tsunami, to get his perspectives on what these new attacks against Israel mean in light of the unrest in the Middle East and whether or not Israel should prepare for war.

Charisma: What’s your reaction to Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem?

Rubin: It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Israeli army reserved the right to enter all of the Palestinian autonomous cities whenever necessary and has been doing that. Therefore, the Palestinian’s ability to create bomb and weapons factories has been greatly reduced. As far as launching terrorist attacks, that makes it a lot harder.

Charisma: But that has changed with the revolution in Egypt. The border between Egypt and Gaza is no longer as secure. So what’s the reality?

Rubin: Israel is a little country the size of Delaware. We can’t afford to look at situations through rose-colored glasses. We have to recognize the reality for what it is. What we see all around us is a continuation of the Islamic revolution. The question in the Islamic world is, who is going to head the Islamic tsunami? Will it be the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia or the Shiites as represented by Iran? That is really what is going on in the Middle East today.

Charisma: How much of the timing of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem is connected with the Egyptian revolution?

Rubin: It’s a continuation of the extremism in the Islamic world. The Islamic terrorist groups in the Islamic world gain popularity by how many terrorist attacks they are able to carry out. So the efforts are clearly going to be there more and more.

It didn’t make the news in a lot of places around the world, but there was an Israeli family in Samaria that a little over a week ago, on Sabbath night, had terrorists come into their home and kill three of the children—all under 11 years of age—and both the parents. There were three other children who survived the attack.  After the attack, their bodies were cut up into pieces. They were totally butchered.

This is very common in the Islamic world. People don’t like to face up to this barbarity because the implications are too unpleasant, but that is what we’re facing here. The so-called Palestinians, who are basically the Muslims of the land of Israel, look at the world very differently.  They don’t look at things through Western eyes.

For a while the terrorists were keeping kind of quiet partially because, as I said, the Israeli army was preventing it, but also because it was in their interest. They felt they were going to get an independent Palestinian state, which would be a terrorist state in the heartland of Israel.

Recently, it seems like those chances have been diminished. Israel is starting to wake up to the fact that there is no real partner for peace there and, as result, the terrorist groups are starting to compete again to see who can launch the most attacks.

I predict that there is going to be an increase in terrorist attacks against Israel in the days to come.

Charisma: Do you expect a war in the Middle East?

Rubin: Absolutely. There is not a question. It’s certainly coming. There has been a pattern in recent years. It used to be that when terrorist launched attacks, Israel would respond—and respond disproportionately so the terrorists would know immediately that you just don’t do that. In the recent years since the so-called peace process started, Israel has been very wary about attacking and responding in a strong way. That’s a big problem because it’s hurt our deterrence.

Instead of letting the Palestinians launch 50 mortar attacks and then just respond with a few rockets, Israel needs to respond twice as hard. Every time they attack, we attack twice as hard. It’s just basic common sense. But up to this point, it is not happening. And because of that, the terrorists are encouraged. They continue. They raise the ante. They increase the terrorism. As result of that, it’s going to lead to a war because ultimately we’re going to have to fight back and hit back hard.