How Next War In Mideast Will Shape Up And When
How Next War In Mideast Will Shape Up And When – Investors.com.
The next Middle Eastern war may have already started.
Its first casualties may have been the five members of the Fogel family, Israelis slaughtered in their sleep by Palestinian terrorists in the town of Itamar on March 11 in the disputed territories of the West Bank.
Or the first shots of the war might have been heard on March 19 as the Hamas terror group significantly ramped up rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Or perhaps it was in Jerusalem on March 23, when a backpack bomb spiked with ball bearings detonated, killing a British woman and wounding at least 25 others, the first such attack in that city in seven years.
The Israeli response to this increase in terrorist violence directed at its civilians has been predictable: measured, targeted attacks and arrests aimed at those who struck Israel.
The world response is also predictable: condemnation of Israel for exercising its right of self-defense.
We’ve seen this cycle before.
What’s different this time is that the shifting sands of the Middle East have raised the stakes in Israel’s confrontation with Hamas in Gaza and its terror ally Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy in southern Lebanon.
Who are Hezbollah and Hamas and what might the next Middle East war look like?
Prior to the attacks of 9/11, the Islamic terror group that had killed the most U.S. citizens was Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Party of God). Hezbollah carried out the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, killing 17 Americans and 46 others, and the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen.
Shooting Into Politics
Since the 1980s, Hezbollah has transformed itself from a terrorist group to a violent Shiite Muslim political party. Hezbollah virtually runs Lebanon. With up to $400 million in funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah is thought to have assassinated Rafic Hariri, a well-regarded former Lebanese prime minister, in 2005.
Hezbollah has also shown increasing sophistication by working with the Mexican drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the U.S. as a method to finance their far-flung operations. In addition to being opposed to Western civilization, Hezbollah has stated, “It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.”
Hezbollah staged a cross-border raid into Israel in 2006 to capture Israeli soldiers, killing three, wounding two and kidnapping two. This provoked a 34-day conflict that saw some 1,200 Lebanese and 158 Israeli deaths, with Hezbollah firing up to 4,200 rockets into Israel, targeting civilian areas. Hezbollah even managed to hit an Israeli naval vessel with an Iranian-supplied anti-ship cruise missile, demonstrating a new and militarily significant capability.
During the 2006 war, Hezbollah deliberately positioned military assets in civilian homes, schools, hospitals and mosques. The inevitable result was twofold: collateral damage to Lebanese civilians and heavy international criticism of Israel for civilian deaths.
For Hezbollah the lesson learned from the 2006 conflict was simple: double down on collocating rockets, ammunition dumps and command nodes with civilians. The cynical result: Hezbollah’s 40,000 Iranian-supplied rockets are aimed at Israel from densely populated civilian areas.
Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni Muslim terror group, runs the Gaza Strip, an area of 1.6 million people adjacent to southern coastal Israel. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006, when it won election over its more secular rival, Fatah, which now administers Palestinian affairs in the West Bank, where 1.5 million Arabs live.
After the election, Hamas, an Arabic acronym for “Islamic resistance movement,” purged its political rivals. Hamas is the Palestinian wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that shares the goals of al-Qaida, namely, the destruction of Israel and Western civilization. The Muslim Brotherhood differs with al-Qaida on methods — hence, the mistaken view in the Western media that it is “moderate.”
Since taking over in 2006, Hamas has systematically imposed Shariah law on what was once a fairly secular population. With unrest sweeping the Arab world, it spread somewhat to the Gaza Strip, but Hamas brutally repressed these stirrings while attacking foreign journalists who tried to report on the protests.
Hamas is now in unity talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, an unheard-of possibility just a year ago. Formal negotiations are to start in Cairo in April — presumably under the watchful eye of Egypt’s military government, now fully melded with the Muslim Brotherhood. Abbas is preparing to submit a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood to the U.N. in September.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working toward unveiling a peace initiative with the Palestinians in May. Even if all of the Palestinian demands were met, less the dissolution of Israel itself, this effort will fall on deaf ears as Hamas feels newly empowered now that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is influencing policy in Cairo.
The first practical impact of the Muslim Brotherhood’s hijacking of the Egyptian revolution will be the de facto lifting of the arms embargo against Hamas. This will allow new and highly capable armaments to be shipped into Gaza from Iran and other regional players who seek Israel’s destruction. Among such troubling weapons systems are Chinese-designed, Iranian-made anti-ship cruise missiles.
Israel intercepted a shipment of these cruise missiles destined for Hamas on an Iranian-chartered cargo ship only three weeks ago. With Egypt beginning to turn a blind eye to illegal weapons smuggling to Gaza, it is only a matter of months before Hamas becomes significantly stronger militarily.
A calculation of when the next Mideast war might transition from the preliminary stages to intense, open conflict can be made by looking at the calendar of coming events.
Egyptian parliamentary elections are scheduled for September, with a presidential election in November. Egyptian politicians, in and out of the Muslim Brotherhood, are proving adept at blaming Israel and the Jews for all sorts of ills. An Israeli-Hamas war could stir Islamist sentiments to the advantage of the Muslim Brotherhood.
That the Palestinians intend to take their case to the U.N. in September offers a clue as well. Palestinian diplomats don’t expect to win international recognition of their unilateral declaration of statehood in the Security Council, where the U.S. has a veto and friends.
Rather, Palestinians expect to take their case to the larger U.N. General Assembly using the “uniting for peace” procedure created in 1950 as a work-around from continuous vetoes from the Soviet Union regarding the Korean War.
Winning a U.N. General Assembly vote wouldn’t, by itself, lead to formal statehood recognition for the Palestinians — the Security Council is needed for that — but it would provide their cause a great deal of legitimacy.
So September appears to be the critical month. Looking at the timelines of the last two conflicts between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, 23 days and 34 days, respectively, Hamas would have to begin the campaign in mid- to late-August. This would achieve maximum political effect in the Egyptian elections and in the U.N. in September.
An earlier attack would draw an Israeli counterstroke that might be completed too soon, diminishing political gains.
It’s always a danger to project how military operations might unfold from past corollaries. But Israel’s response to Hezbollah aggression in 2006 and its 2008 response to increased Hamas rocket attacks, known as Operation Cast Lead, offer examples.
Hamas and Hezbollah have anti-ship missiles with range sufficient to blockade Israel’s two main ports: Haifa and Ashdod. Using these missiles against Israeli naval vessels and commercial shipping would mark an unprecedented escalation of the ongoing attacks on Israel, one that would threaten the Israeli economy.
Using anti-ship missiles in this way would also provide Hamas and Hezbollah with the optics of engaging in the traditional statecraft of a naval blockade, placing them on par with the U.S. and European powers. This is in contradistinction from their prior practice of firing unguided rockets indiscriminately at Israeli population centers — an action seen more as terror bombing than as a legitimate exercise of force.
Thus, a likely trigger of the coming war will be a joint announcement by Hamas and Hezbollah of a blockade of Israel.
Operation Cast Lead resulted in up to 1,400 Palestinian deaths, about half of whom were civilians. As with Hezbollah, Hamas has learned to locate its military hardware in civilian centers to purposefully maximize civilian suffering in return for maximized political effect.
Battle View
The war’s unfolding may be this simple:
• Hamas and Hezbollah declare a blockade and commence cruise missile attacks on shipping.
• Israel targets the Hamas and Hezbollah anti-ship batteries that will undoubtedly be located in densely populated apartment buildings.
• The terror groups trot out the international press to duly report on Israel’s “atrocities” against civilians.
• Hamas and Hezbollah initiate massive rocket barrages on Israel’s cities and towns.
• Israel responds with a 30-day air-ground operation to occupy and destroy the rocket-launching areas and their associated command and control centers.
In the end, Israel wins the battle, but loses the diplomatic and political war.
A Hamas/Hezbollah blockade of Israel would present a serious threat to that nation. Compared with 2006 and 2008, Hamas and Hezbollah are far better armed and trained and will likely benefit from the placement of Iranian al-Quds force teams in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
This will result in collateral damage to the civilian populations that will likely greatly exceed what was seen in 2006 and 2008.
And, from the perspective of Hamas and Hezbollah, these thousands of civilian deaths will be well worth it — expendable martyrs in the grand jihad of delegitimizing Israel.
• DeVore served in the California Legislature from 2004 to 2010. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and served as a special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon. He studied at American University in Cairo in 1984-85.
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WarSclerotic 
April 8, 2011 at 10:22 AM
[…] How Next War In Mideast Will Shape Up And When (via ) How Next War In Mideast Will Shape Up And When – Investors.com. The next Middle Eastern war may have already started. Its first casualties may have been the five members of the Fogel family, Israelis slaughtered in their sleep by Palestinian terrorists in the town of Itamar on March 11 in the disputed territories of the West Bank. Or the first shots of the war might have been heard on March 19 as the Hamas terror group significantly ramped up roc … Read More […]