WarSclerotic

IAF hits targets in Gaza after Hamas calls for cease-fire.

The Israel Air Force struck a building used for terror activities and three smuggling tunnels in in the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday after Hamas announced an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip in an effort to reign in growing escalations.

After consulting with various other Palestinian terrorist factions in Gaza and other international Arab officials, Hamas said that the cease-fire went into effect at 11 p.m. Thursday.

Hamas reportedly ordered all armed factions in Gaza to halt fire into Israel.

Earlier Thursday, the Hamas military wing, the Izzadin Kassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for firing a Kornet anti-tank missile at a children’s schoolbus near Kibbutz Saad in the Sha’ar Hanegev regional council, which left a 16-year-old in critical condition and the driver in light condition.

The attack was “the first response to the continuing crimes of the occupation,” a Hamas statement said.

In response to the attack, the IDF spokesperson said that the air force had struck nine targets in the Gaza Strip and that artillery forces had struck the area from where the anti-tank missile was fired.

Five Palestinians were killed and 33 injured in the strikes, Palestinian medical sources reported.

Speaking at the IDF’s Southern Command earlier Thursday night, Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke about the school bus attack and called it a “very serious event that hit deep into Israeli territory from deep within the Gaza Strip. That is something that we cannot accept,” he added.

Commenting on IDF,  IAF and artillery strikes on Gaza, the defense minister said: “The actions being taken right now are a response to [the attack] and they will continue as long as necessary in order to make clear that things like this cannot continue.”

The responses by the IDF are both purposeful and effective, Barak said, adding that, “We see Hamas as responsible for everything originating in Gaza, and we expect that Hamas will understand what is allowed, and of course, what is forbidden.”

Two hurt in missile strike on bus carrying students near Gaza – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Two people were wounded Thursday after an anti-tank missile exploded into a bus traveling in one of the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.

Following the attack, 16 additional mortar shells were fired at Israeli towns in the western Negev, most of them hitting open areas.

	Bus damaged by missile strike from Gaza which wounded two people, April 7, 2011.
	Photo by: Ilan Assayag

Magen David Adom crew who arrived at the scene said that a 16-year-old boy was critically wounded as a result of the attack, and that the bus driver was moderately hurt by shrapnel wounds in his leg.

“The boy was lying on the ground bleeding. The bus driver was conscious and hysterical. The entire bus destroyed – it was a horrifying sight,” said a member of the rescue service.

MDA said that the rescue services resuscitated the boy and later transferred him to the hospital. MDA also said the bus was nearly empty after dropping off school children and was carrying only the driver and the 16-year-old boy at the time of the attack.

Residents of communities near the site of attack were instructed by authorities to stay inside their homes in case the strikes at Israeli towns will continue.

Following the attack, the Israel Defense Forces quickly retaliated and launched both land and air strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, the IDF spokesperson said, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding five others.

Defense Minister, Ehud Barak ordered the army to respond quickly and said he held the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, responsible for the violence. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

The strike came following several weeks of tension and mutual attacks along Israel’s border with the Hamas-ruled Strip, with Israel Defense Forces aircraft striking smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza earlier Thursday.

On Tuesday, IDF tanks fired at and killed an armed Palestinian approaching the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel on Tuesday, as three mortar bombs exploded in Israeli soil.

The incident took place after an IDF force spotted an armed Palestinian near the Erez crossing at the Strip’s north, later directing tank fire to the spot. No injuries were reported from among the soldiers.

On Saturday, IDF planes struck a vehicle travelling at the south of the Gaza Strip, killing three Hamas operatives, one of them a top commander in Hamas’ military wing.

An IDF Spokesperson stated that the three men were members of a terrorist cell that was “planning to kidnap Israelis over the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover” in Israel and in the Sinai Peninsula, a popular spring tourist destination for Israelis.

The Palestinian Ma’an news agency identified the three as Isma’il Labad and his brother Abdullah from Ash-Shati’ refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, and military commander Muhammad Ad-Dayah from the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

Ad-Dayah, 33, is considered to be a top Hamas military official. As a child he participated in the first intifada, later serving as the bodyguard of former Hamas chief Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Ad-Dayah also lost one of his eyes during an attempted mortar attack on a nearby settlement.

Hamas vowed vengeance against Israel in a statement Saturday, describing the strike as a crime and “serious escalation” of the recent violence, and vowed that Israel would “bear all the consequences.” The militant group also called on the U.S. to stop the flow of financial aid to Israel.

Prior to the attack, Palestinian militants have fired rocket salvos into Israel, reaching as far as the major southern city Be’er Sheva, and Israel has carried out a series of air strikes.

Teen in critical condition from Gaza anti-tank missile.

An anti-tank missile shot from the Gaza Strip directly hit a school bus outside Kibbutz Sa’ad in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council on Thursday, injuring two people. Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to respond speedily and to attack using all means necessary.

An Israeli attack helicopter machine-gunned a target in Gaza City after the missile attack, for the first time since Operation Cast Lead. A Reuters correspondent said the sound of heavy fire from the helicopter was audible in the center of the city.

IDF forces struck back at various locations throughout the strip. At least three people were killed and at least eight people, including a 4-year-old girl were injured in IDF and IAF strikes, Palestinian medics said.

An IAF F-16 warplane bombed a major Hamas security compound, rocking Gaza City with a big explosion and wounding at least one person there.

In the Negev attack, the 16-year-old was in critical condition after paramedics managed to resuscitate him. He was airlifted to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba where he was undergoing surgery. Soroka officials said that he was suffering from head injuries.

The bus driver was listed in light condition after being hit in the leg. They were the only people on the bus.

Forty-five rockets and mortar shells on Thursday afternoon were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip in the span of three hours. Palestinian terror groups claimed that they had fired two longer-range rockets into Israel following the IDF strikes. Shortly after, the IDF’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system was successfully activated for the first time, intercepting a Grad rocket fired towards Ashkelon.

Mortars and Kassam rockets continued to fall in the Eshkol, Sha’ar Hanegev and Hof Ashkelon Regional Councils through Thursday night.

An emergency information line was opened for the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council: 08-680-6450

Iron Dome works in combat, intercepts Katyusha rocket.

History was made on Thursday when the Iron Dome counter-rocket defense system intercepted a Grad-model Katyusha rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, proving its capabilities for the first time in combat.

IDF sources said that the rocket was detected shortly after it was launched in the direction of Ashkelon, south of which a battery was deployed on Monday. Two Tamir interceptors were fired at the Katyusha and the first intercepted it, a senior Israeli Air Force officer said.

“This is a historic achievement and the first time that a short-range rocket was shot down in this way in the world,” one defense official said.

The first Iron Dome battery was deployed outside of Beersheba in late March after Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired over 100 rockets and mortar shells into Israel in under a week. The IAF said that it planned to keep the Iron Dome in its current positions but would move the batteries to other cities within the range of Palestinian rocket fire over the coming weeks.

Israel plans to increase the number of operational batteries to six in the coming years, with the arrival of $205 million the Obama administration has pledged it will provide Israel to purchase additional rocket defense systems. The Defense Ministry recently completed negotiations with Iron Dome manufacturer Rafael about the upcoming deal.

Sources in the Air Force said that the Iron Dome was still undergoing an operational evaluation but would continue to be activated in the event of continued attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Former defense minister and Labor Party MK Amir Peretz who made the decision to develop the Iron Dome, hailed the success and said that it was the result of “well-trained young soldiers who were prepared for their mission.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 7, 2011, 10:06 AM (GMT+02:00)

Tadan

Remains of smugglers’ car near Port Sudan

In accusing Israel of killing the two passengers of a Hyundai Sinai near Port Sudan Tuesday, April 5, the Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti alleged a missile was fired from an aerial drone or a vessel on the Red Sea. debkafile‘s exclusive military and intelligence sources reveal that a special operations unit landed by sea and used a surface missile to hit the car and kill two top handlers of the Iranian-Hamas arms smuggling network in Sudan. The assailants waylaid the vehicle as it drove through the Kalaneeb region on the only blacktop road running through the Sudanese desert between Khartoum and Port Sudan.

Our sources further reveal that the passengers killed in the car did not arrive at Port Sudan airport by air, as previously reported, but by road from the northeastern Sudanese town of Atbara, which lies 344 kilometers north of Khartoum at the meeting-point of the Blue and White Niles.

This town of some 120,000 inhabitants is the base of operations of one of the largest and most ruthless arms smuggling network operating out of Sudan.

This network’s long and murky record goes back to the 1980s and 1990s when it served al Qaeda. Its top operatives include members of the Masoud al-Qosi clan, some of whom joined up with Osama bin Laden and quit Sudan with him when he returned to Afghanistan in 1996.

One of Bin Laden’s bodyguards, Ibrahim al Qosi, has spent the last seven years at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay awaiting trial.
Over the years, Iranian and Hamas agents were given a niche in the expanding Sudanese smuggling ring to oversee the execution of the deals they commissioned for smuggling arms into Gaza. Those agents recently withdrew from direct involvement and deputized network members to handle the route to Gaza.

Its most recent commission was the covert transfer of mustard and nerve gas consignments which Hamas and Hizballah buyers purchased with Iranian funding and direction from Libyan rebels in Benghazi  and which were bound for Lebanon and the Gaza Strip – as debkafile was first to disclose on March 31.

The “merchandise” had reached Sudan from Libya in convoys under special Hizballah and Hamas guard.

On April 6, after the attack on the car, top Sudanese intelligence and military investigators arrived on the scene at around 18:00 hours to try and establish who perpetrated the attack and identify the two dead men. They found the bodies too blackened and burnt to identify and their personal documents mostly destroyed in the flames.

Khartoum then turned to Cairo with an urgent request for counter-terror and missile experts to help in the inquiry. They were also stalled by lack of proper forensic investigation gear.
In their initial examination, the Sudanese investigators believed they found Iranian ID belonging to one of the passengers while the second looked like a Palestinian; one of them had died in the car, the second outside. In the absence of local missing persons, the pair were presumed to be outsiders.

They also deduced that the hit-team was picked up by helicopter straight after the attack and flown to a ship standing by off the Red Sea coast of Sudan. The noise it made gave rise to the theory that car had been struck by an airborne missile.
The method of attack and clean getaway pointed to a sophisticated military organization capable of unconventional operations across great distances spanning thousands of kilometers. It would have required competent military intelligence support in places as far apart as Atbara, Kalaneeb, Port Sudan and the Red Se

What is Sudan hiding about the air strike it blamed on Israel? – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Tuesday’s attack by fighter jets demolished a car and killed its two passengers, which reportedly included an Islamist responsible for supplying weapons to Hamas.

By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff

Sudan accused Israel yesterday of launching a missile strike on its territory on Tuesday – an attack that demolished a car and killed its two passengers. Israel did not comment on the attack or the accusations.

The full extent of the strike and the identity of the victims are not clear yet, but the Al-Arabiya news network reported yesterday that an Islamist responsible for supplying weapons to Hamas was apparently among the two people killed.

	A photo of the attack on Port Sudan on April 5, 2011.
	Photo by: Sudan Tribune

If Israel is responsible for the attack, as foreign media reports suggested yesterday, it would appear to be another step in Israel’s global campaign to stop Iranian arms smuggling into the region.

The Sudanese Media Center, a news agency associated with the African nation’s security services, reported yesterday that at about 9 P.M. local time (10 P.M. Israel time ) missiles struck a vehicle on the main road from Khartoum airport, 14 kilometers from Port Sudan, killing the car’s two occupants.

According to one version, the missiles were fired from unidentified fighter jets that came from the east over the Red Sea. One of the victims was said to be a Sudanese national and the other, according to Al Arabiya, was a person “of Arab nationality responsible for arming Hamas.”

Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Karti said, “This is absolutely an Israeli attack,” adding that Sudan had evidence that Israel had launched the strike.

An eyewitness told Reuters that security people were preventing journalists and other people from entering the site of the explosion. He said he could see a car going up in flames.

The Sudanese Media Center said the state’s aerial defense forces fired at the attacking aircraft, which was described as “foreign,” and drove it out of Sudan’s air space.

A senior Sudanese official said later that eyewitnesses saw the aircraft follow the vehicle and then bomb it. He added that a similar attack had been made in that area before. The official denied reports that these attacks were meant to prevent arms trafficking and called on the international community to investigate who is behind the bombings.

The conduct of the Sudanese authorities and their decision to keep the media away from the attack site may indicate that Khartoum has much to hide in the affair. Perhaps, despite its denials, the Sudanese regime knows about the reported arms smuggling taking place within its borders.

Israeli defense officials have accused Sudan of enabling Iran to smuggle arms through its territory in convoys, via Egypt, to the Gaza Strip.

Sudanese officials describe the attack as being targeted against a specific person. But sending an aerial force to such a remote destination to kill one lone militant appears to be unusual.

Israel has not confirmed or denied foreign media reports saying the Israel Air Force has carried out strikes in Sudan at least twice before, in January and February 2009, shortly after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza ended.

In one incident, a truck convoy leading arms to Gaza was bombed and 119 people were killed. In the other incident, a ship was bombed from the air.

At the time, reports surfaced about Israeli naval commando activity in Sudan’s ports against arms smuggling.

Sudan, whose relations with the West are tense, is interested in downplaying the incident, especially if another arms convoy has been hit.

Israel’s covert war with Iran

For the past three years, Israel and Iran have been conducting a covert war over arms trafficking. Iran sends a huge amount of weapons and materiel to Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad through various routes. Israel has meanwhile acted in various regions to foil the smuggling, according to foreign media reports.

In January 2010, senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, head of the Islamist organization’s arms trafficking apparatus, was murdered in a Dubai hotel. Dubai police accused the Mossad of the assassination and published photos and passports of the alleged perpetrators, with Dubai claiming were traveling under fake identities.

Over the past two months, reports related to the arms-trafficking war have been on the rise. In February, Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi disappeared in Ukraine, with his family claiming that Israeli agents had abducted him from a nighttime train. A large part of the Hamas weapons industry relies on the help of Iranian experts. The circumstances under which Abu Sisi was brought to Israel are prohibited from publication under a gag order.

On March 16, Israel’s naval commando intercepted the ship Victoria en route from Turkey to Egypt, where large amounts of weapons were found on board. The IDF believes the weapons, intended for Gaza, had been flown from Iran to Damascus, where they were loaded onto the ship. This appears to be an alternative Iranian route, replacing the old sea route from the Persian Gulf to Egypt and from there to Gaza via Sinai.

Despite the smuggling failures, considerable quantities of Iranian weapons are assumed to have still reached both Hezbollah – the Syrian border with Lebanon is completely open and unsupervised – and Hamas.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 6, 2011, 6:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

An Israeli Heron drone

Late Tuesday, April 5, two passengers of a Hyundai Sonata car were killed in a mysterious attack by a missile that wrecked their car near Port Sudan. debkafile‘s counter-terror sources report that the attack, carried out by an unmanned aerial vehicle at Kalaneeb south of Port Said, targeted the Hamas representative in Sudan in charge of the vast Iranian weapons smuggling enterprise for the Gaza Strip via Egypt and the Suez Canal.  His latest task was to organize the transfer to Port Sudan of a shipment of mustard and nerve gas purchased by Hamas and Hizballah representatives with Tehran’s help from Libyan rebels in Benghazi.

The covert WMD consignment was destined for Gaza and Lebanon.

debkafile broke the story of this transaction on March 31. The full report appears below.

It raises the possibility that Israel carried out the missile strike in Port Sudan to cut short this traffic. This charge was leveled by the Sudanese foreign minister in Khartoum Wednesday. Jerusalem has made no comment.

debkafile also reports that Hizballah and Hamas personnel are stationed at the headquarters established in Port Sudan by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards intelligence and naval arms.
On March 31, debkafile reported:

Senior Libyan rebel “officers” sold Hizballah and Hamas thousands of chemical shells from the stocks of mustard and nerve gas that fell into rebel hands when they overran Muammar Qaddafi’s military facilities in and around Benghazi.
Word of the capture touched off a scramble in Tehran and among the terrorist groups it sponsors to get hold of their first unconventional weapons.

According to our sources, the rebels offloaded at least 2,000 artillery shells carrying mustard gas and 1,200 nerve gas shells for cash payment amounting to several million dollars.

US and Israeli intelligence agencies have tracked the WMD consignments from eastern Libya as far as Sudan in convoys secured by Iranian agents and Hizballah and Hamas guards. They are not believed to have reached their destinations in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, apparently waiting for an opportunity to get their deadly freights through without the US or Israel attacking and destroying them.

It is also not clear whether the shells and gases were assembled upon delivery or were travelling in separate containers. Our sources report that some of the poison gas may be intended not only for artillery use but also for drones which Hizballah recently acquired from Iran.

Tehran threw its support behind the anti-Qaddafi rebels because of this unique opportunity to get hold of the Libyan ruler’s stock of poison gas after it fell into opposition hands and arm Hizballah and Hamas with unconventional weapons without being implicated in the transaction.

Shortly after the uprising began in the third week of February, a secret Iranian delegation arrived in Benghazi. Its members met rebel chiefs, some of them deserters from the Libyan army, and clinched the deal for purchasing the entire stock of poison gas stock and the price.

The rebels threw in a quantity of various types of anti-air missiles.

Hizballah and Hamas purchasing missions arrived in the first week of March to finalize the deal and arrange the means of delivery.

The first authoritative American source to refer to a Hizballah presence in Benghazi was the commander of US NATO forces Adm. James Stavridis. When he addressed a US Senate committee on Tuesday, March 29, he spoke of “telltale signs of the presence of Islamic insurgents led by Al-Qaeda and Hizballah” on the rebel side of the Libyan war. He did not disclose what they were doing there.

Jerusalem Center Projects and On-Line Publications-Articles By Dore Gold-Articles by Dore Gold-Israel’s Requirements for Defensible Borders.

Washington, D.C.

April 5, 2011
Israel is entering an extremely dangerous period in the year ahead. It is not facing an imminent military attack, but rather is confronting a new diplomatic assault that could well strip it of the territorial defenses in the West Bank that have provided for its security for over forty years. This applies particularly to its formidable eastern barrier in the Jordan Valley, which, if lost, would leave Israel eight or nine miles wide and in a very precarious position against the threats that are likely to emerge to its east, in the years ahead.

Traditional U.S. policy indeed recognized that Israel is not expected to withdraw from all the territories it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. This was enshrined in the language of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was the basis of successive peace treaties between Israel and the Arab states.  This key element of Resolution 242 also appeared in repeated letters of assurance to Israel by U.S. secretaries of state from Henry Kissinger to Warren Christopher.  In 1988, Secretary of State George Shultz reiterated: “Israel will never negotiate from, or return to the lines of partition or to the 1967 borders.¹

More recently, the April 14, 2004, presidential letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also spoke explicitly about Israel’s right to “defensible borders” and to the need of it being able to defend itself by itself. The latter point implicitly acknowledged Israel’s doctrine of self-reliance, by which the Israel Defense Forces were to guarantee Israel’s survival and not international troops or even NATO. Two months later, that letter was confirmed by massive bipartisan majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Significantly, it also ruled out the notion that Israel would be expected to withdraw in the West Bank to the 1967 lines, which were only armistice lines, and not internationally recognized borders.

This principle in fact had already been underscored decades earlier by the main author of Resolution 242, the British ambassador to the UN in 1967, Lord Caradon, who admitted on PBS: “We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ’67 line….We all knew – the boundaries of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier.”²

A New Quartet Initiative?

Yet today, Britain, France, and Germany are lobbying for a radically new Middle Eastern initiative with the UN Secretariat and the European Union, which, along with the U.S. and Russia, are members of the Middle East Quartet. What they are proposing is that the Quartet detail already the outlines of an Israeli-Palestinian treaty with the hope that international endorsement of key Palestinian demands, like borders, will prompt Mahmoud Abbas to return to negotiations with Israel. The Quartet will have to make a decision about this proposal, perhaps as early as April 15.

But Britain, France, and Germany are not just acting as facilitators, for they are insisting that Israel must accept an agreement on borders based on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. This was confirmed in public by British Foreign Secretary William Hague last week during an address at Chatham House in London, where he reiterated these terms.³ In Washington, there have been both public and private efforts underway to press President Barack Obama to join the Europeans and issue his own blueprint for Israel’s future borders, based on the same territorial parameters.⁴ It is only known that the Obama administration has neither embraced nor renounced the 2004 U.S. letter to Israel concerning its right to “defensible borders.”

Strategic Uncertainty Across the Middle East

Amazingly, these new demands of Israel, which would be problematic in any event, are being proposed at the worst possible time, that is, precisely when the entire Middle East looks like it is engulfed in flames. Rebellions against central governments have been spreading from Yemen to Syria, as well as from Egypt to Bahrain. This will hopefully lead in the long-term to accountable and democratic governments. But in the short- and medium-term, the results could be highly destabilizing and bring to power far more radical forces that could seek renewed conflict.

In fact, on March 22, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted in an interview in the Washington Post:

“I think we should be alert to the fact that outcomes are not predetermined and that it’s not necessarily the case that everything has a happy ending….We are in dark territory and nobody knows what the outcome will be.⁵

What this means is that just as Israel faces complete strategic uncertainty with regard to the future of the Middle East, it is being asked to acquiesce to unprecedented concessions that could put its very future at risk. This is clearly misguided advice.

First, how can Israel be expected to sign agreements, predicated on it withdrawing from strategic territories, like the Jordan Valley, when it cannot be certain if the governments it negotiated with will even be there in the future?

Look what is happening in Egypt after the fall of President Mubarak, where senior political figures are already saying that they will have to re-examine the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace. No one can provide a guarantee to Israel that the regimes ruling today in Syria, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia will not be overthrown. In the West Bank, the regime of Mahmoud Abbas remains in power largely due to the deployment of the Israel Defense Forces throughout the area and their counter-terrorist operations against Hamas and its allies. Were Israel to pull out of the West Bank, under present circumstances, it could not depend on Abbas remaining, regardless of what is happening to Arab regimes today across the region. In short, the degree of strategic uncertainty for Israel, given current political trends around it, has increased sharply.

The Rising Profile of the Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood

What makes this concern even more compelling is the fact that the strongest political forces today that are now vying for power in the Arab world and seek to replace the current regimes there are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood network. This is already evident in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood had an extremely low profile when President Mubarak was toppled, but since that time its role in Egyptian politics has grown substantially.⁶ It has been regarded as the strongest opposition movement in both Egypt and Libya.⁷

The Muslim Brotherhood stands out as one of the main political forces behind the wave of protests transpiring in Jordan, at present, as well.⁸ Indeed, Jordanian Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit charged that the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood was taking orders from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria.⁹

Historically, the Muslim Brotherhood provided the ideological underpinnings for the leading figures in global terrorism from Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to Osama bin Laden. In the last few years, with the rise of leaders like Muhammad Badie in Egypt and Hammam Sayid in Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood has come under a more extremist leadership, which still embraces hard-line doctrines against the West and a commitment to jihadism.¹⁰

Even if the Muslim Brotherhood does not take power at this initial stage, it will undoubtedly become part of future political coalitions that will move many neighboring countries into a much more hostile stance against Israel and even one supportive of militant action against the Jewish state. In the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas has been seeking reconciliation talks with Hamas which, if successful, would definitely affect the future course of Palestinian policy toward Israel.

The hostility of the Muslim Brotherhood to Israel should not be underestimated. It is frequently forgotten that Hamas, which regularly launches rocket attacks deliberately aimed at Israeli population centers, is, according to its own charter, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Muhammad Badie issued in late 2010 a weekly message in which he plainly stated that the way forward on the Palestinian issue is not through negotiations, but rather returning to jihad and martyrdom (istishhad).¹¹ It should come then as no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood’s second-in-command announced in early February 2011 that the movement will seek to cancel the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.¹²

Second, the present wave of anti-regime rebellions is loosening control of the central governments over large parts of several Arab states. This has created a vacuum in many areas, which is being filled by regional terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and its affiliates, who seek to establish new sanctuaries beyond the reach of pro-Western Arab military establishments. This process is already evident in Yemen. But it has become accentuated in Egypt, as well, especially in the Sinai Peninsula. During the Iraq War, al-Qaeda of Iraq sought to set up forward positions in the Jordanian city of Irbid. The Jordanian security forces overcame this challenge, but can Israel always be certain that this will be the case?

Third, the undermining of the internal stability of Sunni Arab states is occurring as Iran seeks to consolidate its regional hegemony in the entire Middle East.  While Iranian interests may be affected by the continuing rebellions in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Hizbullah-controlled Lebanon, Tehran stands to be a major beneficiary of the current instability in critical countries, like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. For Israel, the biggest question is the future orientation of Iraq, where the Iranians have been supporting a number of key Shiite parties. In the last numbers of years, Lebanese Hizbullah has also been active in Iraq, training Shiite militias, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

As Iran’s regional power grows, will Iraq still be oriented towards the U.S. or will it evolve into an Iranian satellite and re-engage in the Arab-Israeli conflict? Iraq is not far away from Israel; it is roughly 210 miles from the Iraqi border to the Jordan River. It has not gone without notice that Saudi Arabia has reinforced over the last year its northern border with Iraq, considering that it too cannot be certain what Baghdad’s future orientation will be. Israel, as well, cannot rule out Iraq, under Iranian influence, re-engaging in the Arab-Israel conflict. If that is even a remote possibility, how can Israel be expected to fully withdraw to the 1967 lines and abandon its right to defensible borders?

Undermining a Negotiated Peace

To conclude, the pressures Israel faces at this time to agree to a full withdrawal from the West Bank and to acquiesce to the loss of defensible borders pose unacceptable risks for the Jewish state. It also stands in contradiction to the international commitments that were given to Israel in the past. These recognized that Israel did not have to agree to a full withdrawal from this territory. Additionally, the 1993 Oslo Agreements envisioned a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Borders were to be decided by the parties themselves and not be imposed by international coalitions or by unilateral acts.

In fact, those commitments to a negotiated solution of the conflict appeared explicitly in the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement. Notably, that agreement bears the signatures of President Bill Clinton, and officials from the European Union and Russia, who acted as formal witnesses. What is clear today is that the Palestinian leadership under Mahmoud Abbas has no interest in a negotiated solution to its conflict with Israel. It prefers to see the international community impose territorial terms that are to its advantage without having to formally declare an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict and without having to recognize the rights of the Jewish people to a nation-state of their own.

The idea that the Quartet would dictate to Israel the 1967 lines and set the stage for an imposed solution serves this Palestinian interest, but not the interest of achieving real peace. European support for such initiatives would contravene the very peace agreements they signed in the past as witnesses. It would set the stage for further Palestinian unilateralist initiatives at the UN in September and deal a virtually fatal blow to any negotiations.

Finally, it must be added that the people of Israel have undergone a traumatic decade and a half. For the most part, they passionately embraced the promise of the 1993 Oslo Agreements and yet, instead of peace, they saw their cities attacked repeatedly by waves of suicide bombers that left over 1,000 Israelis dead. They still considered taking further risks and supported unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, only to find that there was a five-fold increase in rocket fire against Israeli population centers in the year that followed. Longer-range rockets poured into Hamas-controlled Gaza, as Iran exploited the vacuum created by Israel’s withdrawal.

The people of Israel have an inalienable right to security and to certainty that the mistakes of the last seventeen years will not be repeated. The full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip must not be attempted again in the West Bank, especially given what is happening today across the Middle East region. For those reasons, Israel must not be asked to concede its right to defensible borders.

Notes

1. Richard Holbrooke, “The Principles of Peacemaking,” Israel’s Right to Secure Boundaries: Four Decades Since UN Security Council Resolution 242” (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2009), p. 45.

2. British ambassador to the UN in 1967 Lord Caradon: “We didn’t say there should be a withdrawal to the ’67 line; we did not put the ‘the’ in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately. We all knew – that the boundaries of ’67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier….We did not say that the ’67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity.” MacNeil Lehrer Report, March 30, 1978.

3. Herb Keinon, “Hague Comes Out Against Interim Agreement,” Jerusalem Post, March 30, 2011.

4. See, for example, Bernard Avishai, “Next, an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan,” New York Times, March 30, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/opinion/30iht-edavishai30.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=print.

5. David Ignatius, “Gates Underlines the Dangers in the Middle East,” Washington Post, March 22, 2011.

6. Michael Slackman, “Islamist Group Is Rising Force in a New Egypt,” New York Times, March 24, 2011.

7. “Islam and the Arab Revolutions,” The Economist, April 2-8, 2011. See also, “Energized Muslim Brotherhood in Libya Eyes a Prize,” CNN, March 25, 2011.

8. Ranya Kadri and Isabel Kershner, “Protestors Rally Into Night in Jordan,” New York Times, April 1, 2011.

9. Taylor Luck, “Gov’t, Islamists in ‘Dangerous Game,'” Jordan Times, April 1, 2011.

10. For a discussion about the more extremist trends in the Muslim Brotherhood, see Shadi Hamid, “A Radical Turn for the Muslim Brotherhood?” Brookings, June 26, 2010; and Jonathan D. Halevi, “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood: In Their Own Words,” February 6, 2011, Jerusalem Issue Brief, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Hammam Sayid was known before his election as head of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood to have made statements in support of Osama bin Laden; see al-Hawadeth, September 24, 2001.

11. Muhammad al-Badi’ — Weekly Message, December 23, 2010.

(from the Muslim Brotherhood website in Arabic)

The entire Umma [the Islamic people], and not just the Palestinian Authority, is being asked to return to true fundamental principles, that must guide the [handling of the] Palestinian problem, so that it won’t be forgotten. Therefore, relating to negotiations, to recognition [of Israel], to reconciliation [with Israel], or establishing a Palestinian state in the ‘67 borders as an axiom, is a big mistake, for the Land of Palestine is Arab and Islamic land, on which their holy sites [of the Muslims] are located. The Jihad for the return of this land is an obligatory commandment incumbent on the entire Arab and Islamic nation….Palestine will not be liberated by hopes and prayers, but rather by Jihad and sacrifice, and we call all Brothers in Palestine to return to national unity, on the basis of resistance, for that is the only way to recover Palestine. Jihad is victory or martyrdom for Allah.

(For the complete text in Arabic, see below)

http://www.ikhwanonline.com/Article.asp?ArtID=76669&SecID=213.

في فلسطين ميلاد أمة يلوح في الأفق

إن الأمة كلها– وليس السلطة الفلسطينية فقط– مطالبة بالرجوع إلى الثوابت الحقيقية التي يجب أن تحكم قضية فلسطين حتى لا تُنسى، ومن ثَمَّ فإن اعتبار التفاوض والاعتراف والصلح وإقامة دولة فلسطين في حدود 1967 من المسلمات هو خطأ فاحش، إن أرض فلسطين أرض العروبة والإسلام وعليها مقدساتهم، والجهاد من أجل استرداد هذه الأرض فرض عين على الأمة العربية الإسلامية، ولقد كانت حرب غزة نموذجًا فذًّا لصمود الشعب الفلسطيني المجاهد، وكان الفشل الذريع للصهاينة دليلاً قاطعًا على أن ما يحدث في فلسطين هو ميلاد أمة تخرج من بين الركام والأنقاض أكثر صلابةً وقوةً وإيمانًا، ومَن يرغب في نصرة فلسطين فعليه أن ينضمَّ إلى المشروع المقاوم، فلم تعد تُجدي أساليب الشجب والاستنكار، وفلسطين لن تتحرر بالتمنيات والدعوات، وإنما بالجهاد والتضحيات، ونحن نناشد كل الأخوة في فلسطين العودة إلى الوحدة الوطنية على أرضية المقاومة؛ فذلك هو السبيل الوحيد لعودة فلسطين، وإنه لجهادٌ نصرٌ أو استشهادٌ.

12. Rashad al-Bayumi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s second-in-command, announced in an interview with Japanese TV (and cited by al-Hayat, March 2, 2011) that the group would join a transitional government in order to cancel the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, as it “offends the Arabs’ dignity and destroys the interests of Egypt and other Arab states.”

Egypt’s ElBaradei Threatens War With Israel.

Troubling signs are beginning to emerge from post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt: The prime minister is making new overtures to Iran — and a leading presidential candidate is threatening war with Israel.

Mohamed ElBaradei

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency who has announced his candidacy for president in Egypt, said on Monday that “if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime.”

The Digital Journal observed: “In the world’s first glimpse of the policies that may emerge from the results of the upcoming Egyptian presidential election, one candidate for president outlined his insistence on protecting Palestinians in Gaza from Israeli military assaults. Mohamed ElBaradei’s position on the matter is clear: An Israeli military strike against Gaza would result in a declaration of war from Egypt.”

In an interview with the Arab newspaper Al-Watan reported by the ynetnews website, ElBaradei also declared: “In case of any future Israeli attack on Gaza, as the next president of Egypt, I will open the Rafah border crossing and will consider different ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement.

“Israel controls the Palestinian soil and there has been no tangible breakthrough in the process of reconciliation because of the imbalance of power in the region and the situation there is a kind of one-way peace.”

On Tuesday, Palestinian militants in Gaza launched three mortar shells at Israel, and Israeli forces killed an armed Palestinian near the Israel-Gaza border.

“Pressure has been mounting along Israel’s border with the coastal enclave in recent weeks, as Gaza militants and Israeli forces traded blows in what some fear are signs of a large-scale military escalation,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Also on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Al Arabi said his country is ready to open a “new page” with Iran.

“Egypt has opened a new page with all countries of the world, including Iran,” Al Arabi said. “The Egyptian and Iranian people deserve relations which reflect their history and civilization.”

Al Arabi’s remarks came during a meeting with Iranian official Mojtaba Amani, who gave him a letter from Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, AFP reported.

Salehi urged Egypt to explore ways to improve relations between the two countries.

Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Egypt in 1980 in protest of Egypt’s recognition of Israel.

Salehi also invited Al Arabi to visit Tehran, and expressed a desire to visit Cairo himself.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 5, 2011, 9:05 PM (GMT+02:00)

Anti-Assad protest turns violent

The Syrian uprising took a new turn Tuesday, April 5, when armed protesters ambushed and shot dead two policemen in the Damascus suburb of Kfar Batna. Syrian troops then opened fire and killed 15 inhabitants.

Monday, police opened fire on the funeral procession for 10 protesters killed in demonstrations in the Damascus suburb of Douma.

The fact that armed elements have taken over and are willing to use violence against Assad regime – and in the capital yet – marks a new and dangerous spiral of violence in the two-week long protest. Until now the violence came from regime forces against protesters. Now that the opposition is resorting to arms, the government may well escalate its crackdown on dissident demonstrations.

The Syrian uprising took a new turn Tuesday, April 5, when armed protesters opened fire for the first time on security forces from a well-laid ambush in a Damascus suburb. Two policemen were killed according to first reports. The fact that armed elements have taken over and are willing to use violence against Assad regime – and in the capital yet – marks a new and dangerous stage in the two-week long protest.

Syria’s banned opposition groups and Muslim Brotherhood, under the combined new banner of “The Syrian Revolution 2011,” earlier announed a fresh round of demonstrations against President Bashar Assad starting Tuesday, April 5, and lasting until next week, debkafile‘s Middle East sources report.

Both sides of the conflict realize that the Assad regime is not yet at the tipping-point for its survival after street protest rallies and bloody crackdowns centering on Daraa in the south and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, in which 110 demonstrators died. However, a mass, nationwide uprising could badly shake its stability because it would seriously overtax Assad’s loyal military and security troops.

The opposition and the regime are meanwhile playing cat and mouse to see which holds the balance. The protest movement has already made an important gain: Even if Assad weathers the storm, his regime will never recover its old stability, arrogance and confidence. After 11 years in power, the Syrian president’s authority will be on the wane.
To knock it over completely, the Sunnis, who are 76 percent of the Syria’s population of 26 million, must join the protest movement en masse. This they have so far avoided doing for fear of the bullets which Assad’s loyalist forces do not hesitate to shoot.

Because it is hard to get ordinary Sunni Muslims out on the streets, the heads of Syrian Revolution 2011 have instigated a campaign of passive resistance. This week, for example, opposition leaders told the population to stop paying their electricity bills, an act of protest that has caught on in Syria’s big cities. The Assad regime is therefore confronted both by the “Days of Rage” and quiet civil resistance.
Furthermore, the important port-town of Latakia has split down the middle between two opposing camps – the 300,000 members of the ruling Allawite sect fear to venture into the districts populated by the town’s 400,000 Sunnis – and vice versa. Army control is reduced to keeping open the road linking the Syria’s main import and export port facilities to the highway out of the city.
In the next 48 hours, the opposition is hoping to whip up mass demonstrations in Aleppo and Damascus, the capital. Aleppo, a city of 2.8 million inhabitants is the political and economic hub of the Syrian Sunni community. Therefore, major outbreaks there would produce a big crack in Assad’s authority.

The Syrian ruler has tried to pre-empt the Aleppo demonstration by pouring substantial armed strength into the city, cutting its Internet links and arresting thousands of people suspected of opposition ties.
But he faces a huge problem. He can’t trust the Sunni rank and file to obey orders to suppress a large-scale Sunni insurrection in Aleppo – only the Allawite units which owe loyalty to the president and the Assad clan.  He must therefore rely on the support of the 4th Army Division and the security and intelligence services and they may be too thin on the ground to shoulder the task. He dare not try and loose Sunni troops on the protesters of Aleppo for fear they join the protesters.