WarSclerotic

Protests sweep Syria’s east, Nasrallah pic… JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – Syrian security forces fired at two protests in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor on Friday as demonstrations demanding the removal of President Bashar Assad swept the tribal area, residents and activists said.

In the city of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, protesters burned pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose speech in Beirut this week in support of Assad infuriated demonstrators, activists and a tribal leader in the province told Reuters by phone, adding security forces had withdrawn from the streets of Albu Kamal.

Foreign correspondents are barred from Syria and witness reports are hard to verify independently.

Nasrallah said on Wednesday most Syrians still backed President Bashar Assad and the removal of his regime on the back of mass unrest would serve U.S. and Israeli interests.

The Syrian and Iranian-backed ally said he believed Assad was serious about making reforms, in response to pro-democracy protests that have gripped the country for nine weeks and which have presented the gravest challenge to Assad’s 11-year rule.

“All indications and information until now still affirm that the majority of the Syrian people support this regime and have faith in President Bashar Assad and are betting on his steps towards reforms,” Nasrallah said in his first comments on Syria since protests broke out in March.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards set up Hezbollah in 1982 to fight Israeli forces that had invaded Lebanon. The group enjoys strong political and military support from Tehran and Damascus. The United States lists the group as a terrorist organization.

“I personally believe … based on discussions and directly listening to President Bashar Assad that he believes in reforms and is serious and committed … and is ready to take very big steps towards reforms,” he told a crowd in the southern Lebanese town of Nabi Sheet by video link, on the 11th anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon.

Syrian protesters, inspired by popular uprisings in other parts of the Arab world, initially took to the streets to call for greater freedoms and an end to corruption.

Assad made some gestures towards reforms, including lifting a hated decades-old emergency law, while also sending in tanks to crush revolts in flashpoints across the country.

Met with a violent crackdown by Syrian security forces — human rights group Sawasiah says at least 1,100 civilians have been killed — demonstrators have demanded Assad’s overthrow.

Nasrallah, who had praised popular uprisings that overthrew the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, said the fall of the Syrian government would serve American and Israeli interests since it would be replaced by a regime “ready to sign any peace, meaning surrender, with Israel”.

Nasrallah praised Assad’s strong support for the guerrilla group and said he preserved the unity of Lebanon.

Syria’s role in Lebanon has long been in a contentious issue in Lebanese politics. Syria ended a 29-year military presence in its smaller neighbor after an international outcry over the assassination of former statesman Rafik Hariri in 2005.

Nasrallah, whose guerrilla fighters fought Israel in an inconclusive war in 2006, called on Syrians to “choose the path of dialogue and not confrontation”.

Human rights activists and witnesses say Syrian security forces, the army and irregular Assad loyalists, have opened fire on peaceful protesters. Syrian authorities blame the violence on armed groups backed by Islamists and outside powers.

DEBKA.

Sunday, May 22, marked two new developments in the fierce confrontation between the Assad regime and Syria’s protesters which has claimed at least 1,100 lives in three months.
That day saw Syrian military, security and intelligence troops moving into the high-end centre and suburbs of Damascus, which have so far been untouched by the violence sweeping the country. Backed by armored vehicles, they set up hundreds of road blocks to fragment the city into tiny military sectors. Each contingent was made responsible for keeping the streets in his sector clear of trouble. Civilians trying to move between the sectors are now subjected to stringent and humiliating searches – often with beatings.
No longer can any Damascene inhabitant be sure of reaching his destination in the city or even returning home. Men or women are picked up off the streets and hauled off to interrogation centers. At best, their cell phones are impounded on the pretext of checking the last numbers called.
As the week wore on, an eerie silence descended on the streets of the Syrian capital. Hardly any vehicles or passers-by are now to be seen. The odd pedestrian venturing outdoors makes sure to carry no bags or parcels that would subject him to searches or mobile phones that would be seized.
Clearly, the regime was panicked into expecting Damascus to explode into protest action like most other cities, possibly misled by false reports. Nothing happened. But the regime and the Syrian capital seem to be holding their breath for something to break the tension.
Protesters display placards of Iranian and Hizballah officers
In another new feature of the savage contest, protesters are holding aloft large portraits of Iranian and Hizballah officers photographed taking part in the Syrian military crackdown. The placards sprouted over rallies across the country this week as demonstrators called for the foreign thugs, identified by name, to be attacked and hounded out of Syria.
The government pretends to be nonchalant in the face of a growing number of countries imposing sanctions on President Bashar Assad by name and his top commanders. But DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources report that behind the high walls of the presidential palace and the general command, two warring factions are locked in a fierce dispute, which threatens to split the top military and intelligence commands from top to bottom.
On the one hand, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Nassif, head of the Syrian intelligence services and Assistant Vice President for Intelligence Gen. Ali Mamluk – both of whom have been targeted for US and European sanctions – have told the president in no uncertain terms that the time has come to start meeting protesters’ demands.
Mamluk said: “You can’t just sit in your palace and do nothing. If you want to survive you’ll have to start building yourself a new image and separating yourself from the discredited regime, because as things stand now, everyone in the country holds you personally responsible for the killings and brutal repression.”
Assad’s kinsmen will resist any let-up on the crackdown
The general urged Assad to set up a public council for national reconciliation with himself a member and order arrests of army and security officers notorious for outstanding cruelty.
Run “confessions” by army officers admitting to shooting demonstrators in defiance of your orders every night over state television, Mamluk advised, instead of the “confessions” no one believes by regime opponents that they were paid by foreigners to stage street violence.
This advice is sharply opposed by two of the president’s close kinsmen, his younger brother Maj. Gen. Maher Assad, 43, the Republican Guard strongman who oversees the harsh measures against demonstrators, and his brother-in-law Maj. Gen. Assef Shawqat, recently named deputy chief of staff.
Both have warned the president that if he tries to let up on the crackdown on protest, they will resist him by force if necessary.
This is the first known crack in the solid military front Syrian ruler’s closest and most trusted military circle has presented so far in the face of tenacious popular dissent. A sharp-edged wedge has begun dividing the Assad clan’s military elite from its loyalists at the top of its intelligence apparatus.

DEBKA.

Binyamin Netanyahu

The bipartisan acclaim Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu won from a joint House meeting in Washington Tuesday May 24 (about which an American columnist wrote: “After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s masterful speech before Congress, President Obama is the odd man out in Washington when it comes to the Middle East”) was just one weapon in the Israeli leader’s armory. The other one, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources reveal, is a series of secret understandings he has forged with the “young” Saudi princes assigned by King Abdullah in recent months to manage the oil kingdom’s foreign and security affairs.
Saudi Arabia and Israel have been cooperating quietly on issues of shared interest for three years starting in the days of Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert. But the basis of understanding has broadened and strengthened in the four months since the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the falling-out between Abdullah and President Barack Obama over the latter’s Middle East policy.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 493 of May 20: Saudis: No More Oil Trade for US Security Shield.)
When the Israeli prime minister met Obama at the White House Friday, May 20, the day after the US president unveiled his Middle East vision which Israel sharply criticized, he made no secret of the relationship he had set in motion with Riyadh and even suggested that it might be a useful anchor for Washington’s policy in the region and its approach to the Palestinian question.
Netanyahu let it be understood that his own Palestinian steps had been coordinated with the Saudis and through them with the GCC Gulf emirates and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Israel holds strongly to its military option against Iran
It was the Israeli leader’s first visit to the White House after the Israel-Turkish strategic alliance fell apart in May 2010 and Israel’s key Arab ally Mubarak was overthrown in Cairo. But because he came with a new Arab strategic partner, Saudi Arabia, he was not empty-handed.
This new connection also gave Netanyahu the chance to disavow any impression of Israel scrapping its military option for preventing Iran attaining a nuclear bomb, an impression generated recently by such public comments as Defense Minister Ehud Barak‘s “Iran is unlikely to bomb Israel in the event of it obtaining a nuclear weapon” and the view voiced by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, “…an air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be a stupid idea that offers no advantage.”
The prime minister was very clear about this at the White House: Not only has Israel not abandoned this option, but it is determined to exercise it with Saudi assistance – in lieu of the United States if need be.
This determination was reflected in his words to Congress: “The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation,” he said. “This is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message: American will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
“As for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself.”
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources, the accords Israel has reached with the Saudis do not constitute a formal pact or treaty but rather a row of strategic understandings hammered out in fairly regular, unpublicized encounters between Israeli and Saudi intelligence chiefs at which Netanyahu too has put in an appearance.
Intelligence give-and-take expanded to imperiled Arab capitals
Mossad Director Tamir Pardo takes his seat opposite the Director of Saudi General Intelligence Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz or Chairman of the Saudi National Security Council Prince Bandar bin Sultan – or sometimes both. Their discussions are described by Israel and Saudi sources as down-to-earth with no time wasted on rhetoric or political palaver.
The two parties raise issues of concern, swap intelligence and get down to the hard tacks of ways and means and solutions. When the issues are within the remit of the officials present, the agreed steps can be put into practice without delay or red tape. When higher authority is required for implementation, decisions are referred to King Abdullah in Riyadh and Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
These exchanges are kept under close wraps by both sides.
Until recently, they focused mostly on the perils posed by Iran’s military and nuclear impetus and expansionist activities. In the six months since the Arab Revolt began engulfing the region, the agenda has broadened to steps arising from shared intelligence covering the Arab capitals challenged by popular uprisings and revolts.
Today, bilateral strategic cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia encompasses:
Iran: Insights on its domestic currents and the balance of power within the regime, the army and the Revolutionary Guards Corps;
Iraq: Having expanded its undercover operations there, the Saudis welcome any input – provided it does not come from American or domestic sources. They now rely heavily on their own sources, contributions from Jordan’s clandestine informants in the country and on Israel’s undercover presence in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Loss of Egypt left Saudi and Israeli intelligence dangling
Egypt. Until Mubarak’s downfall on February 11, Saudi Arabia was well served by a direct telephone line between King Abdullah and the Egyptian president, who kept his intelligence chiefs on call for any summons from Riyadh to fly over and brief the monarch and Prince Muqrin.
Mubarak had frequent conversations with Israeli leaders and his intelligence minister was a familiar face in Jerusalem.
However, the military rulers now installed in Cairo headed by Field Marshal Mohammad Tantawi have drawn aloof from both. They are especially wary of any policy tie-in between Cairo and Riyadh.
And so a major source of Saudi intelligence has dried up.
Western intelligence sources comment that only four months ago, no one in the Middle East would have imagined Saudi and Israeli clandestine services working together on surveillance in Egypt the way they are today.
The arcane workings of this give-and-take relationship surfaced partially this week in a couple of apparently unrelated Middle East occurrences.
Last week, we reported that Jordan’s King Abdullah II had accepted an invitation to join the Gulf emirates association, the Gulf Council of Cooperation. Since then things have moved fast and, notably, Lt. Gen. Mohammad Al Raqqad, Director of the Jordanian General Intelligence Dept. – GID, was told to pitch in with the Israeli-Saudi intelligence partnership. He came armed with the strong ties he already maintains with his Israel counterparts.
Sunday, May 22, the Hashemite king, after conferring with Riyadh, turned down a request by the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for an audience, telling his aides not to accept any more calls from this frequent visitor.
Abbas was bitterly disappointed; he had hoped for a briefing on the king’s White House talks with Barack Obama on May 17 as a pointer to the US administration’s policies.
Trepidation in Tehran, Damascus, Hizballah
The Palestinian leader was rebuffed again Monday, May 23, when he asked to see the Saudi King. He was told that Riyadh had shut the door on him for choosing to deal with the Egyptian military junta and sign a pact with Hamas under Cairo’s auspices.
The following day, Jordan’s king arrived in the Egyptian capital in the capacity of the Saudi royal rulers’ go-between with Cairo and the Palestinians.
Those steps were interpreted by US officials, according to our Washington sources, as programmed jointly by the Saudis and Israelis to lend extra weight to Netanyahu’s presentation to the US president of their strategic partnership.
This burgeoning alliance is the cause of much trepidation in Tehran, Damascus and the Lebanese Hizballah, amid fears that it will undermine them and thwart their objectives. Those fears threw up the bizarre spy affair which the Lebanese authorities claimed to have uncovered on May 21 when they arrested a Shiite sheikh on suspicion of spying for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Sheikh Mohammad Ali Husseini, leader of an obscure “resistance group”, was arrested at his apartment in the Riz compound east of the southern Lebanese port of Tyre on the basis on information gathered in ten days. He was taken to the Defense Ministry in East Beirut for questioning and his computers, communication equipment and documents impounded.
Lebanese sources revealed that Hussein had been funded by Saudi Arabia since 2008.
That incident marks the first time anyone in the region has ever been accused of spying jointly for Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is a mark of the waves their collaboration is making in the region.

Nuclear Watchdog Details Concerns In Iran, Syria : NPR.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has released troubling new reports on the nuclear activities of Iran and Syria.

The Iran report indicates the production of enriched uranium there is increasing and raises more questions about Iran’s possible research into the military applications of nuclear technology.

In the Syria report, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has reached the conclusion that Syria was very likely building a clandestine nuclear reactor when Israel bombed the site in 2007.

Iran: Uranium Enrichment Increasing

Iran’s production of low-enriched uranium is on the rise, and though the facility at Natanz is far from full capacity, it is producing more per month now than in the past.

Iran’s enrichment activities were hampered by breakdowns and by a computer attack last year caused by what’s come to be known as the Stuxnet worm.

But the IAEA report suggests Iran has surmounted those difficulties, says David Albright, director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

“Iran’s increase in its low-enriched uranium output by 30 percent since last summer shows … that it’s getting Natanz to work better, and shows that probably any leftover effect from Stuxnet has been reduced.”

The IAEA report does confirm that Iran has not diverted any of its known uranium stocks from civilian to military uses.

The report focuses some attention on the gas centrifuges that are used to manufacture enriched uranium. Since Iran started its enrichment about four years ago, it has used only first-generation centrifuges obtained from Pakistan.

Centrifuge technology has improved since then, and Iranian leaders have boasted that they intend to install new, far more efficient centrifuges in the future. But the IAEA has found no actual evidence that Iran has installed the newer technology.

Open Questions About Weapons Development

There are also ongoing questions about research Iran has done on aspects of nuclear weapons technology. The agency has pressed Iran for years to clear up questions about its military nuclear research. Iran has left many unanswered.

One concerns experiments with a neutron generator and uranium deuteride — this is what might be called a trigger for a nuclear explosion. The agency believes Iranian scientists worked on this particular piece of technology for as many as four years, perhaps longer, says Albright.

“This particular piece is important because it doesn’t have any other uses that really are legitimate or credible,” Albright says. “And it also shows that Iran is working on fairly sophisticated components of a nuclear weapon. I mean there’s a much simpler way to do it. If you want to perhaps do it more secretly, you may want to go this route of uranium deuteride neutron initiator.”

The agency’s report does not assert that Iran is currently engaged in this work — only that the agency suspects it did the work before and may have continued it in some capacity.

On Wednesday, the head of Iran’s atomic energy agency said simply that the IAEA’s questions are based on fabricated documents.

Enlarge DigitalGlobe/Getty ImagesThis site in Syria was bombed by Israeli jets more than three years ago because it was suspected to be a nuclear reactor. It is now showing new construction.

This site in Syria was bombed by Israeli jets more than three years ago because it was suspected to be a nuclear reactor. It is now showing new construction.

Syria Stalls IAEA Investigation

On Syria, the agency says it’s reached the conclusion that a facility under construction there that was bombed by Israel more than three years ago was “very likely a nuclear reactor, similar to one in North Korea.”

The IAEA has been stymied for several years in its investigation of this incident. Syria allowed one inspection of the site, after the rubble was removed. There are three other locations in Syria believed to be related to this site, but Syria has not permitted agency inspectors to visit those.

The investigation has reached a dead end, says Albright.

“The IAEA has been under pressure,” he says. “They can’t let this slide. It’s bad for the credibility of the IAEA if Syria gets away with it.”

State Department spokesman Mark Toner indicated the U.S. wants to see this discussed by the IAEA in an upcoming meeting of its board of governors.

“The attempt by Syria to construct a clandestine nuclear reactor site is obviously a matter of concern, and we fully expect that the IAEA board will address this issue when it meets, I believe, next week,” Toner says.

There’s an expectation that the U.S. will urge that Syria be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.

Netanyahu Shines in Speech to Congress | FrontPage Magazine.

The most riveting moment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s much-applauded address to Congress on Tuesday was his declaration that “the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.” He was speaking of Iran, but then he broadened his scope, adding: “Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam.”

“It threatens Islam” — i.e., the real Islam is a Religion of Peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. This unreality is disappointing to see, and will not bode well for Israel insofar as it continues to translate into policy. Nonetheless, even to acknowledge that the threat has any Islamic character at all is a huge advance over Obama, George W. Bush, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, et al.

For it was not until four years after 9/11, in October 2005, that Bush pointed out that the terrorists’ attacks “serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.” He had never used such terminology before that, generally limiting himself to calling the enemy “terrorists” and “evildoers” — names so general that they can apply to multitudes besides those who are actually warring against the United States today — and hardly ever used it after that.

Obama has been even less realistic. He has again and again reached out to the Islamic world, assuring Muslim countries of his respect for Islam. Again and again he has been rudely rebuffed, but that has not stopped him from making the attempt again and again. After the death of Osama bin Laden, he claimed that Osama was “not a Muslim leader, but a mass murderer of Muslims.” Then he made sure to give this mass murderer of Muslims a solemn Islamic funeral.

John O. Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism advisor, summed up the Obama administration’s warmly positive stance toward Islam in an August 2009 address: “Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against `jihadists.’ Describing terrorists in this way–using a legitimate term, `jihad,’ meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal–risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in his speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

That may be so, but Netanyahu’s statement is true as well – at least the first part of it: “Militant Islam threatens the world.” America is not and never will be at war with Islam, but a significant element of Islam is at war with America, Israel, and the rest of the free world – and Netanyahu is much more realistic about that fact than any other Western leader.

Nor is that the extent of his realism. In his address to Congress, he spoke other truths that Barack Obama apparently would prefer to ignore, including a stout defense of his country: “In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally….My friends, you don’t have to — you don’t need to do nation-building in Israel. We’re already built. You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it. And you don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.”He even contrasted Israeli freedom to the repression of Sharia regimes: “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. Now, I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free, and they’re all citizens of Israel.”

Refreshing also was Netanyahu’s rejection of the Palestinian propaganda line, which Obama and so many other Western leaders have echoed, that Israel’s presence in the West Bank constitutes an illegal “occupation”: “And you have to understand this,” he told Congress: “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We’re not the British in India. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one god, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw his vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history — and boy am I reading a lot of distortions of history lately, old and new — no distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.”

And he spoke the truth that Obama mentioned only in passing in his speech last week calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state: “our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state; it’s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about….In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli prime ministers to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War. They were simply unwilling to end the conflict. And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees. My friends, this must come to an end.”

Confronting directly the common mainstream media spin, emanating from Palestinian propaganda, that Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians are the victims, he challenged Mahmoud Abbas to reverse his recent accord with Hamas and pursue a genuine path to peace. Echoing Reagan, Netanyahu declared: “So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate. Make peace with the Jewish State. And if you do, I promise you this: Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations; it will be the first to do so.”

It is a challenge that will not be accepted, but in the very act of making it, Netanyahu showed which side is the real force for peace, and which side is – in accord with the jihad doctrine – continuing to pursue murder and bloodshed.

He also showed who among his audience (both in Congress and in the Western world in general) were blinkered panderers and appeasers falling prey to jihadist propaganda, and who was the statesman.

Obama: Putting Israel in Mortal Danger | FrontPage Magazine.

In major recent policy statements, at the AIPAC Conference, the White House and the State Department, President Barack Obama declared:

[*] “Precisely because of our friendship [with Israel], it’s important that we tell the truth;”

[*] “And it is precisely because of our commitment to Israel’s long-term security that we have worked to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

President Obama, however, has not told the whole truth in his review of the record of previous U.S. presidents. He has also been less than precise concerning his own efforts for peace and downright sloppy in his review of Israel security needs and demographic considerations.

Actually, if Israel were to return to the old frontier lines (which date from 1949, not 1967) as President Barack Obama urges, Israel’s strategic situation would be dramatically worsened in many ways.

Mortal Danger: Arab armies or terrorists would be able to cut Israel in half along its narrow waist, because there would be only eight or nine miles (15 km.) from the Arab state Obama envisions and the Mediterranean Sea. This is about the same distance as from Wall Street to Columbia University in New York City. An Arab armored column could knife across Israel’s heartland through the narrow and heavily populated coastal plain at Netanyah. Within minutes, certainly no more than hours, a surprise Arab attack could mortally wound Israel. Even a small and well-executed terror incursion could sever Israel in two very rapidly.

Air Space and Air Alert: Israel’s mountain bases in the West Bank and the Golan Heights, which Obama wants Israel to relinquish, allow Israel early warning time from threats (such as missile launches and air attack) from even as far away as Iran and Iraq. In addition, the heavily industrialized coastal plain gets a few extra minutes warning time from closer threats. Today, a jet fighter can cross from the Jordan River to Tel Aviv, Haifa or Netanya in under three minutes. That is not a lot of time, but it is better than having less than a minute.

Palestinian leaders refuse even to discuss Israel maintaining sovereign air rights over any Palestinian territory or Israel holding bases inside such territory. Indeed, the history of  Israeli bases in the Gaza Strip, which were constantly attacked, is proof of how difficult it would be to maintain bases without significant Israeli territory linking them to Israel. This, too, is ruled out by PLO leaders, and no amount of “land swaps” can possibly correct the problem.

Indefensible Borders: The West Bank is essentially the world’s biggest anti-tank trap. Five mountain passes rise steeply  from the low ground of  the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea (the lowest point on the planet) up to mountains of Judea and Samaria. Israel can easily hold off superior forces from the high ground. That is why Gen. Earle Wheeler and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff told President Lyndon Johnson in July 1967 that, for its defense, Israel needed to hold this high ground. (For a copy of JCSM-373-67, June 29, 1967, see Michael Widlanski (ed.), Can Israel Survive A Palestinian State, Jerusalem, IASPS, 1990, pp. 148-149.)

President Lyndon Johnson’s advisers Eugene Rostow and Arthur Goldberg drew up UN Security Council Resolution 242.  They specifically wrote “defensible borders.” This was a reference to the research opinion solicited by President Johnson from his Joint Chiefs of Staff. Johnson’s aides  also refused the concept of total withdrawal.

Israeli military men and policy makers as diverse as Labor’s Yigal Allon and Likud’s Ariel Sharon also built their own strategic visions on Israel retaining at least 30-50% of the West Bank for Israeli security needs. Such significant Israeli control is completely rejected by Arab policy makers. It cannot be fixed by “land swaps” because Israel simply does not have enough land to swap.

Obama Rules Out Major Border Changes: Since making his State Department policy speech on the “67 borders,” Obama has tried to explain that he was not demanding a return to previous frontier lines, but several elements show that he is again not telling anything close to the truth. First, Obama himself stipulates that Israel’s total land area should not be increased, but that “Palestine” and Israel should execute mutually equal land swaps. Secondly, Obama insists that “Palestine” should be “contiguous”—i.e. that Gaza and the West Bank must be connected by a land corridor that effectively cuts Israel in half. Thirdly, Obama insists that “Palestine” have borders with Jordan and Egypt, making it likely that terror and arms smuggling will be relatively easy—as is the situation in Gaza today. Most important, Mr. Obama insists on “the full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces” from the West Bank. In simple language, this rules out Israeli forward bases on the Jordan River or the Jordan Valley. That is basically a return to the pre-1967 or 1949 situation, whether Obama admits it or not.

When Obama says he is “leaving it up to both sides,” this is also not true, because when Obama makes the stipulations about full Israeli withdrawal and the limits on Israel’s total size, he is making it nearly impossible for any future Palestinian leader to take a Palestinian negotiating stance that is  less Palestinian than Barack Obama’s.

Obama did this before with his position on Jewish “settlements,” and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas admits that Obama essentially ran him “up the tree.”

Defending Jerusalem: Between 1949 and 1967, Jerusalem was a shriveled town, whose re-supply and communications lines were vulnerable to attack. That is one of the reasons that Israel’s Defense Ministry was set up in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem was Israel’s capital in name, but isolated and vulnerable in practice. Jerusalem is located along the continental divide between the Israeli coastal plain and the Judean Desert. Geographically, it is an enclave surrounded by the West Bank, and maintaining Israel control of Jerusalem would be difficult without controlling significant portions of the higher ground of the Judean mountains around Jerusalem. Israeli control of Jerusalem would also be made a nightmare by ceding Arab control to significant neighborhoods or regions around Jerusalem, as Obama envisions.

Other Implications of Cutting Israel Down to Size: This has been a dream of Arab regimes and pro-Arab policy-makers even before the 1967 War. In the 1940′s and early 1950′s, Britain’s Ernest Bevin, UN mediator Folke Bernadotte and many in the US State Department wanted to take Jerusalem and parts of the Negev out of Israeli control for a variety of reasons. Today, “cutting Israel down to size” is the express dream of Amr Moussa, the staunchly anti-Israel secretary-general of the Arab League and the leading candidate to succeed Egyptian leader Husni Mubarak  His goal of  cutting Israel down to size would also likely encourage irredentist tendencies among Israeli Arabs and demands for autonomy of predominately Arab sections of Israel in the Galilee and Negev. In other words, Obama’s ideas would not lead to peace and stability but to more instability and foment.

Overall Effect on Israel’s Defense Doctrine: Because of the loss of strategic depth and early warning, Israel would need to move to a trip-wire defense posture that would encourage massive pre-emptive and probably unconventional attack on any perceived threats. This, too, is not a formula for stability or tranquility.

Demographic Threats to Israel: Obama claimed that , “the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian Territories.” This is, at best, only partly true, because PLO leaders and their supporters have been “cooking” demographic data, such as UN refugee rolls and phony Palestinian Authority statistics, for a long time. Palestinian Arab birth rates have been falling for at least a decade, while Israeli birth rates, especially in the West Bank, have been rising. Research by experts at the  American Enterprise Institute shows that the “demographic threat” to Israel is largely a bugaboo.

This is not the first time that Obama has been imprecise in Islamic demographic statistics.  Obama largely misstated the Islamic demographic picture in the United States. He claimed there were seven million Muslims in America—in his Cairo speech in June 2009. This is probably more than three times the actual figure. Islamist extremists in Europe and the United States have often deliberately cited such bogus statistics, and it is unfortunate that the president of the US follows this trend.

Obama’s Efforts for Peace in the Middle East: Despite taking credit for any positive developments in the Middle East, the Obama record has been weak and generally counterproductive:

[*] Obama’s first foreign speech took place in Turkey, which has since become a major Islamist actor, encouraging the flotilla attack on Israel earlier this year. Turkey has also become more hostile to its own NATO partners  and increased cooperation with Syria and Iran, both terror states. In addition, Turkey’s leaders have encouraged its expatriates abroad, especially in Germany, not to become part of the Western lifestyle in their host countries, but to export a militant brand of Islam.

[*] Against the advice of several of America’s allies (in Israel  and Europe), Obama took an unnecessarily hostile stance against the authoritarian (but not totalitarian) regime of Husni Mubarak, who had been one of America’s most reliable allies in the region. This action undermined stability in the heart of the Mediteranean basin, which Obama belatedly and tacitly admitted when he said: “there will be times when our short term interests do not align perfectly with our long term vision of the region.”

[*] Against the express wishes of Congress, Obama sent an ambassador to Syria, whose regime tried to establish a nuclear weapons reactor in 2008 (until it was destroyed by Israel) and whose regime has killed  hundreds of peaceful protestors.

[*] Obama’s huge overture to the Islamic world in his dramatic  2009 Cairo speech was not greeted by moderation by most of the audiences he addressed, including the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members he specifically invited to hear the speech. Leaders of the Brotherhood have spearheaded the worst elements of the foment in Egypt, calling for breaking trade and diplomatic links with Israel, and even resuming full-scale war and support for anti-Western terror.

[*] Obama’s repeated overtures and offers of “engaging Iran” have produced diametrically opposite results from what was desired: Iran’s ayatollahs stole the 2009 Iranian election for the  sake of the messianic-minded Mahmoud Ahmadinajad; bloodily repressed all peaceful protests; and allowed Iran to advance its nuclear weapons options, while blocking Israel’s calls for joint military action.

[*] Contrary to Obama’s protestations that his policy is merely an extension of previous US administrations, the Obama Administration has been the most hostile to Israel retaining any territory captured from attacking Arab armies in 1967.

[*] President Lyndon Johnson and his top advisers favored Israel retaining significant territory for defensive needs. That was the basis for the Johnson-Rostow-Goldberg interpretation of UN Resolution 242, which, contrary to statements by Obama officials, did not foresee anything approaching the 1949 frontier lines.

[*] President Gerald Ford signed several secret and public memoranda of understandings (1974 and 1975) with Israel which set very tough terms for any dealings with the PLO—which the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat have essentially violated by their  efforts to attack and de-legitimize Israel. Ford also sent a letter to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promising to “give great weight” to Israel’s demand to have continued Israeli control of the Golan Heights, the high ground protecting northern Israel.

[*] President Ronald Reagan saw a Palestinian Arab state as a danger, and so, originally, did President George W. Bush, who originally opposed Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, until he was convinced otherwise, on both points,  by advisers  of Ariel Sharon.  [Today, most Israelis believe Sharon’s ideas were a huge mistake.] Both Regan and Bush II made it clear that they viewed Israel as an important strategic ally of the US and an important moral ally of the US. Bush cut off ties with Arafat when it was shown that he had continued directing terror against Israel. Bush II’s “Roadmap for Peace” demanded that any Israeli territorial concessions had to be preceded by hard evidence of Palestinian cessation of terror, violence and incitement to hatred.  Obama has demanded Israeli concessions from the outset, and his position forced a hardening of the Palestinian position, leading to a freezing of all direct Israeli-Palestinian talks for two year.

[*] No previous US president saw Israeli settlements as illegal, except for Jimmy Carter. But Obama and his vice president (Joe Biden) and secretary of state  have even suggested that Israeli neighborhoods in Jerusalem are an obstacle to peace.

[*] From President Harry Truman to President George W. Bush, US leaders have believed that there is a moral and historical bond between the US and  the Jewish people as a whole, and the people of Israel in particular. For Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, the horrors of the Holocaust were a unique stain on humanity and an indelible memory. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has placed the Holocaust in the same category as the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs  who attacked Israel in 1948 and who have not stopped since. He regularly places “Palestine”—a state which does not exist—on the same moral and strategic plain with Israel, America’s only firm ally in the Middle East. President Obama makes little or no reference to the continued hate education and incitement in the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, and he repeatedly acts as if PA forces are as reliable as Israeli soldiers.

This is part of a pattern with Mr. Obama, who is willing to sacrifice the truth to fit a political scenario, and then to act offended when he’s caught bending the facts. He must be forced to confront to confront the truth.

Dr. Michael Widlanski edited Can Israel Survive a Palestinian State? and teaches Arab politics and communication at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His new book on Arab-Islamic terror will be published by Threshold Editions in 2012.  Dr. Widlanski is a former reporter, correspondent and editor, respectively, at The New York Times, The Cox Newspapers-Atlanta Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post, serving as a special advisor to Israeli delegations to peace talks in 1991-1992 and as Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Ministry of Public Security, editing secret PLO Archives captured in Jerusalem.

Information Warfare: Israel Braces For The Big One.

May 26, 2011: Israel recently established the National Cybernetic Taskforce, with orders to devise and implement defensive measures to protect the economy and government from Internet based attacks. The taskforce will consist of about 80 people and will be run by a retired general. Apparently, existing Internet security efforts, and military Cyber War organizations have discovered a growing number of vulnerabilities in the national Internet infrastructure. The only solution to this growing vulnerability is a large scale effort to monitor the national network infrastructure for vulnerabilities, and fix them as quickly as possible. You will never catch all the vulnerabilities, but in Cyber War, as in the more conversional kind, victory is not always a matter of who is better, but who is worse (more vulnerable to attack.)

Meanwhile, Israel makes no secret of what it thinks about its Cyber War capabilities. Over the last year, Israel has revealed that its cryptography operation (Unit 8200) has added computer hacking to its skill set. Last year, the head of Israeli Military Intelligence said that he believed Israel had become the leading practitioner of Cyber War. This came in the wake of suspicions that Israel had created the Stuxnet worm, that got into Iran’s nuclear fuel enrichment equipment, and destroyed a lot of it. Recently, Iran complanied that another worm, called Star, was causing them trouble. Usually, intelligence organizations keep quiet about their capabilities, but in this case, the Israelis apparently felt it was more useful to scare the Iranians, with the threat of more stuff like Stuxnet. But the Iranians have turned around and tried to attack Israel, and are apparently determined to keep at it for as long as it takes.

This struggle between Israel and Iran is nothing new. Seven years ago, Israel announced that Unit 8200 had cracked an Iranian communications code, an operation that allowed Israel to read messages concerning Iranian efforts to keep its nuclear weapons program going (with Pakistani help), despite Iranian promises to UN weapons inspectors that the program was being shut down. It’s long been known that Unit 8200 of the Israeli army specialized in cracking codes for the government. This was known because so many men who had served in Unit 8200 went on to start companies specializing in cryptography (coding information so that no unauthorized personnel can know what the data is.) But it is unusual for a code-cracking organization to admit to deciphering someone’s code. Perhaps the Iranians stopped using the code in question, or perhaps the Israelis just wanted to scare the Iranians. Israel is very concerned about Iran getting nuclear weapons, mainly because the Islamic conservatives that control Iran have as one of their primary goals the destruction of Israel. In response to these Iranian threats, Israel has said that it will do whatever it takes to stop Iran from getting nukes. This apparently includes doing the unthinkable (for a code cracking outfit); admitting that you had successfully taken apart an opponent’s secret code.

Israel is trying to convince Iran that a long-time superiority in code-breaking was now accompanied by similarly exceptional hacking skills. Whether it’s true or not, it’s got to have rattled the Iranians. The failure of their counterattacks can only have added to their unease.

Europeans seek UN condemnation of Syria while Hezbollah back legitimacy of Assad’s regime.

Al Arabiya

Thursday, 26 May 2011

Syrians living in Jordan protest against Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad outside the UN office in Amman. (File Photo)

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Lion’s Den: ‘Fin de Régime’ in Sy… JPost – Opinion – Columnists.

  The ongoing revolt in Syria offers great opportunities, humanitarian and geo-political. Western states should quickly seize the opportunity to dispatch strongman Bashar al-Assad and his henchmen. Many benefits will follow when they land in their appointed dustbins.

FOREIGN: The malign but tactically brilliant Hafez al- Assad blighted the entire Middle East with disproportionate Syrian influence for decades. His son, the feckless Bashar, has continued this pattern since 2000 by sending terrorists to Iraq, murdering Lebanon’s prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, overthrowing his son Saad, aiding Hezbollah and Hamas, and developing chemical and possibly nuclear weapons.

His disappearance will be a universal boon.

But Bashar’s main role internationally is serving as Tehran’s premier ally. Despite Westerners usually seeing the Syrian-Iranian alliance as a flimsy marriage of convenience, it has lasted over 30 years, through shifts in personnel and circumstances, due to what Jubin Goodarzi in 2006 called the two parties’ “broader, long-term strategic concerns derived from national security priorities.”

The Syrian intifada has already weakened the Iranian-led “resistance bloc” by politically distancing Tehran from Assad and fomenting divisions in the Iranian leadership. Syrian protesters are burning the Iranian flag; were (Sunni) Islamists to take power in Damascus, they would terminate the Iranian connection, seriously damping the mullahs’ grandiose ambitions.

The end of Assad’s rule can also have other important consequences. Bashar and the ruling Islamist AK party in Turkey have developed such close relations that some analysts predict the Assad regime’s removal will lead to a collapse of Ankara’s entire Middle East policy. Also, unrest among the Kurds of Syria could lead to their greater autonomy, which would in turn encourage co-ethnics in Anatolia to demand an independent state – a prospect that so worries Ankara, it sent a stream of high-level visitors to Damascus to urgently push a counter-insurgency accord.

Turmoil in Syria also offers relief for Lebanon, which has been under the Syrian thumb since 1976. Similarly, a distracted Damascus permits Israeli strategists – at least temporarily – to focus on the country’s many other foreign problems.

DOMESTIC: In a smug interview discussing developments in Tunisia and Egypt just weeks before his own country erupted on March 15, Bashar al-Assad explained the misery also facing his own subjects: “Whenever you have an uprising, it is self-evident that… you have anger [which] feeds on desperation.”

The word desperation nicely summarizes the Syrian people’s lot; since 1970, the Assad dynasty has dominated Syria with an iron Stalinist fist only slightly less oppressive than that of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Poverty, expropriation, corruption, stasis, oppression, fear, isolation, Islamism, torture and massacre have been the hallmarks of Assad rule.

Thanks to Western greed and gullibility, however, outsiders rarely realize the full reality. On one hand, the Syrian regime financially supports the Center for Syrian Studies at the University of St. Andrews. On the other, an informal Syria lobby exists. Thus, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refers to Assad as a “reformer,” and Vogue magazine publishes a puff-piece on the tyrant’s wife titled “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert” (calling her “glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies”).

One potential danger of regime change must be noted. We can expect not a relatively gentle coup d’état as in Tunisia or Egypt, but a thoroughgoing revolution directed not only against the Assad clan but also the Alawi community from which it comes. Alawis, a secretive post-Islamic sect making up about one-eighth of the Syrian population, have dominated the government since 1966, arousing deep hostility among the majority Sunnis. Sunnis carry out the intifadas and Alawis do the dirty work of repressing and killing them. This tension could fuel a bloodbath and even a civil war – possibilities that outside powers must prepare for.

As the current impasse persists in Syria, with protesters regularly filling the streets and the regime regularly killing them, Western policy can make a decisive difference. Steven Coll of The New Yorker is right that “The time for hopeful bargaining with Assad has passed.”

The time has come to brush aside fears of instability for, as analyst Lee Smith rightly observes: “It can’t get any worse than the Assads’ regime.”

The time has come to push Bashar from power, protect innocent Alawis, and deal with “the devil we don’t know.”

The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum, Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author of three books on Syria.