WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 26, 2011, 9:52 AM (GMT+02:00)

Kuwait’s Grand Mubarak Port under construction

Ahmadinejad: Palestinian stateho… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    TEHRAN – The creation of a universally-recognized Palestinian state would be just a first step towards wiping out Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday.

He spoke weeks ahead of a UN General Assembly in New York where the Arab League plans to seek full UN membership for a Palestinian state.

Ahmadinejad, restating a position expressed soon after taking office in 2005 that Israel was a “tumor” to be wiped off the map, urged Palestinians not to settle for a two-state solution that is backed by [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas but to strive for a complete return of what they consider their land.

“Recognizing the Palestinian state is not the last goal. It is only one step forward towards liberating the whole of Palestine,” Ahmadinejad told worshippers at Friday prayers on international Qods Day — an annual show of support for the Palestinian cause.

“The Zionist regime is a center of microbes, a cancer cell and if it exists in one iota of Palestine it will mobilize again and hurt everyone.”

“It is not enough for them to have a weak, powerless state in a very small piece of Palestine. They should unite to establish a state but the ultimate goal is the liberation of the whole of Palestine,” he said.

“I urge the Palestinians never to forget this ideal. Forgetting this ideal is equal to committing suicide. It would be giving an opportunity to an enemy which is on the verge of collapse and disappearance.”

Back to surgical strikes – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Israel resumes pinpoint eliminations of terrorists, the most effective anti-terror weapon

Since last Thursday there has been a change in the IDF’s modus operandi in the Gaza Strip. The political leadership granted the army and Shin Bet much more leeway and much more flexibility with regard to undertaking pinpoint eliminations of wanted terrorists: Whether they are ticking time bombs or hostile parties planning to perpetrate terror attacks at a later point.

Hamas sought a ceasefire, albeit nothing was put down in writing, and Israel rushed to establish the substance of this truce. One of its principles, as of today, is that if they fire rockets we will return to pinpoint eliminations according to a master list, along the same lines of the fugitive lists in the days of the Second Intifada.

Since Operation Cast Lead Israel has refrained from executing pinpoint eliminations against terror group leaders. Israel has also refrained from eliminations of terrorists in the field involved in planning attacks. At times we saw reports about a terror cell that left the Gaza Strip and was struck even before it crossed the border into Sinai, but for the most part pinpoint eliminations were reserved for ticking time bombs: that is, rocket launching cells eliminated before or after firing into Israel.

In other words, most terrorists could wander around the Gaza Strip with relative safety. Even when the infrastructure of the Popular Resistance Committees came together for executing the attack near Eilat – via Sinai – there was an opportunity to strike it. Some defense officials proposed doing just that. Yet senior officials decided not to execute such surgical strike due to political and operational reasons.

Prepare for escalation

When referring to the elimination of terror infrastructure the objective is not just to strike the men who directly execute the attack. Striking the planners and the men responsible for logistics can also affect execution of an attack. For example, there were cases where terror cells embarked on an attack, their infrastructure in the Gaza Strip was exposed and hit, and the cells returned without undertaking the planned attack.

The pinpoint elimination was and remains the most effective weapon in coping with terrorism and striking fear in its perpetrators. The IDF learned this in the Second Intifada, when it curbed the spread of terror networks by constantly cutting back the lists of wanted terrorists. In contrast to the Gaza Strip, in the West Bank it was also possible to make arrests. But in Gaza, cutting back the list can only be done by physically neutralizing the targets.

The defense minister hinted at the change in policy regarding surgical strikes at the beginning of the week in Ashkelon, when he mentioned cutting off terrorists’ heads. However, the pinpoint elimination is also a weapon that invites a quick reaction. Hamas and Islamic Jihad can accept a strike against the tunnels, store rooms or buildings. But a strike on their command structure, for example, forces them to react in an effort to deter Israel from continuing.

Hence, should Israel persist in the policy of eliminations now – which has since Thursday cut down five terrorists from the Popular Resistance Committees, five terrorists from Islamic Jihad and two Hamas terrorists – we can assume that the ceasefire declared by terrorist organizations will not last very long, and we shall find ourselves very quickly in the midst of a military operation.

Activists: Syrian forces kill 8, protester… JPost – Middle East.

    AMMAN – Forces loyal to President Bashar Assad killed eight people across Syria overnight, activists said on Friday, in a sustained campaign to crush street protests against his rule buoyed by the demise of Muammar Gaddafi’s power in Libya.

Many of the deaths occurred as a result of attacks on street demonstrations demanding an end to 41 years of Assad family domination that have been breaking out daily after Ramadan prayers that follow the breaking of the fast, they said.

“Congratulations to the Libyan people,” read signs carried by protesters who marched at night demanding Assad’s removal in the town of Kisweh, south of Damascus.

“God is with us. The revolution is bringing together the free,” shouted demonstrators in the resort town of Zabadani, west of the capital and near the border with Lebanon.

The activists said on Friday seven of the protesters were killed in the city of Hama, which has been besieged by the military since the beginning of Ramadan on Aug. 1, in the countryside of Aleppo to the north, in the northwestern province of Idlib and in Homs, hometown of Assad’s wife Asma.

“The best response to Assad is the peaceful street protests we are seeing as another Arab autocrat falls in Libya,” said dissident Adib Shishakli, grandson of one of Syria’s earliest presidents after independence from France in 1946.

The eighth civilian casualty was a Turkish truck driver killed by a pro-Assad militia on the main highway leading to Turkey in the town of Rastan just north of Damascus, which has been scene of daily assaults to end street protests, the activists said.