WarSclerotic

Egypt’s Mursi orders military to maintain security and order.

Monday, 10 December 2012

Egypt’s powerful army, which is trying to remain neutral, warned on Saturday it “will not allow” a worsening of the crisis and said both sides must hold dialogue. (AFP)

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Concern that Assad may have passed some chemical weapons to Hizballah.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 10, 2012, 10:08 AM (GMT+02:00)

Chemical weapons

There is growing concern that some of the chemical weapons the Assad regime has been pushing out of the Damascus area in the last few days were sent across the border to Hizballah strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley to keep them out of rebel hands. Syrian army officers who recently defected report that containers were last week removed from Syrian bases at Jabal Kalamon and loaded on vehicles camouflaged as commercial trucks. On the Lebanese side, the consignment is thought to have been split up and hidden at different Hizballah bases to make them harder to attack.

Israel’s US Ambassador Michael Oren, asked by a FOX TV interviewer Saturday Dec. 8, if he could confirm this, said he could not, but warned that any evidence of chemical weapons being passed from the Assad regime to extremist groups like Hizballah would be a “game-changer,” and a “red line” for Israel.  “We have a very clear red line about those chemical weapons passing into the wrong hands. Can you imagine if Hizballah and its 70,000 rockets would get its hands on chemical weapons? That could kill thousands of people.”
Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon on he other hand saw no indication Sunday that Syria was planning to use chemical weapons against Israel. He refrained from going into any of the three possible perils presented by the regime in Damascus as it finds itself in a knife-edge situation:

1.  Syria’s chemical weapons are deployed in at least five air force bases, with evidence of preparations to use them, as confirmed by British Foreign Secretary William Hague Saturday, Dec. 8.

US military sources explained early Monday, Dec. 10, that the nerve gas sarin is effective up to 60 days after its precursor chemicals are mixed. Placing the weaponized material in close proximity to warplanes indicates an intention within that timeline to drop the poison gas bombs from the air. After that, sarin must be destroyed in controlled conditions lest its poisons escape into the environment.   No one knows if the Syrians have the necessary scientific manpower to take responsibility for this process.
2.  The battle around Al Safira, site of Syria’s biggest chemical weapons store and Scud D missiles fitted with chemical warheads, is fierce and fluid: the base changes hands every few hours in heavy fighting between Syria army and rebel forces.
Saturday, the base’s capture by the rebels triggered a warning from the Assad regime against throwing chemical weapons into the battle. Sunday, Al Safira was recaptured, but the rebels are sweeping through the surrounding villages and closing in on three sides. For now, Syrian forces control the road connecting Al Safira to Aleppo, but the rebels have seized parts of Sheikh Suleiman, the biggest air base near that city, and are getting close to that highway. Its fall would snap shut the rebel siege on Al Safira.

Control of Al Safira would place the big chemical weapons stores in the hands of rebel forces in that sector, many of whom belong to Jabhat al-Nusra, the roof organization of the al Qaeda elements fighting in Syria against the Assad regime.

3. In the estimate of Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, Assad has already directed his troops fighting in and around Damascus to use chemical weapons if the rebels get near to seizing any part of Damascus international airport.

Experts: Gaza War Changed Face of Mideast Conflicts | Defense News | defensenews.com.

Israel’s technical superiority and a civilian population whose confidence was boosted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket system provided the country with breathing space for diplomacy that delivered a ceasefire in eight days with no need for a bloody ground invasion during the recent conflict with Gaza. (AFP)

Mursi, Brotherhoods hijacking Egypt: National Salvation Front.

In a statement read by its spokesman, the National Salvation Front called for mass protests on Tuesday against the draft constitution. (Al Arabiya)

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The Full Israeli Experience – NYTimes.com.

( Classic Friedman: ” Israel better stop being realistic…”  –  JW )

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

¶ Tel Aviv

¶ THESE were the main regional news headlines in The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday: “Home Front Command simulates missile strike during drill.” Egypt’s President “Morsi opts for safety as police battle protestors.” In Syria, “Fight spills over into Lebanon.” “Darkness at noon for fearful Damascus residents.” “Tunisian Islamists, leftists clash after jobs protests.” “NATO warns Syria not to use chemical weapons.” And my personal favorite: “ ‘Come back and bring a lot of people with you’ — Tourism Ministry offers tour operators the full Israeli experience.”

¶ Ah, yes, “the full Israeli experience.”

¶ The full Israeli experience today is a living political science experiment. How does a country deal with failed or failing state authority on four of its borders — Gaza, South Lebanon, Syria and the Sinai Desert of Egypt — each of which is now crawling with nonstate actors nested among civilians and armed with rockets. How should Israel and its friends think about this “Israeli experience” and connect it with the ever-present question of Israeli-Palestinian peace?

¶ For starters, if you want to run for office in Israel, or be taken seriously here as either a journalist or a diplomat, there is an unspoken question in the mind of virtually every Israeli that you need to answer correctly: “Do you understand what neighborhood I’m living in?” If Israelis smell that you don’t, their ears will close to you. It is one reason the Europeans in general, and the European left in particular, have so little influence here.

¶ The central political divide in Israel today is over the follow-up to this core question: If you appreciate that Israel lives in a neighborhood where there is no mercy for the weak, how should we expect Israel to act?

¶ There are two major schools of thought here. One, led by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, comprises the “Ideological Hawks,” who, to the question, “Do you know what neighborhood I am living in?” tell Israelis and the world, “It is so much worse than you think!” Bibi goes out of his way to highlight every possible threat to Israel and essentially makes the case that nothing Israel does has ever or can ever alter the immutable Arab hatred of the Jewish state or the Hobbesian character of the neighborhood. Netanyahu is not without supporting evidence. Israel withdraws from both South Lebanon and Gaza and still gets hit with rockets. But this group is called the “ideological” hawks because most of them also advocate Israel’s retaining permanent control of the West Bank and Jerusalem for religious-nationalist reasons. So it’s impossible to know where their strategic logic for holding territory stops and their religious-nationalist dreams start — and that muddies their case with the world.

¶ The other major school of thought here, call it the “Yitzhak Rabin school,” was best described by the writer Leon Wieseltier as the “bastards for peace.”

¶ Rabin, the former Israeli prime minister and war hero, started exactly where Bibi did: This is a dangerous neighborhood, and a Jewish state is not welcome here. But Rabin didn’t stop there. He also believed that Israel was very powerful and, therefore, should judiciously use its strength to try to avoid becoming a garrison state, fated to rule over several million Palestinians forever. Israel’s “bastards for peace” believe that it’s incumbent on every Israeli leader to test, test and test again — using every ounce of Israeli creativity — to see if Israel can find a Palestinian partner for a secure peace so that it is not forever fighting an inside war and an outside war. At best, the Palestinians might surprise them. At worst, Israel would have the moral high ground in a permanent struggle.

¶ Today, alas, not only is the Israeli peace camp dead, but the most effective Israeli “bastard for peace,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak, is retiring. As I sat with Barak in his office the other day, he shared with me his parting advice to Israel’s next and sure-to-be-far-right government.

¶ Huge political forces, with deep roots, are now playing out around Israel, particularly the rise of political Islam, said Barak. “We have to learn to accept it and see both sides of it and try to make it better. I am worried about our tendency to adopt a fatalistic, pessimistic perception of history. Because, once you adopt it, you are relieved from the responsibility to see the better aspects and seize the opportunities” when they arise.

Iran claims Azeri drones are plying its border under Israel’s watchful eye | The Times of Israel.

Israel and Azerbaijan signed a $1.4 billion arms deal in February

Israel Air Force Hermes 450 UAV (photo credit: Elbit via Tsahi Ben-Ami/Flash 90)

Azerbaijani drones, constructed with the aid of Israel, are being used to conduct spy missions along the Azeri-Iranian border, Iran claimed.

According to a Saturday article in Iran’s state-sponsored Press TV, Azerbaijan has acquired a fleet of Orbiter ultra-light drones and Hermes-450 drones, the latter of which can be outfitted with missiles and electronic warfare capability, and are using them to monitor Iran’s northern regions.

Israel and Azerbaijan signed a $1.4 billion defense deal in February, which focused on drones and missile defense systems. Press-TV reported that Israeli satellites were being used in conjunction with the drones to run surveillance along the Iranian border.

Azerbaijan in October denied reports that it had agreed to allow Israel to use its territory as a staging ground for a possible attack on Iran. Also in October, 22 people were sentenced behind closed doors to lengthy jail-terms in Baku for assisting Iranian agents in plotting terror attacks against US and Israeli targets in Azerbaijan.

More Egypt protests called after Morsi concession | The Times of Israel.

Egyptian president has called off a decree granting himself near-absolute powers, but still plans on going ahead with a December 15 constitutional referendum

Egyptian protesters chant anti-Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Morsi slogans outside the presidential palace, under a banner with a that reads ‘the people want to bring down the regime,’ in Cairo, Egypt on Saturday, December 8, 2012. (photo credit: AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s liberal opposition called for more protests Sunday, seeking to keep up the momentum of its street campaign after the president made a partial concession overnight but refused its main demand he rescind a draft constitution going to a referendum on Dec. 15.

President Mohammed Morsi met one of the opposition’s demands, annulling his Nov. 22 decrees that gave him near unrestricted powers. But he insisted on going ahead with the referendum on a constitution hurriedly adopted by his Islamist allies during an all-night session late last month.

The opposition National Salvation Front called on supporters to rally against the referendum. The size of Sunday’s turnout, especially at Cairo’s central Tahrir square and outside the presidential palace in the capital’s Heliopolis district, will determine whether Morsi’s concession chipped away some of the popular support for the opposition’s cause.

The opposition said Morsi’s rescinding of his decrees was an empty gesture since the decrees had already achieved their main aim of ensuring the adoption of the draft constitution. The edicts had barred the courts from dissolving the Constituent Assembly that passed the charter and further neutered the judiciary by making Morsi immune from its oversight.

Still, the lifting of the decrees could persuade many judges to drop their two-week strike to protest what their leaders called Morsi’s assault on the judiciary. An end to their strike means they would oversee the Dec. 15 vote as is customary in Egypt.

If the referendum goes ahead, the opposition faces a new challenge — either to campaign for a “no” vote or to boycott the process altogether. A low turnout or the charter passing by a small margin of victory would cast doubts on the constitution’s legitimacy.

It was the decrees that initially sparked the wave of protests against Morsi that has brought tens of thousands into the streets in past weeks. But the rushed passage of the constitution further inflamed those who feel Morsi and his Islamist allies, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are monopolizing power in Egypt and trying to force their agenda.

The draft charter was adopted amid a boycott by liberal and Christian members of the Constituent Assembly. The document would open the door to Egypt’s most extensive implementation of Islamic law, enshrining a say for Muslim clerics in legislation, making civil rights subordinate to Shariah and broadly allowing the state to protect “ethics and morals.” It fails to outlaw gender discrimination and mainly refers to women in relation to home and family.

Sunday’s rallies would be the latest of a series by opponents and supporters of Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Both sides have drawn tens of thousands of people into the streets, sparking bouts of street battles that have left at least six people dead and hundreds wounded. Several offices of the Muslim Brotherhood also have been ransacked or torched in the unrest.

Morsi, who took office in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president, rescinded the Nov. 22 decrees at the recommendation Saturday of a panel of 54 politicians and clerics who took part in a “national dialogue” the president called for to resolve the crisis. Most of the 54 were Islamists who support the president, since the opposition boycotted the dialogue.

In his overnight announcement, Morsi also declared that if the draft constitution is rejected by voters in the referendum, a nationwide election would be held to select the next Constituent Assembly.

The assembly that adopted the draft was created by parliament, which was dominated by the Brotherhood and other Islamists, and had an Islamist majority from the start. The lawmaking lower house of parliament was later disbanded by court order before Morsi’s inauguration.

If the draft is approved in the referendum, elections would be held for a new lower house of parliament would be held within two months, Morsi decided.

The president has maintained all along that his Nov. 22 decrees were motivated by his desire to protect the country’s state institutions and transition to democratic rule against a “conspiracy” hatched by figures of the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi, whose claims have been repeated by leaders of his Brotherhood, has yet to divulge details of the alleged conspiracy.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

The dangerous myopia of American Jewish leaders – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

( This,  from the decidedly “lefty”  HaAretz… – JW )

The progressive Jewish leadership calls for peace while Hamas calls for hatred. When will these Jewish leaders stop denying reality and start grappling with the dangers in the real world in which Israel has to try to survive?

By Daniel Gordis | Dec.09, 2012 | 11:48 AM | 10

American Jews at a rally in Washington D.C., showing their dual patriotism for Israel and the U.S. Photo by AP

By Chemi Shalev | Dec.09,2012 | 11:48 AM | 8

From coast to coast, as Progressive American rabbis continue to call for peace, they are inadvertently revealing their tragic inability to acknowledge that the world in which they once formulated their positions on Israel has changed almost beyond recognition. The gaping disconnect between the world that these rabbis pretend exists and the one that actually exists renders their message both irrelevant and myopically dangerous. For the goal of religious leadership ought to be to get people to do something. Yet, acting while denying reality can lead only to grievous, and, perhaps, irredeemable mistakes.

Jews do not easily surrender hopes for peace. But increasingly, beginning with the Second Intifada, Israelis have come to doubt the possibility of a “land for peace” deal. That doubt increased when Gazans voted Hamas into power after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. In recent years, as more Israelis have come to understand that there is no placating Gazans, who see themselves as descendants of 1948 refugees from the Negev and the coastal plain (precisely the places that Gazans shelled during the recent conflict), Israeli despair has only hardened.

That the situation is both dangerous and depressing is undeniable. But responsible leadership does not deny reality, no matter how sad it may be. It first acknowledges what exists, and only then tries to imagine what we can do to create a better world.

Yet that is precisely what too many American Progressive Jewish leaders refuse to do. As Operation Pillar of Defense was raging, the rabbi of Ikar in Los Angeles wrote to that community saying that what Israel needed to do was “engage earnestly and immediately in peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority,” demonstrating an utter lack of understanding of the power balance between Hamas and Fatah, or of the hatred of Israel that is now systemic in Palestinian life. When the UN General Assembly voted to upgrade the Palestinians’ status to that of non-member observers, the rabbis of Bnai Jeshurun in New York wrote their community saying that “The vote at the UN [was] a great moment for us as citizens of the world. … This is an opportunity to celebrate the process that allows a nation to come forward and ask for recognition.”

Do these rabbis imagine in their wildest dreams that any parallel sentiment will emerge from the other side? The ink was hardly dry on that letter when Hamas’ political chief Khaled Meshal said that “Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on any inch of the land… there is no legitimacy for Israel.” Meshal continued: “We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.” Does anyone really imagine that Israeli concessions in the West Bank can curb this sort of hatred? Would an Israeli willingness to deny Meshal’s view and his popularity strengthen Israel or weaken it? Shortly after that, it was reported that PA forces in the West Bank had ceased all operations designed to curtail Hamas’ influence in the West Bank. Can anyone doubt what that means?

Some responsible American Jewish voices are coming to terms with this new reality. Leon Wieseltier recently wrote in The New Republic that “I no longer believe that peace between Israelis and Palestinians will occur in my lifetime. I have not changed my views; I have merely lost my hopes.”

Wieseltier is, sadly, where most Israelis are. Progressive American voices, tragically, are in a very different place. “We are deeply entrenched in our narratives of good and evil, victim and perpetrator,” Ikar’s rabbi wrote, unwilling to take a stand on whether Hamas was good or evil, victim or perpetrator, while Bnai Jeshurun’s followed with that note that the UN vote was a great moment for them “as citizens of the world.”

Jews have always seen ourselves as citizens of the world. But key to Judaism’s survival has been an ability to couple that universal concern to a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges and dangers facing the Jewish world. The mark of great religious leadership is not simply its ability to imagine a better world, but to imagine how we might get to that world from the one that actually exists. We will know great Progressive religious leadership is emerging when we see the world that they describe bears at least some resemblance to the one in which Israel has to try to survive.

Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President and Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His book, Saving Israel, won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award; The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness is Actually Its Greatest Strength was published in 2012.

Netanyahu: Hamas has no intention… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

Photo: Pool / Haim Zach

IDF: Hamas trying to activate W. Bank sleeper … JPost – Defense.