WarSclerotic

Syria naval base blast points to Israeli raid – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Rebels claim attacked munitions cache held advanced Russian missiles; ferocity of attack consistent with military like Israel’s, rebels say

Reuters

Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday – a disclosure that appeared to point to an Israeli raid.

Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military Council, said a pre-dawn strike on Friday hit a Syrian navy barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. He said that the rebel forces’ intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being stored there.

“It was not the FSA that targeted this,” Saadeddine told Reuters. “It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels.

“This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean,” he said.

Rebels described huge blasts – the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern military like Israel’s.

Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement. The Syrian government has not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a “series of explosions” at the site.

Israeli officials have made clear that if advanced weaponry is transferred from President Bashar Assad‘s army to Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, it would include the long-range Yakhonts, which could help Hezbollah repel Israel’s navy and endanger its offshore gas rigs. In May, Israel and its US ally complained about Moscow sending the missiles to Syria. Israel said they would likely end up with Hezbollah. The Lebanese group has said it does not need them.

Asked about the Latakia blasts, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told reporters: “We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions – in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most.”

A former senior Israeli security official, who declined to be named, told Reuters that the area of Latakia in question was known to have been used to store Yakhont missiles.

Technically at war with Syria, Israel spent decades in a stable standoff with Damascus while the Assad family ruled unchallenged. It has been reluctant to intervene openly in the two-year-old, Islamist-dominated insurgency rocking Syria.

But previous air strikes near Damascus, on January 30, May 3 and May 5, made little attempt to conceal Israel’s involvement.

Israel Hayom | ‘Israel and the NSA co-wrote the Stuxnet computer virus’.

Israel Hayom | Al-Jazeera staff members in Egypt resign to protest ‘biased coverage’.

Israel Hayom | Syrian rebels claim IAF destroyed S-300 battery near Homs.

Gulf states step in with billion-dollar lifeline for Egypt | JPost | Israel News.

( This is clearly intended to undercut any Obama pressure on Egypt to appease the Moslem Brotherhood.  For the first time that I can remember, I find myself supporting the Arab over the US’s foreign policy. – JW )

The United Arab Emirates has agreed to grant Egypt $1 billion and lend it another $2 billion, an Egyptian source said on Tuesday, throwing it a financial lifeline after the army ousted the country’s Islamist president last week.

The source also said Saudi Arabia may lend Egypt another $2 billion, which he expected to be confirmed within two days.

Egypt’s finances have been devastated by political and economic instability since the popular uprising that pushed Hosni Mubarak out of the presidency two and a half years ago.

The UAE’s $3 billion was expected to be part of a larger financial package from the Gulf emirate, said the source close to the talks. The loan would be in the form of a deposit at Egypt’s central bank, although the interest rate and maturity had yet to be finalized.

UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and National Security Adviser Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed flew to Cairo on Tuesday morning at the head of the most senior foreign delegation to visit Egypt since the overthrow on Wednesday of Mohamed Mursi.

He became president a year ago in Egypt’s first freely contested election.
The delegation was coming to “show full support to the people of Egypt – political support, economic support,” Egypt’s foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said earlier.

With turmoil driving away foreign investors and tourists, Egypt is running dangerously short of cash to provide the subsidized bread and fuel that its 84 million people rely on. Egyptian newspapers, mainly controlled by the state or by Morsi’s opponents, described Monday’s violence as the result of terrorism by Morsi’s supporters.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s interim rulers issued a faster than expected timetable for elections to try to drag the country out of crisis, a day after 51 people were killed when troops fired on a crowd supporting Morsi.

The streets of Cairo were quiet on Tuesday but Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement called for more protests later in the day, raising the risk of further violence.

Under pressure to restore democracy quickly, Adli Mansour, the judge named head of state by the army when it brought down Mursi last week, decreed overnight that a parliamentary vote would be held in about six months. That would be followed by a presidential election.

In an important positive signal for the transitional authorities, the ultra-orthodox Islamist Nour Party said it would accept ex-finance minister Samir Radwan as prime minister, potentially paving the way for an interim cabinet. The stakes were raised dramatically by the bloodshed on Monday, the worst since Morsi was toppled by the military. The army opened fire outside Cairo’s Republican Guard barracks where the deposed leader is believed to be held.

The bloodshed has also raised alarm among key donors such as the United States and the European Union, as well as in Israel, with which Egypt has had a US-backed peace treaty since 1979. Officials said troops fired in response to an attack by armed assailants. The protesters disputed that account, insisting they were conducting peaceful dawn prayers.

Mansour decreed that Egypt will hold new parliamentary elections once amendments to its suspended constitution are approved in a referendum. In what appeared to be an olive branch to Islamists, the decree included controversial language put into the constitution last year that defined the principles of Islamic sharia law.

The UAE – long skeptical of the Brotherhood – had pledged billions in aid to Egypt after the fall of Mubarak but held the money back during Morsi’s year in power.

The West has had a harder time formulating a public response, after years of pushing Arab leaders towards democracy while at the same time nervous about the Brotherhood’s rise. Demonstrators on both sides in Egypt have chanted anti-American slogans, accusing Washington of backing their enemies.

Washington has refrained from calling the military intervention a “coup” – a label that under US law would require it to halt aid. It called on Egypt’s army to exercise “maximum restraint” but has said it is not about to halt funding for Egypt, including the $1.3 billion it gives the military.

Helpless Hamas Watches as Egypt Targets Islamists – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

An Egyptian police car set ablaze on Cairo’s Six of October Bridge

AFP photo

As tight allies of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has been watching the situation in Egypt with grave concern. And with the deposing of Mohammed Morsi from the presidency of Egypt, Gaza Arabs are very concerned that the Hamas government in Gaza could be negatively affected by the anti-Islamist atmosphere in the Levant.

A poll by the PA’s Ma’an news service Monday found that 73.4% of Gaza Arabs polled believe that the events in Egypt will negatively affect the Hamas government. Only 22.9% say that there will be no effect. Among the effects that some Gazans fear is an increase in secular political activity, as well as bolder efforts by Fatah-oriented Gazans to organize politically.

In a statement, Hamas condemned the “massacre” Egyptian Army units are said to be committing against Islamists. Early Monday, at least 40 people were killed in clashes outside a military building in Cairo, where supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi were holding a sit-in against, Egyptian officials said. Those killed were all Morsi supporters, among them many members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Later Monday, reports from Egypt said that the army had ordered the closure of Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo, claiming that soldiers had been fired upon from there.

But Hamas dare not intervene to help their comrades in Egypt, at least openly. With the deposing by the Egyptian army of Mohammed Morsi and the arrests of top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, many of the Brotherhood have been clearing out of large cities and taking refuge in remote areas, like Sinai. Over the weekend, angry riots broke out in El Arish between pro- and anti-Morsi groups, and on Saturday night the Egyptian army announced that it was moving troops and tanks into Sinai in order to rout out Brotherhood and pro-Morsi groups.

With that, there were reports Monday that dozens of Hamas terrorists had made it over the border into Sinai and taken up arms to fight Egyptian Army troops. Several of them are said to have participated in a Brotherhood attack on an Egyptian Army post in El-Arish, in which several Egyptian soldiers were killed. Egypt, meanwhile has closed up most of the smuggling tunnels between Sinai and Gaza. Reports said that since the weekend, over 50 of the tunnels have been sealed.

Car bomb hits Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut; several said killed, 18 hurt | JPost | Israel News.

Al Quds Commander Killed in Syria.

Or Heller

8/7/2013

A severe blow to the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah in the combat taking place in Syria: according to the London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Al Quds brigade was killed in Syria.

If the report is correct, then the death of the Al Quds force commander, known as Abu Ajaib, represents Hezbollah’s highest-ranking casualty in Syria to date.

Thus far, Hezbollah has lost hundreds of fighters in the fighting taking place in Syria. According to IDF assessments, the organization is close to losing more fighters in Syria than it lost during the Second Lebanon War.

Violent Ramadan ahead: Egypt’s army chief says no to dialogue with Brotherhood. Assad nixes ceasefire.

Muslim Brotherhood casualties in Cairo gunfire

The holy Muslim month of Ramadan beginning in the Middle East Tuesday, July 9, heralds more, rather than less, bloodshed. After at least 51 deaths in a Cairo shootout Monday, Egypt’s military chief Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi rebuffed US diplomatic efforts to bring the various political forces in the country around the table for dialogue. The high military council is divided on this: One faction urges a relentless crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and its deposed president; a second, led by Gen. El-Sisi, says they mustn’t be cowed by the backlash to Monday’s incident, but should keep the political process for a new and stable government on track
In line with this perception, Provisional President Justice Adli Mansour issued a decree Tuesday for elections to a new parliament in February 2014, followed immediately by voting for a new president. He did not fix a precise date. No one expects this decree to tranquilize the turmoil in the country or deter the Brothers from an uprising (intifada) declared against the powers that unseated them after Egyptian soldiers shot dead at least 51 of their supporters. They were accused by the army of trying to storm the Republican Guards Club in Cairo where deposed president Mohamed Morsi is held. The Brothers claimed they were just holding a peaceful sit-in.
The generals have geared up to meet this threat, which appears to have been kicked off Monday with attacks on strategic targets across Egypt – carried out, according to debkafile’s military sources, by the Brotherhood’s armed underground, Al-Gihas al-Sirri.

In parallel, the military is also deploying for a major offensive to curb the armed Salafi Bedouin rampant in Sinai and now harnessed to the Brotherhoods uprising. The generals believe this center of revolt must be nipped in the bud without delay for the sake of confining the MB uprising to mainland Egypt.

To this end, heavy military reinforcements were seen pouring into Sinai in the early hours of Tuesday. The urgency of cutting down the Brotherhood’s capabilities for making trouble was attested to by the risk the Egyptian army took by withdrawing substantial military strength from the Suez Canal towns of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez and redeploying them in Sinai. They acted on the assumption that, in the short term, the Brothers would concentrate their defiance on street protests and clashes with the army to Cairo.

Our military sources report that Maj. Gen. Ahmad Wasfi, head of the Second Army, arrived Monday in the northern Sinai town of El Arish to set up a command center for the forthcoming campaign against the Islamist opposition and its allies, the Salafist networks linked to al Qaeda and the radical Palestinian Hamas.
The outbreaks in Egypt this week overshadowed the disastrous situation in Syria.

debkafile’s military sources report that alongside thrusts on other fronts, such as Homs, the Syrian army and Hizballah are in the final stages of preparations for their big push to liquidate rebel strongholds in Aleppo and recapture Syria’s second city.

Syrian President Bashar Assad decided to go ahead with this offensive despite the onset of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from sunup to sundown for a month.
Iran and Moscow are speeding extra military and arms supplies to aid this effort by airlift. Refusing to brook any further delays in the battle for Aleppo, Assad turned down a proposal by UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon’s and the new Syrian opposition president Ahmad Jabra to declare a bilateral ceasefire for the month of Ramadan.