WarSclerotic

US said worried at imminent collapse of Israel-Palestinian talks, Ynet News, March 23, 2014

(How many U.S. citizens did Mr. Pollard murder or otherwise terrorize? Zero. Nevertheless, if the radio report is accurate perhaps Israel should adopt a Palestinian tactic and agree to (maybe) think about the possibility of releasing one non-terrorist prisoner jailed for as long as Mr. Pollard has been (if one meeting both criteria can be found) after the U.S. releases Mr. Pollard and he is safely wherever he wants to be. — DM)

Sources tell Israel Radio that Americans may even consider possibility of freeing Jonathan Pollard.

The US government is very worried that the talks between Israel and the Palestinians are on the verge of collapse and are seeking a solution that would allow for a way forward, Israel Radio reported Sunday.

According to the report, Western political sources said that the US administration is searching for a proposal favorable enough for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which would persuade his government to free Israeli Arab prisoners.

US sources would not rule out the possibility of agreeing to Netanyahu’s request for the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard in order to keep the talks going, the radio said. The former US civilian defense worker is currently serving a life term in the US for spying for Israel.

The report said that Pollard’s release would come in return for the Israeli adoption of Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework agreement and the release of Israeli Arab prisoners. But, the radio said, the sources stressed that US President Barack Obama would not necessarily agree to Pollard’s release.

The talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which began in July, are due to end on April 29. Israeli officials have warned that a Palestinian failure to extend the talks would exempt Jerusalem from releasing a fourth and final batch of Palestinian prisoners, while President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that an Israeli failure to free the final group of 26 would allow the Palestinians to act as they saw fit in the international arena.

“We are awaiting the release of the fourth batch of prisoners, as agreed upon with the Israelis through the United States,” he told members of the central committee of his Fatah movement.

“We are saying, if they are not released, this is a violation of the agreement and allows us to act however we see fit within the norms of international agreements.”

J Street Backs Refusals to Recognize Jewish State – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

( “J Street” is the way by which lefty Jews can maintain their positions in their lefty communities while claiming to still be “pro” Israel.  Not sure they will survive being against it as  Jewish state. – JW )

John Kerry and Mahmoud Abbas meet in Paris, February 2014

Reuters

US lobbying group J Street has once again thrown its weight behind the Obama administration and the Palestinian Authority, urging Israel to drop demands for the PA to recognize the country as a Jewish state.

Israeli leaders have been adamant on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, saying that far from being a mere symbolic gesture, the recognition would signal an end to future claims against Israel by the PA and a genuine end to the conflict. Some PA officials have openly declared that from their perspective, any concessions gained by the current talks would be merely a “first stage” in the destruction of the Jewish state.

In a statement on the group’s blog, J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami reiterated his group’s commitment to diplomatic efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry, including a partition of Israel as part of a “Two-State Solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but noted that talks between Israel and the PA were stalling.

“To keep moving forward, both men now need to give a little, while keeping their eyes on the prize and recognizing that the benefits of resolving the conflict outweigh any short-term political considerations and that the penalties for failure for both peoples are immense,” Ben-Ami wrote of Israeli Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu and PA Chairman Abbas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, Ben-Ami did not explain what concessions would be expected from the PA, instead branding Israeli demands for recognition as a Jewish state as “unrealistic” and calling on Israel to drop those demands – echoing recent statements by the US State Department and Secretary of State Kerry himself.

J Street – which claims to be “pro-Israel and pro-peace” – has come under fire by pro-Israel groups for its links to radical anti-Israel organizations, including some which call for a boycott of the Jewish state. J Street’s critics say it is simply hiding an anti-Israel agenda behind a friendly face.

But peace activist Yehuda Hakohen says the problem runs far deeper, and that J Street undermines both Israeli and Palestinian Arab interests on the ground.

“J Street is essentially the Jewish mouthpiece for American empire in the Middle East,” said Hakohen, who directs the grassroots Alternative Action organization. “They promote Washington’s foreign policy agenda for the region and work hard to present that agenda as somehow being in the interests of Jews and Palestinians on the ground.

“But the reality is that the policies they advocate only further oppress both peoples and further divide us, making the attainment of genuine peace increasingly more difficult.”

“The two state paradigm is doomed to failure because it fails to address the aspirations and grievances of either people. It simply creates more injustice and oppression for both of us while advancing the agendas of foreign powers in our region,” he continued.

“Forcibly expelling Jews from their homes in the cradle of Jewish civilization and forcing Palestinians to live under an American-backed police state is not the way forward towards peace or justice and I honestly have trouble believing the leadership of J Street to be so naive as to genuinely think otherwise.”

Iran is building a mock-up of the USS Nimitz-class nuclear carrier near Bandar Abbas.

DEBKAfile Special Report March 23, 2014, 1:48 PM (IST)

Iranian mock-up of aircraft carrier.

At the same time as President Barack Obama was sending New Year greetings to the Iranian people Thursday, March 20, US satellites snapped shots of a mockup of Iran’s first aircraft carrier under construction at the Revolutionary Guards naval base of Bandar Abbas. After decoding the images, US intelligence experts were astonished to find it was a replica of a US Nimitz-class super-carrier. debkafile reports that the construction work was first picked up by drones from the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, which operates in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Arabian Sea.

In his message, the US president challenged Iran’s leaders to “take meaningful and verifiable steps to assure the world that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only” for the sake of “a new beginning,” including “a better relationship with the United States and the American people, rooted in mutual interest and mutual respect.”

Of the US Navy’s 10 operational Nimitz-class carriers, two – the USS George H.W. Bush and the USS Harry S. Truman — are currently deployed in the Middle East. Each is 330 meters long and carries on is decks up to 3,000 naval and air crew and 85-90 fighter craft and helicopters.

The Pentagon’s first response to the discovery was uncertain: “We are aware that Iran has constructed a floating barge that resembles a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier near Bandar Abbas,” spokesman Lt. Col. Tom Crosson said Saturday. “Commercially available imagery shows its construction. We are not sure what tactical value Iran hopes to gain by building a mock-up of a US aircraft carrier.”

Since the disclosure, Iran experts have been speculating on that question. Some have suggested that it was a crude model which the Iranians were planning to destroy as a propaganda stunt during a naval training exercise.

However some military experts are taking it more seriously and warn that the mock-up carrier signaled a new level of sophistication in the use of unconventional doctrine and capabilities for confronting superior US naval power.”
Obama’s message of friendship for Nowraz was not exactly reciprocated: At a speech in Mashhad the next day, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the US the “enemy” and a “dictatorial and arrogant” power. Khamenei said the Americans “used rhetoric and language that was less courteous and more aggressive… and insulting to the people.”

debkafile’s military experts offer six points of interest about Iran’s attempt to replicate a US carrier:

1. The discovery of this project was not random. Its construction has been going on for more than two years, but the Obama administration preferred to keep it dark so as not to spoil the climate of détente it was striving to build with Tehran. And indeed, the first response to the disclosure from the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Eliot Engel was that the mock-up “demonstrates Iran’s continued lack of good faith.”

2.  The Iranians deliberately exposed the project by placing air force fighter jets on the deck of the fake Nimitz to make sure they were detected by US surveillance.
3.  Its purpose is neither for propaganda nor for show in a training exercise. Iran’s method for its most ambitious military projects is to start from scratch and advance step by step until their goal is reached, our Iran experts sources report. Their UAV program began with primitive models, which were perfected stage by stage over a period of years, with the help of Chinese, Russian and North Korean experts. The drone project has by now advanced enough for Iran to hand the Lebanese Hizballah a fleet of drones with high-grade technological and surveillance capabilities.
4.  The mockup vessel program is adjusted to the long-term prospects of nuclear diplomacy – in Iran’s estimation. Tehran is certain that negotiations with the six powers are going nowhere, fated to be dragged out to bar any diplomatic or military solution of their nuclear controversy forthcoming before the end of Barack Obama’s presidency. By 2017, when his successor takes office, Iran’s policy-makers calculate that their mockup will have been developed into a full-scale operational aircraft carrier ready to go from Bandar Abbas.

5. On various occasions in the past year, officials associated with Iran’s nuclear program and senior commanders of its Navy and Revolutionary Guards have said that high-grade nuclear fuel will be needed for their nuclear-powered naval vessels and submarines – which they don’t possess.  Iranian negotiators will for the first time be able to present a complete aircraft carrier to support their claim when they are confronted by skeptical world powers.
6. Iran obviously lacks the capacity to build an aircraft carrier to US standards. Nor does it possess advanced fighter jets comparable to US or Israeli air force aircraft; or the technology for constructing and operating the sophisticated military electronic devices installed in American warplanes and carriers.

At the same time, Tehran has surprised the world by its strides in drone and cyber technologies, while at the same time demonstrating the military and tactical mastery for turning the tide of the Syrian civil war from Bashar Assad’s almost certain defeat to success. Iran’s aggressive ambition to outperform its enemies should therefore not be underestimated.

Ben Shapiro at UCLA: “BDS is just another form of anti-semitism” – YouTube.

(Ben Shapiro delivers the knockout punch to the BDS crowd. – Artaxes)

The Vienna lesson | JPost | Israel News.

By JPOST EDITORIAL

03/22/2014 22:44

Ultimately, Israel must look after its own interests, chief among which is preventing uranium enrichment by its arch-enemy.

Just about the only semi-newsworthy report to have emerged out of the latest round of negotiations in Vienna on Tehran’s nuclear project is that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif canceled a dinner with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The cancellation was apparently Ashton’s punishment for, according to the Iranians, breached protocol by hobnobbing with opposition representatives on her recent trip to Tehran.

Viewed against the supposed big picture this is a negligible item. Yet, as such, it is highly significant. It almost goes to show that there is really no big picture.

Supposed talks with Iran continue sporadically and constitute the pretext for relaxing sanctions on the rogue regime’s nuclear ambitions. But in truth, nothing is actually happening.

To make things worse, the strategy of employing stringent sanctions to force Iran to give up the program that would enable it to develop nuclear weaponry is a thing of the past. As European firms rush to close deals with the Islamic Republic, the residue of the pressure on it becomes a derisive reminder of unkept promises and hollow declarations.

Although we certainly hope the talks achieve what the US and the EU have proclaimed as their goal of stemming the nuclear program, Iranian representatives, newly confident and insolent, show no inhibitions in thumbing their noses at their pro forma interlocutors.

They have ample reason to be cocky. They know the show of negotiating at Vienna will draw out the process and in the interim Tehran will regain legitimacy.

In all likelihood, its nuclear threat will be increasingly pooh-poohed while its centrifuges keep on turning and enriching uranium.

Easing fears about Iranian intentions while failing to abrogate the atomic-bomb scheme is, however, only the preliminary sham.

Iran’s standing has been radically enhanced via the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Moscow has throughout been Tehran’s main backer in the international arena.

Now that Russia is at loggerheads with America and Europe over Crimea, there is even less incentive for Russia to cooperate with the Western effort to curb its leading protégé in the Middle East, to put it mildly.

Since the bark of the Obama administration and its European sidekicks appears to be considerably worse than their bite, the Russians are hardly deterred by the ludicrous punitive measures adopted against them.

Moscow’s fundamental geopolitical interests far outweigh denial of entry visas to its VIPs. The hectoring from Western capitals is as an irritating mosquito sting.

It does no real harm but the agitation it provokes is nothing to scoff at.

A vexed Kremlin means even less accommodating Russian negotiators at Vienna, and they were hardly obliging partners to begin with.

There is little incentive for them to keep up previous pretenses. The Americans’ shortsighted 2009 unilateral retreat from establishing a missile shield over Poland and the Czech Republic had already cast US President Barack Obama in President Vladimir Putin’s eyes as a paper tiger, and Putin has not spared Obama recurrent humiliations.

The upshot is that the apparent diplomatic offensive against Iran’s nukes is fast evaporating. Even top American experts concede there is no chance for real success.

Cementing Iran’s status as a nuclear-threshold state has evolved into the best-case scenario. How nightmarish things have become.

The ostensible pressure on the ayatollahs was to start with spurred by Israeli threats to deal with Iran by itself and by military means. As Israel’s warnings lost volume, so they lost effectiveness.

The international community’s prime motivation to lean on Iran was gone. Reviving it is, perhaps, the logic behind Defense Minister’s Moshe Ya’alon’s assertion last week that Israel cannot rely on Washington to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Ultimately, Israel must look after its own interests, chief among which is preventing uranium enrichment by its arch-enemy. We can only hope that our primary ally, the United States, together with the EU, will ultimately lead the international community in stopping Iran.

Why doesn’t Netanyahu back Ya’alon? Other prominent ME voices fault Obama’s policies too, DEBKAfile, March 22, 2014

Ya’alon is . . .  in good company among his peers in the region’s top security and military circles when he disparages the Obama administration’s handling of matters in a way which he regards as detrimental to the region and Israel’s national security.

Israel’s blunt-spoken Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has found little backing at home for his outspoken criticism of Obama Administration’s policies. Up until Saturday night, March 22, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu let him face the music alone when US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded an apology – and even when his spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the clarifications Ya’alon offered of his remarks to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel were not good enough.

“The US still had concerns about Ya’alon’s pattern of behavior. An apology from Ya’alon would be a natural next step,” she said. “His comments, as we’ve stated a couple of times, don’t reflect the true nature of our relationship with Israel.”

Sounding like a schoolteacher reprimanding a delinquent pupil, Ms Psaki implicitly accused Israel’s defense minister of misrepresenting the nature of US-Israel relations. And, most of all, he was required to say sorry for daring to say that US policy was weak and wavering – not just on Ukraine, but on Iran, in a way that directly impinged on Israel’s security. His ultimate sin, for the spokeswoman, was to urge that his country  stop waiting for America to pull the Iranian chestnut out of the fire and take matters in its own hands.

In a previous episode, the defense minister agreed he was out of line when he characterized Kerry in a much-quoted private conversation as “obsessive and messianic” over his dogged pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian final accord.  For that remark he did apologize.

However, when it comes to finding extreme fault with the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Ya’alon is not the only high-ranking politician in the Middle East – or even the most vehement, although not all the others have been told by Ms Psaki to apologize.

A similar perspective has been openly articulated even more vigorously by, for instance, top Saudi leaders, including King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal.

Nor is Ya’alon the only senior defense official whom the Obama administration wuld like to see the back of. Egypt’s Defense Minister Gen. Abdul-Fatteh El-Sisi is another. The general’s criticism of Washington’s policies is hardly restrained. He has paid for it with a cold US shoulder, even though he will almost certainly be elected the next president of the most populous Middle East country.

Punishing the Egyptian general for his crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which he removed from power in a coup, Obama refused to let Egypt have urgently needed warplanes, helicopters and surveillance equipment to fend off the al Qaeda-Iraq (ISIS)’s advance into the Sinai Peninsula. Our counterterrorism sources report the jihadis are using Sinai as a jumping-off base and have begun infiltrating cities in the Nile Valley.

El-Sisi has since appealed to Moscow for the necessary hardware.

The administration’s treatment of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Director of Saudi General Intelligence, was still tougher, punishing him for the campaign he led in support of certain Syrian rebel militias contrary to the Washington line. That campaign aimed, with the king’s approval, to remove Bashar Assad from power.

This is not the place to analyze what went wrong. At the same time, it is important for Israel to understand that, so long as Bandar’s agents were proactive in the Syrian civil war, neither Hizballah nor al Qaeda’s affiliates were able to reach the Syrian-Israeli border dividing the Golan. In the two months since the Saudi prince and his agents were purged from the Syrian scene, the two terrorist organizations are more deeply involved than ever in the civil war, and have also started mounting cross-border attacks on Israel from Syrian territory.

Certain US quarters planted stories that Bandar had fallen out of royal favor and was stripped of all his official duties, including the directorship of intelligence. But the prince surfaced in Beijing two weeks ago, ahead of a state visit by Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, to negotiate the purchase of Chinese ballistic missiles. It turned out that Bandar was still Chief of intelligence minus only the Syrian dossier.

Ya’alon is therefore in good company among his peers in the region’s top security and military circles when he disparages the Obama administration’s handling of matters in a way which he regards as detrimental to the region and Israel’s national security.

What is conspicuously missing is a sign of support from Binyamin Netanyahu at a time when the defense minister needs a solid lineup for handling the dangerous and complex hostile fronts evolving on three of Israel’s borders – the Golan, the Gaza Strip and the South, as well as the West Bank, where Hamas forces are gathering anew to spring back into active terrorist mode.

US Senators urge Obama to push for strict Iran nuclear deal | JPost | Israel News.

By REUTERS

LAST UPDATED: 03/22/2014 22:25

Twenty three US senators send letter to the President urging him to stand firm on him; legislators ask that Obama insist on a final agreement in which Iran would not be able to build or buy a nuclear weapon.

WASHINGTON – Twenty-three US senators kept the spotlight on Iran nuclear negotiations on Saturday with a letter to President Barack Obama urging that he stand firm, after a second round of talks wound up in Vienna.

The letter from Democratic senators and one independent, was identical to one sent to Obama earlier this week by the House of Representatives, asking that he insist on a final agreement in which Iran would not be able to build or buy a nuclear weapon.

The House letter was signed by 395 of the 435 members of the chamber and was sent as Iran and six world powers met to persuade Iran to scale back its contested nuclear activities.

The meeting in Vienna was the second in a series that the six nations – United States, China, Russia, Germany, France and UK – hope will produce a verifiable settlement, ensuring that Iran’s nuclear program is oriented to peaceful purposes only.

The 23 senators said they embraced Obama’s two-track approach twinning sanctions against Tehran with negotiations, but urged strict procedures of transparency and verification to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

The US Congress has long taken a harder line on Iran than the White House, but Saturday’s letter was an indication of how sensitive the issue is, even among members of the same party.

Many in this group of senators, including Carl Levin, whose office released Saturday’s letter, did not sign a letter sent earlier this week from 83 of their colleagues.

That letter, spearheaded by Democrat Robert Menendez, took a more aggressive stance, urging Obama to insist that any final agreement state that Iran “has no inherent right to enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

That would be a non-starter for Iran, which cites a right under the NPT to produce nuclear energy for civilian purposes.

Both the US and Iranian delegations – the two pivotal players in the negotiations – face intense pressure from hawkish critics back home.

Bennett Lauds Defense Minister for Speaking Out – Inside Israel – News – Israel National News.

( Good for Bennett.  Israelis should rally behind Yaalon.  Even more so should Amercans… – JW )

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon

Economics Minister and Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett strongly condemned the ongoing media and political tirade against Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who is under fire for criticizing the US’s policy toward Israel.

“The media attack on the defense minister and top IDF official is unnecessary and mostly false, and so far there is no one who says: enough,” Bennett wrote on a Facebook post on Saturday night.

“[Ya’alon] is an excellent defense minister, [and] his mouth and heart are the same – even if the positions [he has] are not the same positions these commentators and others [hold]. (Which is good),” he added.

Over the past year, quiet – and interesting developments – have returned to the Defense system,” Bennett continued. “The State of Israel has regained its deterrence. Nowadays, everyone knows we will not hesitate to work at length to cut off the hands of our enemies.”

“Israel’s intelligence framework has undergone a true revolution,” Bennett continued. “We have new and bold capabilities. Within the turbulent sea that is the Middle East, Israel stands as a beacon of stability. Sometimes you can – and you should – say a few good words [about it].”

The United States harshly criticized Ya’alon this week, over his remarks that the United States “shows weakness” in various arenas around the world, including Ukraine, and has a “soft” approach over Iran’s nuclear program.

In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry personally protested to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over Ya’alon’s strong criticism which the U.S. saw as trying to hurt U.S.-Israel relations.

Later, Ya’alon phoned Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and clarified that his remarks were not meant to insult the United States.

However, the apology was not enough for US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who indicated that the US is still waiting for a more substantial apology.

Border Skirmishes – The Weekly Standard.

The Iran-Israel struggle heats up.

Mar 31, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 28 • By LEE SMITH

Last week the Israeli Air Force bombed Syrian military and security positions in retaliation for an operation on the Syrian-Israeli border in the Golan Heights. Four Israeli soldiers were wounded when Hezbollah attacked their Jeep. Hezbollah it seems was looking to kidnap them. This time they failed, but, said Hezbollah sources, “We are sure we will succeed in the near future.”

Maybe. If so, it is sure to resonate throughout the Middle East. The last time Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers it touched off a monthlong conflict in the summer of 2006. After the devastation Hezbollah suffered, hundreds of its elite troops dead and billions of dollars’ worth of damage done, the party’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, said that had he known how the Israelis would respond, he never would have taken their soldiers in the first place. So now that Nasrallah knows what Israeli countermeasures look like, what could he possibly be thinking?

The answer is that it’s not Nasrallah calling the shots. Hezbollah is Iran’s long arm in Lebanon. Accordingly, its activities on Israel’s northern border, taken together with the maneuvers of other Iranian allies on the southern frontier—weapons transfers to Gaza-based militants and their rocket fire on Israel—are evidence of a new Iranian boldness. Perhaps as a consequence of the interim nuclear agreement Iran struck last November with the P5+1 powers (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany), Tehran imagines that the White House will rein in Jerusalem. But if that’s what Obama is advising, Israel isn’t paying attention. Israel’s aggressive defense suggests that if Iran keeps pushing, it may soon find itself in open warfare.

For the last year and a half, Israel has kept Iran’s allies on its borders almost totally quiet. The 2006 war that many, including Hezbollah, believed Jerusalem had lost served instead to reestablish the credibility of Israeli deterrence. To the south, Israel’s November 2012 Pillar of Defense campaign in Gaza left Hamas reeling, while the Syrian civil war and the sectarian furies it unleashed loosened the bonds that tied Iran to its chief Palestinian asset. Even as the conflict in Syria burned, Israel was careful to show that it had no stake in the outcome and would stand aside so long as neither Assad nor the rebels tried to involve it—or transfer weapons to Hezbollah.

Israel has repeatedly targeted weapons convoys moving strategic, or game-changing, arms from Syria to Lebanon, typically striking at their point of origin rather than their destination. The reasoning seems to be that with Assad under fire already and reluctant to open another front against Israel, it’s advisable to hit there rather than in Lebanon, where Hezbollah might be compelled to act to save face. Nonetheless, on February 24 the Israeli Air Force struck a Hezbollah position in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah’s retaliatory campaign has included at least four border incidents. In one of them, Hezbollah fighters crossed several hundred yards into Israeli territory and planted IEDs.

Until last week, Israeli responses had typically been measured—firing artillery rounds into Syrian territory, for instance. The decision to target Assad’s forces now—as Israel did not do during the 2006 war, when Damascus kept transferring supplies to Hezbollah—is something of a game-changer itself, and needs to be seen in the context of Israel’s southern front.

Earlier in March, Israeli naval commandos boarded a Panamanian-flagged vessel, the Klos C, in the Red Sea carrying arms destined for Gaza, most likely intended for Palestinian Islamic Jihad but undoubtedly with the acquiescence of Hamas. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped that the interdiction of Iranian arms was something like a public relations coup that would change the White House’s mind about its bargaining partner in Tehran, the administration paid little heed. “It’s entirely appropriate to continue to pursue the possibility of reaching a resolution on the nuclear program,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said after the arms seizure.

However, the fact that the administration showed itself unmoved was perhaps the key factor in Jerusalem’s strategic messaging campaign, for Washington wasn’t Jerusalem’s only intended audience. The Israeli government was also signaling to its own citizens. The message was twofold: First, Iran is a strategic threat, not merely because of its nuclear weapons program, but also because of its support for the axis of resistance on Israel’s borders, a message underscored when Palestinian Islamic Jihad rained dozens of missiles on Israeli towns. Second, the Obama administration isn’t greatly bothered by the fact that Iran doesn’t, as the president put it, “operate in a responsible fashion.”

As Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said last week: “We had thought the one who should lead the campaign against Iran is the United States. But at some stage the United States entered into negotiations with them, and, unhappily, when it comes to negotiating at a Persian bazaar, the Iranians were better. .  .  . Therefore, on this matter, we have to behave as though we have nobody to look out for us but ourselves.”

If the weapons seizure was meant to drive home to Israelis that they’re on their own when it comes to Iran, then the raid on Syrian targets last week was intended to reassure them. Jerusalem showed that it will stop Iran’s allies on its borders, and also that it’s willing to go to the source—states that sponsor terrorist war, like Syria and, if the clerical regime continues to escalate, perhaps Iran, too.

Lee Smith is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.

Hamas urges PNA to halt security ties with Israel after 3 dead, Xinhua Net, March 22, 2014

The three militant groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, said in a joint statement that “military actions in the West Bank will be resumed soon and the Palestinian armed resistance against the Israeli occupation will never stop.”

RAMALLAH/GAZA, March 22 (Xinhua) — Islamic Hamas movement on Saturday urged the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to halt security cooperation with Israel after the Israeli army killed three militants in the northern West Bank refugee camp of Jenin.

In response to the Israeli raid, Hamas said that “the PNA must immediately sever security cooperation with the Israeli occupation, ” adding “the PNA should release all political prisoners and stand to the side of our people, heal their wounds and end their suffering.”

Earlier on Saturday, a special Israeli army force targeted a building in Jenin refugee camp where several militants were hiding, including fugitives who are wanted by Israel over involvement in planning attacks on Israel.

Palestinian witnesses and security sources said that Hamza Abu al-Heija, a Hamas militant, was killed. The two other dead militants belong to Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah Party of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The three militant groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, said in a joint statement that “military actions in the West Bank will be resumed soon and the Palestinian armed resistance against the Israeli occupation will never stop.”