WarSclerotic

Obama and the Middle East Mess « Commentary Magazine.

Articles: Obama’s Narcissistic Delusions about Peace in the Mideast.

Hamas has several hundred Syrian-made M-302 rockets of type that reached Hadera.

Syrian-made M-302 rockets

The long-range Hamas rockets that reached Hadera 110km north of Gaza Tuesday, July 8, have been identified as the Syrian-made M-302 Khaibar missile, that was used by Hizballah against Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war to pound Haifa. This weapon uses Iranian technology deriving from the Chinese WS-1 which has a 175 kilo warhead. Hizballah engineers posted in the Gaza Strip have since helped Hamas improve the M-302 and extend its range and accuracy. But still, even after improvements, the M-302’s main shortcoming is its lack of precision.

This was demonstrated Tuesday night when it missed substantial targets in Hadera and also, it now appears, Jerusalem, which took three rockets.

Last March, Iran tried to smuggle into the Gaza Strip an arms shipment including M-302 rockets under a cargo of cement aboard the Klos C. The ship was intercepted by Israel and the weapons seized. But other shipments must have made it through to Gaza and evidently topped up the missile arsenals of Hamas and Jihad Islami.

The Israeli government and army chiefs failed to heed this strategic increment to the Islamists’ tools of war – until Tuesday, when it emerged as a key weapon of Palestinian aggression. Hamas may be expected to continue to use the M-302 to hit Israeli targets.

debkafile’s military sources note the striking differences in the war tactics pursued by Israel and Hamas. The IDF has at this stage based its military operation in Gaza on air strikes for knocking out as much as possible of the Hamas military and logistical infrastructure as well as targeting its commanders.

Hamas, lacking an air force, has launched a well-planned campaign based on heavy, escalating rocket fire which indiscriminately targets the Israeli population and was meant to be supported by limited commando raids.  But the Islamists have failed to cause damage and casualties – not just because the Israelis are well prepared with shelters – because of the imprecision of their rockets, and their inability to mount more than isolated, small-scale raids, which are nowhere near the scale for tipping the balance in the contest.

Siren in Tel Aviv morning after peak Hamas launch of 120 rockets.

▶ Life in Israel: Gaza Rockets Interrupt Wedding in Ashdod – YouTube.

Published on Jul 8, 2014

Gaza rockets fall in the middle of wedding ceremony and send the guests running for shelter on July 8, 2014. Since the beginning of the year, Gaza terrorists have fired over 450 rockets towards Israeli citizens.

Israel pounds Gaza targets after rocket barrage hits as far north as Hadera | The Times of Israel.

Iraq: ‘Terrorists’ Seize Ex-Chemical Weapons Site, ABC News, July 8, 2014

(That’s impossible! As all right left thinking people know, Iraq had no WMDs in 2003. — DM)

The last major report by U.N. inspectors on the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program was released about a year after the experts left in March 2003. It states that Bunker 13 contained 2,500 sarin-filled 122-mm chemical rockets produced and filled before 1991, and about 180 tons of sodium cyanide, “a very toxic chemical and a precursor for the warfare agent tabun.”

The Islamic State extremist group has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility northwest of Baghdad, where 2,500 degraded chemical rockets filled decades ago with the deadly nerve agent sarin or their remnants were stored along with other chemical warfare agents, Iraq said in a letter circulated Tuesday at the United Nations.

The U.S. government played down the threat from the takeover, saying there are no intact chemical weapons and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to use the material for military purposes.

Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a letter that “armed terrorist groups” entered the Muthanna site on June 11, detained officers and soldiers from the protection force guarding the facilities and seized their weapons. The following morning, the project manager spotted the looting of some equipment via the camera surveillance system before the “terrorists” disabled it, he said.

The Islamic State group, which controls parts of Syria, sent its fighters into neighboring Iraq last month and quickly captured a vast stretch of territory straddling the border between the two countries. Last week, its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the establishment of an Islamic state, or caliphate, in the land the extremists control.

Alhakim said as a result of the takeover of Muthanna, Iraq is unable “to fulfil its obligations to destroy chemical weapons” because of the deteriorating security situation. He said it would resume its obligations “as soon as the security situation has improved and control of the facility has been regained.”

Alhakim singled out the capture of bunkers 13 and 41 in the sprawling complex 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad in the notorious “Sunni Triangle.”

The last major report by U.N. inspectors on the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program was released about a year after the experts left in March 2003. It states that Bunker 13 contained 2,500 sarin-filled 122-mm chemical rockets produced and filled before 1991, and about 180 tons of sodium cyanide, “a very toxic chemical and a precursor for the warfare agent tabun.”

The U.N. said the bunker was bombed during the first Gulf War in February 1991, which routed Iraq from Kuwait, and the rockets were “partially destroyed or damaged.”

It said the sarin munitions were “of poor quality” and “would largely be degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there.” It said the tabun-filled containers were all treated with decontamination solution and likely no longer contain any agent, but “the residue of this decontamination would contain cyanides, which would still be a hazard.”

According to the report, Bunker 41 contained 2,000 empty 155-mm artillery shells contaminated with the chemical warfare agent mustard, 605 one-ton mustard containers with residues, and heavily contaminated construction material. It said the shells could contain mustard residues which can’t be used for chemical warfare but “remain highly toxic.”

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed concern on June 20 about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seizing the complex, but played down the importance of the two bunkers with “degraded chemical remnants,” saying the material dates back to the 1980s and was stored after being dismantled by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.

She said the remnants “don’t include intact chemical weapons … and would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely use this for military purposes or, frankly, to move it.”

The Muthanna facility, south of the city of Samarra, was Iraq’s primary site for the production of chemical weapons agents. After the end of the first Gulf War, U.N. weapons inspectors worked there to get rid of chemicals that could be used in weapons, destroy production plants and equipment, and eliminate chemical warfare agents. The U.N. inspectors left just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and never returned. The U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group then took over the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and found none.

News of the facility’s takeover came amid continued political uncertainty in Iraq as leaders must agree on a new government that can confront the militant offensive that has plunged the country into its worst crisis since the last U.S. troops left in 2011.

Iraq’s parliament on Tuesday officially rescheduled its next session for Sunday after it was criticized for earlier plans to take a five-week break.

Watch: Arabs Celebrate Rocket Strikes at Al Aqsa, Virtual Jerusalem, July 8, 2014

US backs Israeli ‘right to defend itself,’ UN chief condemns rockets, Times of Israel, July 8, 2014

PA, Arab League, Turkey and Egypt demand halt to Israeli airstrikes against targets in Gaza Strip

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in Montreux, Switzerland, in January (photo credit: AP/Gary Cameron)

The US and UN condemned ongoing rocket fire into Israel Tuesday, amid calls for both sides to pull back escalating violence between Gaza-based Hamas and Israel on Tuesday.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza and called on both sides of the conflict to halt aggressions.

Ban “reiterates his call on all actors to exercise maximum restraint and avoid further civilian casualties and overall destabilization,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

He added that Ban “condemns the recent multiple rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza” and that “these indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas must stop.”

Israeli strikes on Gaza Tuesday killed 15 people and wounded around 100, local emergency services said, as the military launched an aerial campaign against Hamas and other groups in the Strip.

Army figures showed that Gaza-based terror groups fired 130 rockets at southern Israel since midnight without causing any casualties, while the air force struck 150 “terror targets” in Gaza.

The United States Tuesday condemned Hamas rocket and said it was concerned for civilians on both sides after Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed 15 people.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest also urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to keep a diplomatic channel open with Palestinians to resolve the crisis sparked by the murders of three Israeli teenagers and a Palestinian youth.

“We strongly condemn the continuing rocket fire into Israel and the deliberate targeting of civilians by terrorist organizations in Gaza,” Earnest said.

The spokesman also backed the Jewish state’s right to respond to the attacks.

“No country can accept rocket fire aimed at civilians, and we support Israel’s right to defend itself against these vicious attacks,” he said.

At the same time, Earnest said Washington was mindful of the plight of civilians caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hamas.

“This means both the residents of southern Israel who are forced to live under rocket fire in their homes and the civilians in Gaza who are subjected to the conflict because of Hamas’ violence,” he said.

In Cairo, Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned the Israeli raids. The country, which has brokered cease-fires between Israel and Hamas in the past, has thus far not gotten involved, according to reports.

Turkey called on Israel on Tuesday to “immediately” halt its strikes against Hamas.

“We are calling on Israel to immediately halt its attacks on Gaza,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

It urged the international community, especially the United Nations, to step in and warn the Jewish state to abandon its policy of “collective punishment,” and called on all parties concerned to take lessons from the past and act with “restraint and common sense” to prevent an escalation of violence.

The Arab League called Tuesday for the UN Security Council to hold an urgent meeting to discuss the Israeli air campaign, Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said.

An official from the pan-Arab bloc told AFP Arabi had “instructed the Arab League’s UN representative to initiate urgent consultations within the Arab group calling for an emergency security meeting of the Security Council.”

Arabi said he had been “in touch with [Palestinian Authority] president [Mahmoud] Abbas to follow the latest developments in the Gaza Strip” while also continuing “consultations with Arab foreign ministers on this subject.”

He denounced the “dangerous Israeli escalation” and warned against its humanitarian consequences in Gaza.

“The continued attacks on Palestinian civilians by Israel is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Convention and international resolutions on occupied Palestine,” said the Arab League chief.

Meanwhile, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), announced it would hold an “extraordinary” ministerial meeting Thursday in the Saudi city of Jeddah to discuss the “intensifying and fierce Israeli campaign against Palestine.”

Abbas on Tuesday demanded Israel immediately halt its latest offensive.

“Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas demanded Israel immediately stop its escalation and the raids on Gaza,” said a statement from his office published shortly after midnight (2100 GMT), early Tuesday, by the official WAFA news agency.

He also asked the international community “to immediately intervene to halt this dangerous escalation which would lead the region to more destruction and instability.”

Abbas said the Palestinian leadership was making “intensive and urgent calls” to many Arab leaders in the hope of exerting pressure on Israel to deescalate the situation.

Hamas rocket attacks skyrocket as UN & Obama administration focus on “restraining” Israel, Human Rights Voices, July 8, 2014

(Please see also US backs Israeli ‘right to defend itself,’ UN chief condemns rockets. — DM)

Gaza rocket attacks from Hamas have escalated from 6 on June 27, 2014 to more than 160 on July 8, 2014. Targets include a day care center, summer camps, schools, and homes, the clear intention being to target and murder as many Jewish civilians as possible. The attacks follow days during which the UN and the Obama administration issued repeated calls for Israeli “restraint” – in effect attempting to diminish Israel’s essential right of self-defense.

In the latest salvo, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refuses to name the perpetrators of the attacks “from Gaza.” No mention is made of “Hamas.” And while the rockets should “stop,” what is really bothering the UNSG is alleged Palestinian victims. “The Secretary-General is extremely concerned at the dangerous escalation of violence, which has already resulted in multiple Palestinian deaths and injuries as a result of Israeli operations against Gaza.”

Instead of an Israeli right of self-defense, Ban Ki-moon “reiterates his call on all actors to exercise maximum restraint.” He goes even further and legitimizes Palestinian terrorism with his simultaneous complaint directed at Israel that “the unsustainable situation in Gaza will also need to be addressed in its political, security, humanitarian and development dimensions as part of a comprehensive solution.”

As for the notoriously anti-Israel UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, she had this to say: “From a human rights point of view, I utterly condemn these rocket attacks and more especially I condemn Israel’s excessive acts of retaliation.”