WarSclerotic

Israeli air strikes reduce Gazan high-rise towers to dust, while Israelis flee in droves from Hamas fire.

Debka

Community leaders of 40,000 dwellers of the dozens of kibbutzim, moshavim and small towns adjoining the Gaza Strip spoke out Monday, Aug 25: “It is no longer possible to hide what is going on and the country must hear the truth,” they said: “The populated front line facing the Gaza Strip is no more.” Some bluntly blamed this fiasco on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and their management of the operation against Hamas.

The collapse of the Israeli line outside Gaza is analogous in strategic terms to the fall of the Bar Lev line 41 years ago which permitted the Egyptian artillery and tank assault across the Suez Canal, some veteran reservists said.

Others pointed out that, whereas the IDF should have carved out a sterile security zone inside the Gaza Strip, Hamas had managed to depopulate a strip of territory on the Israeli side of the border by relentless cross-border short-range rockets and mortar fire, and was now dictating events in southern Israel.
On the 50th day of Operation Defense Edge, people living in the south were outspokenly critical of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkott, in contrast to the early days of the operation. They are now blamed for failing to present the security cabinet with “creative military solutions” for combating Hamas tactics.
The prime minister and defense minister this week turned to covering their dilatory tactics against a full-scale war by disseminating predictions “from official sources” that this would be a “week of diplomacy” and truce negotiations would be resumed in Cairo.

This kite didn’t fly for long. Hamas was too full of triumph over the Zionist foe to bow to terms dictated by Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority and refused to be cowed in compromise – even by the heavy ordnance the Israeli air force is throwing at the Gaza Strip’s tallest buildings and high officers. Indeed, history shows that aerial blitzes rarely cause their objects to capitulate, unless augmented by ground action.
In an interview Sunday to Iranian TV, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal acclaimed the “great Hamas victory” over the Israeli army and thanked Tehran for the assistance which made it possible.
Monday morning, Palestinian Hamas leaders Izzat Rishak and Osama Hamdan added their voices to Meshaal’s by rejecting “talk” of an imminent ceasefire in Gaza and flatly turning down the amended Egyptian truce proposal as a basis for negotiations.
The exclusion of a “diplomatic option,” say our military sources, puts the ball back in the Netanyahu-Ya’alon court.

Air strikes are again proving unequal to halting or deterring Hamas’ rocket offensive – exactly as they did before Operation Defensive Edge began. So Israel’s options boil down to a choice between a war of attrition – which Netanyahu has publicly vetoed – and overcoming his revulsion to ground operations in the Gaza Strip – preferably a series of short, sharp surgical strikes.

Three days ago, DEBKAfile reported: Both sides were preparing Saturday night, Aug. 23, for an impending battle on Gaza Strip soil. Heavy IDF ground forces were poised ready to enter the territory – initially to demolish Hamas’s short-range rocket and mortar launches, which have disrupted the lives of neighboring Israeli communities and forced their mass evacuation.  Hamas has been firing those short-range weapons from 3-7 km inside the Gaza Strip.

Once they appreciated the effectiveness of their tactics, Hamas planners escalated the barrage Monday, launching 140 rockets and mortar shells, salvo after salvo, against a broad Israeli population, which has begun to register casualties and extensive damage.

This was meant as a goading challenge to the commanders of the Israel army ranged around the Gaza border, to come in and fight – if they dare.

Netanyahu government can hardly avoid calling a spade a spade, namely calling the conflict a “war” instead of an operation and treating Hamas as “the enemy,” which has to be beaten in a ruthless all-out national effort by every means available. The present situation, whereby Israeli air strikes reduce Gaza’s buildings to dust without stopping Hamas rocket attacks, juxtaposed opposite vanishing Israeli communities reduced to refugees is untenable.

The Muslim Colonists: Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

by Ezequiel Doiny
August 15, 2014 at 4:45 am

via The Muslim Colonists: Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

The Yazidi in Iraq and the Christian Copts in Egypt are not “occupiers” or “settlers;” neither are the Jews in Israel. They are both victims of a common enemy that seems to want a Middle East free of non-Muslims.

The current Palestinian narrative is that all Muslims in Palestine are natives and all Jews are settlers. This narrative is false. There has been a small but almost continuous Jewish presence in Palestine since the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome two thousand years ago, and, as we will see, most of the Muslims living in Palestine when the state of Israel was declared in 1948 were Muslim colonists from other parts of the Ottoman Empire who had been resettled and living in Palestine for fewer than 60 years.

There are two important historical events usually overlooked in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

One is the use that Muslim rulers made of the jizya (a discriminatory tax imposed only on non-Muslims, to “protect” them from being killed or having their property destroyed) to reduce the quantity of Jews living in Palestine before the British Mandate was instituted in 1922. The second were the incentives by the Ottoman government to relocate displaced Muslim populations from other parts of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine.

Until the late 1800s entire ancient Jewish communities had to flee Palestine to escape the brutality of Muslim authorities. As Egyptian historian Bat Ye’or writes in her book, The Dhimmi:

“The Jizya was paid in a humiliating public ceremony in which the non-Muslim while paying was struck in the head. If these taxes were not paid women and children were reduced to slavery, men were imprisoned and tortured until a ransom was paid for them. The Jewish communities in many cities under Muslim Rule was ruined for such demands. This custom of legalized financial abuses and extortion shattered the indigenous pre-Arab populations almost totally eliminating what remained of its peasantry… In 1849 the Jews of Tiberias envisaged exile because of the brutality, exactions, and injustice of the Muslim authorities. In addition to ordinary taxes, an Arab Sheik that ruled Hebron demanded that Jews pay an extra five thousand piastres annually for the protections of their lives and property. The Sheik threatened to attack and expel them from Hebron if it was not paid.”

The Muslim rulers not only kept the number of Jews low through discriminatory taxes, they also increased the Muslim population by providing incentives for Muslim colonists to settle in the area. Incentives included free land, 12 years exemption from taxes and exemption from military service.

Bat Ye’or continues:

“By the early 1800s the Arab population in Palestine was very little (just 246,000) it was in the late 1800s and early 1900s that most Muslim Colonists settled in Palestine because of incentives by the Ottoman Government to resettle displaced Muslim populations because of events such as the Austro-Hungarian Occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Crimean War and World War 1. Those events created a great quantity of Muslim Refugees that were resettled somewhere else in the Ottoman Empire… In 1878 an Ottoman law granted lands in Palestine to Muslim colonists. Muslim colonists from Crimea and the Balkans settled in Anatolia, Armenia, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine.”

Justin McCarthy, a professor of history at the University of Louisville, writing in his Annotated Map, “Forced Migration and Mortality in the Ottoman Empire,” also notes that there were about five million Muslims displaced due to the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Crimean War, Balkan wars, the Turkish war of independence and World War I.

Sergio DellaPergola, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in his paper “Demography in Israel/Palestine: Trends, Prospects and Policy Implications,” provides estimates of the population of Palestine in different periods. As the demographic data below shows, most Muslims living in Palestine in 1948 when the State of Israel was created had been living there for fewer than 60 years:

1890: Arab Population 432,000

1947: Arab Population 1,181,000

Growth in Arab population from 1890 to 1947: 800,000

The Yazidi in Iraq and the Christian Copts in Egypt are not “settlers” and “occupiers;” neither are the Jews in Israel. They are victims of a common enemy that seems to want a Middle East free of non-Muslims.

Ezequiel Doiny is a writer based in Maryland, USA

Islamic State fighters assault last Syrian stronghold in Raqqah, Long War Journal, Bill Roggio, August 24, 2014

(Since I was unable to post the map, here’s a link: Iraqi and Syrian towns and cities seized by the Islamic State and its allies. Map created by Patrick Megahan and Bill Roggio for The Long War Journal. Click to view larger map. — DM)

The Islamic State is close to cementing its control in the eastern Syrian province of Raqqah today after it overran the Tabqa military airport. The airbase is the last Syrian military stronghold in Raqqah.

Islamic State fighters “took control over wide areas of the airbase” after launching a massed assault earlier today, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A number of Syrian soldiers and allied “militiamen” withdrew “towards Athraya Area” after heavy fighting. Syrian warplanes attacked Islamic State fighters inside and outside of the airbase, indicating the military has lost control of the facility.

This Islamic State removed a nearby checkpoint to allow Syrian forces “an attempt to give the regime forces a path in order to retreat from the airbase and to avoid the violent clashes with them inside the airbase,” the Observatory later reported. “The warplanes that were in the airbase of [Tabqa] have been towed to another airbase in the Syrian Badeya and to the Military Airport of Deir Ezzor.”

The jihadists “took control” of the base “almost completely,” the Observatory said in a later update.

The Islamic State took heavy casualties during the fighting. According to the Observatory, over 100 Islamic State fighters were killed and 300 more were wounded. Twenty-five Syrian soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded.

The city of Tabqa, which is just north of the city, and the nearby Thawra Dam have been under the control of Islamist forces since February 2013. The Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, seized the city and dam, and control was transferred to the Islamic State sometime after the two Islamist groups split over the dispute over who controlled the jihad in Syria.

The Islamic State currently controls the city of Raqqah, the provincial capital and its de facto capital in Syria, and other towns and cities along the Euphrates River.

Earlier this month, the Islamic State defeated the 93rd Brigade of the Syrian Army. The unit was deployed from Idlib province to Raqqah in 2012 to reinforce the military’s weakening position in the province. On Aug. 23, the Islamic State published a video of “its brutal execution of Syrian soldiers” captured during the fighting, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. One soldier was beheaded.

The Islamic State “had also reported the killing of an IS [Islamic State] media member, Abu Usama al Ansari, during the operation,” SITE reported. “Footage shows one of the suicide bombers, Abu Hajer al Jazrawi, reading his will, and shows fighters storming the area and killing the soldiers it encounters.” Based on his name, the suicide bomber appears to be a Saudi.

The Islamic State controls most of eastern Syria and has recently advanced further into Aleppo province, where it is threatening the Al Nusrah Front as well as the allied Islamic Front. In Iraq, the jihadist group controls much of Anbar, Ninewa, Salahaddin, and Diyala provinces, as well as areas in northern Babil.

The US began launching airstrikes against the Islamic State in the northern areas of Ninewa after ignoring pleas by the Iraqi government to help halt the advance of the jihadist group for the past year. The Islamic State first took over areas in Anbar in January, then launched its blitzkrieg in the north in June. The US intervened only after the Islamic State seized the Mosul Dam and advanced into areas controlled by the Kurds. The airstrikes have helped the Kurds and the Iraqi military retake the dam and surrounding areas.

James Foley beheading: UK close to identifying jihadist

The UK is close to identifying a suspected British jihadist from the footage of the killing of a journalist, the ambassador to the US has said.

The Islamic State (IS) militant with an English accent appears in the extremist group’s video of the killing of American journalist James Foley.

“I do know from my colleagues at home that we are close,” Peter Westmacott told CNN’s State of the Union show.

The Foreign Office and Home Office refused to comment on the remarks.

“We do not comment on security matters,” an FCO spokesman said.

‘Sophisticated technologies’

Mr Westmacott said: “We’re not far away from that [finding Foley’s killer]. We’re putting a lot into it.”

He added that some “very sophisticated” voice recognition technology was being used in the hunt, which is being led by the FBI.

“I can’t say more than this at the moment, but I do know from my colleagues at home that we are close,” he added.

Earlier this month, extremist group IS published a video of the moments before and after the apparent beheading of Mr Foley, 40, who was seized in Syria in 2012.

The man shown in the video spoke with an English accent

Referring to the 500-plus British citizens who are thought to have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight in the past few years, Mr Westmacott said: “It goes beyond one horrendous criminal… It’s a betrayal of all our values.”

His comments come after Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond wrote in theSunday Times that the government was investing “significant resources” to tackle “a barbaric ideology”.

Mr Hammond also warned the threat from conflicts in Syria and Iraq could last a generation.

Philip Hammond said the conflicts in Iraq and Syria could last a generation

Downing Street earlier announced the appointment of a new security convoy to Iraq.

Lt Gen Sir Simon Mayall, the government’s senior defence advisor for the Middle East, will travel to the country next week to meet political leaders.

Work is also under way to supply “non-lethal equipment” to Kurdish forces who are battling IS, including night vision equipment and body armour, a No 10 spokesman added.

Domestic threat

Home Secretary Theresa May has said the government is looking at new powers to tackle the threat of extremism in Britain.

But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called for a stronger domestic response.

“More must be done to stop British citizens joining the barbarism and to keep the country safe if they return,” she wrote in the Sunday Times.

Islamic State was formed out of al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2013

She called for more action “to disrupt the travel plans of those planning go out to fight through better monitoring of the borders’ watch list as well as access to passports”.

The Home Office insisted it would take the “strongest possible action” against people travelling to fight in Iraq and Syria.

A spokesman said: “The police, security services and Border Force are actively working to identify, detect and disrupt terrorist threats, including from British fighters attempting to return to the UK.

“They use a wide range of powers including those which allow them to detain and interview individuals at the UK border suspected of being involved in terrorism.”

Senior Conservative MP David Davis, meanwhile, said TPims – used to restrict movement, the use of computers and mobile phones and meetings with others – were “completely useless”.

“What happens with them is that all the dangerous villains get away – they leave the country, go off back to Pakistan or now to Iraq,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend.

Who are Islamic State (IS)?

• Formed out of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2013, IS first captured Raqqa in eastern Syria
• By early 2014, it controlled Falluja in western Iraq
• Has since captured broad swathes of Iraq, seizing the northern city of Mosul in June
• Fighting has displaced at least 1.2 million Iraqis
• Pursuing an extreme form of Sunni Islam, IS has persecuted non-Muslims such as Yazidis and Christians, as well as Shia Muslims, whom it regards as heretics
• In July alone, IS expanded dramatically, recruiting some 6,300 new fighters largely in Raqqa, an activist monitoring group said

Government forces in Iraq said on Sunday that they had defeated an attack – suspected to be by IS – on the country’s largest oil refinery, killing several insurgents.

The Baiji refinery in northern Iraq has been the site of several battles between government forces and militants over the past few months.

Meanwhile, a car bomb killed at least seven people in the capital Baghdad.