Israel Update for February 2008

The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper, generally thought to be among the best sources of reliable information in the Arabic language press, reported that Defense Minister Barak had warned Syrian leaders that major new IDF military action was pending against both Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian Hamas forces. It claimed he delivered the stark message via Turkish leaders when he met them in Ankara mid-month.

The paper noted that Israel believes both militant Muslim groups have significantly stepped up their own war preparations over the past year while acquiring sophisticated new weapons systems that seriously threaten the Jewish state. Indeed, Barak told a parliamentary committee last August that Hizbullah has more rockets deployed today than it possessed at the start of the 2006 war. Al-Hayat added that he urged Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to move away from supporting Hizbullah militia forces or risk being targeted in the reported upcoming operation.

Barak was also said to have asked Turkey to consider joining a multinational force to be stationed in the Gaza Strip following any full-scale IDF operation to uproot Hamas forces that seized full control over the Palestinian coastal zone last June. According to Israeli media reports, the idea of putting together and stationing such an international force there-patterned on United Nations troops who have been operating in southern Lebanon since 1978-was being seriously discussed inside the halls of government power. Until now, Israeli leaders had always resisted ongoing Arab demands for foreign troops to be positioned in Palestinian areas, fearing it would ultimately restrict Israeli military options and increase pressure for UN forces to patrol parts of Israel's capital city, Jerusalem.

Master Terrorist Killed In Syria

February's war jitters were largely sparked off when a notorious Hizbullah terrorist mastermind was killed in a bomb blast in an upscale Damascus neighborhood. Imad Mughniyeh, who served as the radical group's "military chief of staff" in recent years, was thought to be behind some of Hizbullah's most horrendous atrocities, including massive explosions in Beirut in 1983 that left 241 American marines and 63 US Embassy workers dead and many others wounded, and subsequent bombings in the early 1990s in Argentina that took the lives of 119 people at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and at a nearby Jewish cultural center.

Hizbullah leaders and their Iranian puppeteers immediately denounced Mughniyeh's February 12 killing as a "Zionist action" which they vowed to swiftly avenge. In a speech several days later, Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed "open warfare" against Israel until the Jewish state is no more.

Despite immediate denials of involvement from the Prime Minister's office, the vociferous threats prompted government leaders to order a full military alert in the north and the movement of Patriot anti-missile batteries to the Haifa area, hit hard by Hizbullah rockets during the 2006 war. Foreign airlines flying into Ben Gurion airport were later ordered by the government to take extra security precautions to prevent possible Hizbullah hijackings or sea-launched rocket assaults upon them.

Several Middle East analysts opined that Maghniyeh's murder was probably undertaken by American security agents who have long desired to see the demise of what some termed the "Butcher of Beirut." Others said anti-Syrian Lebanese forces were most likely behind the Damascus bombing, noting it came almost exactly three years to the day when former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in Beirut by suspected Syrian agents. While refusing to speculate on who was responsible for the killing, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack bluntly stated that "the world is a better place" without the wretched Hizbullah terrorist plotter in it.

Vemon Flows From Iran

Speaking at a rally in southern Iran one week after the Damascus incident, bellicose Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his earlier contention that Israel was behind the bombing. "The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast," he thundered to cheering supporters, adding that Israel "uses terror as a threat every day, and afterwards is happy and joyful."

Other statements from Iranian military leaders added to the sense of looming conflict between Israel and the large Shiite nation and its regional allies. Iran's official news agency quoted a letter sent from Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander General Muhammad Ali Jafari to Sheik Nasrallah stating that "Hizbullah's might is growing with every passing day, and in the near future we will witness the disappearance of his cancerous growth called Israel." The statement echoed the Iranian Shiite revolution's late founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, who often referred to Israel as a "Zionist cancerous tumor" that would one day be eradicated.

An even more ominous outburst came from Iranian Armed Forces Chief Hassan Firouzabadi, who said in a similar letter to the Hizbullah leader that the Lebanese militia would soon deploy "radiation therapy" to wipe out Israel. Officials in Jerusalem worried that this might be a thinly veiled indication that field nuclear warheads are now stationed in Hizbullah dominated portions of Lebanon, probably under direct Iranian control. Hundreds of elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards are thought to be clandestinely stationed in the fractured country. The seasoned military commander added that "jihad warriors of the Lebanese and Palestinian Islamic resistance will continue the struggle until the complete destruction of the Zionist regime and the liberation of the entire Islamic land of Palestine."

Some analysts stated that field nuclear warheads would have a much better chance of striking Israeli targets than warheads on longer range Iranian surface to surface missiles. This is because the highly sophisticated American-funded Arrow anti-missile shield system is designed to take out such ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere, but not the nearly 4,000 shorter range rockets shot at Israel during the 2006 conflict. While the Patriot system can intercept some of these low flying rockets, the war showed that most are able to successfully reach their intended targets.

The speaker of Iran's parliament, Gholam Hadad, joined the evil chorus as well. He was quoted in an Iranian newspaper on February 21 as warning that "the countdown to Israel's destruction has begun."