Israel Update for August 2011

David Dolan

Major clashes broke out between Palestinian and Israeli armed forces in mid August, which many analysts say might portend fuller warfare looming on the horizon. Sparked off by the worst Islamic terror attacks against Israeli citizens in several years, the clashes left scores dead and wounded on both sides. The initial Palestinian terrorist assaults were launched from the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula by a militant Muslim group closely linked to the radical Hamas movement, which repeated its calls during the month for Israel's ultimate destruction. An Egyptian government investigation later revealed that three Egyptian Muslim terrorists took part in the Palestinian raids-an ominous development indeed.

The terrorist outrages, which left eight Jews dead and several dozen wounded, were quickly met by Israeli Air Force strikes on Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip. This in turn led to the heaviest rocket bombardments of nearby Israeli population centres from the Hamas-ruled coastal zone since the IDF's Cast Lead military operation ended in January 2009. Although the new Israeli Iron Dome anti-rocket system successfully intercepted quite a few of the over 150 rockets fired at Israeli cities and towns in the week after the attacks, many rockets and mortar shells did succeed in reaching their targets, leaving one Jewish civilian dead and several others severely wounded, including an illegal Palestinian worker. Normal life was disrupted in Beersheva, Ashdod, Ashkelon and other areas of the south during the bombardments.

A number of Israeli Middle East analysts expressed serious concern that the Palestinian-Egyptian Islamic terror attacks may have been ordered by the extremist Shiite Muslim Iranian regime in a test run of what to expect from a massive Lebanese Hizbullah rocket blitz upon the whole of Israel. Many said the prospects of such a Hizbullah assault grew significantly in the wake of growing international calls for Syrian strongman Bashar Assad to immediately step down from power as his people's blood continues to flow in his streets. Experts warned that the rogue Iranian mullahs will not allow their main Arab ally to go down without a major blowback, most likely aimed at Israel. This came as press reports said Iran has begun moving its uranium centrifuge enrichment facilities into underground bunkers in apparent anticipation of Israeli and/or NATO air strikes against the country's threatening nuclear development programme.

Another attack was launched by a lone terrorist in Tel Aviv on August 29th leaving seven Israelis wounded, several seriously. The Palestinian perpetrator from Nablus north of Jerusalem commandeered a taxi after stabbing the driver and drove it into a nearby policeman manning a roadblock in the south Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa. Shouting out a Muslim slogan, he then jumped out of the taxi and stabbed five other policemen and a security guard. Police said the 20 year old terrorist was stopped by the roadblock while on his way to kill high school students attending a special pre-school-year function at a nearby popular nightclub. The club was filled with over 2,000 teenagers. Authorities issued warnings that additional Palestinian terror attacks are expected in the coming days and weeks.

Israeli officials also kept a close eye on several other regional tremors during the month, especially the war in Libya and growing Islamic agitation in Egypt. Concerns grew that Libyan weapons of mass destruction might make their way east to the Gaza Strip in the wake of the Gaddafi family regime's blood-soaked collapse.

Meanwhile Israeli street protests against the high cost of housing, food, fuel and other commodities continued to rock the country, with the largest public demonstration in several years held in Tel Aviv. Tent cities expanded throughout the small country while doctors finally ended their months-long work sanctions in demand of higher wages. Some charged that socialist street protest leaders are trying to topple the democratically-elected Netanyahu government in a similar 'popular' fashion to the way Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was driven from power last February. Intense government focus on the large protest movement quickly waned in the wake of the renewed security crisis as officials prepared for the planned Palestinian Authority statehood declaration in New York the second half of September and the violence that might spark off.

Terror From Sinai

As previously noted in these monthly reports, Israeli officials had been expressing growing alarm at the escalating breakdown of law and order in the Egyptian-ruled Sinai Peninsula this year, which was handed over to Cairo's control as part of the American-brokered Camp David peace accords signed in 1978. It seemed to many as if the interim military government that assumed power in the wake of President Mubarak's forced ouster either could not, or did not want to, enforce basic security in the large desert peninsula. Hamas and Al Qaida-backed terrorists blew up the natural gas pipeline that brings fuel to Israel and Jordan no less than five times over the past few months, causing major flow disruptions which added to ballooning fuel prices in both countries. Armed Bedouin gangs roamed freely in many areas, including near some coastal resort towns popular with European, American and Israeli tourists.

The fear in Israeli governmental circles was that, with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement now openly contending for power in Cairo in the wake of the White House-supported overthrow of America's closest Arab ally, Islamic militants felt emboldened to act as they wished in the sparsely-populated desert zone. Alarm bells increased early in the summer when intelligence reports revealed the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hamas movement was moving many of its weapons production facilities to the Sinai Peninsula, apparently assuming that IDF jets would not be politically able to attack them there due to the peace treaty and the long-standing alliance between Washington and Cairo.

The ability of Hamas to operate freely in Sinai had been severely restricted by the Mubarak government. However, recognizing that the 'populist' movement to oust it was largely comprised of Islamic groups that support Hamas' extreme anti-Israel stand, the new interim government opened border crossings from the Gaza Strip into Egypt, allowing terrorists to flood into the peninsula. As a result, Israeli officials sternly warned their citizens to stay away from the Egyptian resort zone, fearing more Israelis would be kidnapped by Hamas militants. Meanwhile the desert zone became the preferred route for weapons smuggled to the Gaza Strip from the war-torn Arab country of Libya due west of Egypt. Israeli security officials pointed to substantial evidence that Egyptian security forces were looking the other way, probably greased by large bribes, as the weapons made their way across the north of the troubled country. They noted that eastern Libya, from where the latest 'Arab Spring' anti-government rebel force sprouted, is a known Islamic fundamentalist stronghold that has long expressed strong support for the Hamas anti-peace stand.

Growing lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula caused Israeli leaders to privately demand that Cairo take control of the situation. Egyptian officials then decided to send a squadron of 1,000 soldiers into the area after receiving permission from Israel to do so (as part of the Camp David accords, Egyptian troop movements into the demilitarized zone must be coordinated with Jerusalem). Troops entered the area on August 15, heading mainly to the north where the pipeline attacks have taken place. An existing small border police patrol force was already operating as usual along the 150 mile shared border with Israel, where the Netanyahu government is constructing a security fence (way too slowly, say many critics). The police force had long proved to be ill-equipped to halt a constant flow of illegal infiltration into Israel across the mostly unmarked desert border, with thousands of migrants entering Israeli territory each year, mostly coming from the war-ravaged African country of Sudan, or Somalia.

Dying For Allah

Given this background, it was no surprise to Israeli officials when intelligence agents learned in early August that a major Palestinian terrorist operation was being planned in the Gaza Strip to be launched from Sinai into southern Israel. Arab sources indicated the plan was in its final stages of readiness, and would include a large number of terrorists infiltrating across the international border into the Israeli Negev Desert north of the port city of Eilat. However the sources indicated the goal would be to kidnap more Israeli soldiers in a similar fashion to the cross border Hamas raid that nabbed IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006 (talks to secure his release stalled in Cairo in August). This information led IDF and police officers to assume any infiltration would take place under the cover of darkness, not during the middle of the sun-soaked day.

Whether those reports were wrong or deliberately distorted was not immediately clear to Israeli officials, but in the end, a much more deadly operation was actually being planned. Indeed, the terrorists did hope to kidnap some additional soldiers, but their malevolent goal was to kill as many Jews as possible before undoubtedly being killed themselves. In fact, it was miraculous that dozens did not perish in the combined assaults which rocked Israel on August 18.