A Coming Hamas-Israel War? By ROBERT BAER FEB 6,08
It's difficult to decide which will go over the edge first, Lebanon or Gaza. Maybe both at the same time, hand in hand, and - if you believe Israel - with a gentle shove from Iran. Bets are on Gaza to explode first. Although Hamas claimed that Monday's suicide bomber in Dimona, the first in a year, came from the West Bank, the Israelis still are investigating whether he got into the country from Gaza via Egypt while the border fence at Rafah was breached. It's certainly possible. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians, half of Gaza's population, crossed into Egypt and back, primarily to shop for basic goods unavailable at home.Israel also suspects that advanced long-range rockets, anti-tank rockets and anti-aircraft missiles were smuggled into Gaza during the breach. But more ominously, Israel claimed that, along with the weapons, Iranian-trained Hamas guerrillas came across at the same time - presumably to operate the new weapons. The Negev was hit by rockets on Tuesday, but they were an old model, Qassams.At this point Israel has to be wondering if Hamas is planning a real war, something along the lines of the 34-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hizballah. A Hamas official didn't put that suspicion to rest when he said that next time Hamas might knock a hole in the fence that separates Gaza from Israel.
Israel knows too that Hamas would like to drag Egypt into it. And, who knows, it might work. At some level someone in Egypt is complicit in smuggling weapons into Gaza. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition party, still looks at Hamas as its Palestinian branch. Iran and Hizballah have been soliciting Egypt's cooperation in more help for Gaza. Will Egyptian President Mubarak be able to hold the line, keep a lid on Gaza, when Israel itself can't? Count on it, Israel will do something to change the status quo in Gaza. One option is to build a bigger and higher wall around the country. Construction on a wall separating Israel and Egypt has already started. But little good it will do against the Hamas rockets Israel thinks are coming into Egypt.Walls aside, what Israel sorely misses is the capacity to strike fear into its neighbors, deterrence. The Winograd Commission spelled it out in bleak terms in its report on Israel's failures during the 34-day war. Israel cannot survive, the official statement said, unless it is able to deter its enemies - teach Hamas and Hizballah a lesson they won't forget.Lebanon is second on the neighborhood triage list, but only because no one has been killed in the last 24 hours, at least at this writing. On the other hand, since the Lebanese army fired on demonstrators in the Shi'a southern suburbs on January 27 - killing seven, five of whom were connected to Iran's proxy, Hizballah - there have been 11 attacks on the army. The only reason Hizballah has not responded more forcefully is that the time is not right. But a war in nearby Gaza might just be the perfect time.Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down.
Israeli aircraft pound Gaza Wed Feb 6, 3:48 PM ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Israeli aircraft pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday following renewed rocket fire against southern Israel, wounding at least three people, a Palestinian medical source said.
One of the wounded was in serious condition following the strike on the north Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the medic said.There was no immediate word on that raid from the Israeli military but a spokesman confirmed two other strikes.We conducted two air raids against the Gaza Strip, one targeting an arms-manufacturing workshop in the centre of the territory and a second targeting a weapons store in the south, he said.Two missiles slammed into a metal workshop in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, causing damage but no casualties, witnesses said.The Israeli military often strikes metal workshops in the territory charging that they are used to manufacture makeshift rockets of the sort which Palestinian militants frequently fire into southern Israel. Gaza militants launched at least seven rockets at Israel on Wednesday, an army spokeswoman said.Two children, aged two and four, sustained shrapnel wounds when one of the rockets slammed into their home, medical sources said.
Israel rebuffs Egypt-Gaza border deployments By Jeffrey Heller Wed Feb 6, 12:05 PM ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli leaders on Wednesday rejected proposals to secure Gaza's frontier with Egypt with additional Egyptian forces or international troops two weeks after militants blasted it open, officials said. Israel's Foreign Ministry had suggested giving the nod to Egypt to double the number of its guards at the border to 1,500. Under an Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, the number of troops that can be deployed along the frontier is limited.The officials said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his security cabinet, which includes his foreign and defense ministers, rebuffed the idea, as well as the deployment of any international force at the frontier.Egyptian officials had no immediate response.Israeli defense officials have questioned whether Cairo is making a real effort to secure the Gaza border, which Hamas Islamists in control of the territory blasted open at the Rafah crossing on January 23 in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade.The minister of defense thinks it won't make any difference whether there are more (Egyptian) policemen or less, a defense official said, explaining Ehud Barak's opposition to the proposal, which could entail reopening a long-standing Israeli-Egyptian border agreement.After allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to cross into the Sinai desert last month, Egypt closed the border on Sunday to Palestinians seeking entry. A security source said hundreds were still be allowed back into Gaza in controlled batches.One person was killed and dozens were wounded in clashes that ensued between Egyptian border guards and Palestinian militants after the frontier was sealed.In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas again offered to take charge of the Gaza Strip's borders. His Fatah faction lost control of the territory to Hamas Islamists in fighting in June.We, as an authority, are ready to resume our responsibility for the crossings and Hamas should stay away from this subject, he told reporters.
HAMAS ROLE
Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said in Gaza the group would never agree to be frozen out of any border arrangements.Hamas is committed to ending all forms of the continued siege and it will not accept the continuation of the closure of crossings that turned Gaza into a big prison, Abu Zuhri said.Under an accord in 2005, the year Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, the Rafah crossing with Egypt was overseen by European Union monitors who were not allowed to carry weapons.Citing security concerns, Israel frequently closed the Gaza-Egypt border by blocking the EU monitors, based in Israel, from accessing Rafah through the Israeli crossing point with Gaza at Kerem Shalom.At the security cabinet meeting, ministers decided to approve the construction of a fence along the Israel-Egypt frontier, which cuts through desert areas.Hamas's breaching of the Rafah frontier has raised fears in Israel, where suicide bombers belonging to Hamas struck on Monday, that Palestinian militants could make their way into the Jewish state through Egypt.(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in the Gaza Strip and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Michael Winfrey)
Israel to build new barrier along part of Egypt border by Ron Bousso Wed Feb 6, 8:48 AM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel decided on Wednesday to start building a reinforced barrier along parts of its porous border with Egypt in a bid to prevent infiltration attempts by Palestinian militants, an official told AFP. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defence and foreign ministers decided on the move after a three-hour meeting at the premier's office, a senior government official told AFP.Israel will soon begin constructing two sections of the fence following a plan presented at the meeting by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.The first section will be near the southern Red Sea resort town of Eilat and the second near the area of Nitzana in the centre of the 250 kilometre- (150-mile) desert border, he said.Government spokesman Mark Regev declined to comment on the meeting.The encounter, which also included senior security officials, came a day after the Islamist Hamas movement claimed responsibility for Monday's deadly suicide bombing in Israel, the first such attack in a year.A 73-year-old woman was killed in the bombing in Dimona.The attack came after a near two-week border breach between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, raising fears in Israel that Hamas militants were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who poured into the Sinai when the border was open.Hamas said on Tuesday that two of its members from the occupied West Bank had carried out the bombing, the first time that it claimed responsibility for a suicide blast inside Israel in three and a half years.At Wednesday's meeting security officials presented intelligence reports indicating that dozens of Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip had scattered across the Sinai desert after militants blew open the border on January 23, the official said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recommended during the meeting that Israel support Egypt's request to double its forces along its border with Gaza from the current 750 to 1,500, an official in her ministry told AFP.The meeting came a day after Israel pounded Hamas positions in its Gaza Strip bastion, killing nine Palestinian militants as the Islamist movement said it was behind the suicide bombing in Dimona in Israel's Negev desert.It was the first time since August 2004 that Hamas, which seized control last June of the territory sandwiched between Israel and Egypt from forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack.Israel has increasingly tightened restrictions on movement around Gaza since the second Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, notably in June 2006 after militants seized an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross-border raid and a year later when Hamas seized power.The measures culminated in a full-scale lockdown imposed on January 17 that was eased five days later amid mounting international concern over a humanitarian crisis in the territory where most residents depend on aid.The Israeli military kept up its strikes on Hamas on Wednesday, wounding two militants in an air raid on an Islamist position in the north, Palestinian medics said.
The army said the raid targeted a Qassam- (rocket) launching cell immediately after they fired rockets into Israel.Hamas's armed wing said it fired four rockets and mortar rounds into Israel on Tuesday. The army said the projectiles struck without causing casualties. The latest violence in and around Gaza came after a two-week lull that accompanied the breach of the impoverished territory's border with Egypt. Gaza militants blew open the border barrier on January 23 in a bid to counter the punishing Israeli blockade, but the frontier was resealed by Egyptian and Hamas forces at the weekend. During the two-week breach hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are estimated to have entered Egypt from Gaza to stock up on supplies. The idea of building a reinforced barrier along the Egyptian border was first raised in Israel several years ago, but was eventually abandoned because of the high cost. A defence ministry spokesman told AFP that a reinforced border fence could cost at least 500 million dollars and take up to two years to construct.
Hamas says it carried out Israel suicide bombing Tue Feb 5, 11:14 AM ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) - The Islamist Hamas movement claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a deadly suicide bombing in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first such attack in more than a year. The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades claim full responsibility for the martyrdom operation in the town of Dimona, Hamas's armed wing said in a statement.Monday's bombing was previously claimed by three other militant groups, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group loosely tied to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah movement, the Islamists' main rivals.It is the first time that Hamas has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack since August 2004. Its claim came after two Israeli raids on Gaza killed a total of nine Hamas militants.
