The longstanding connection between the Iranian and North Korean missile programs has the Israeli security establishment cautiously watching the developments in the communist nation. This weekend’s test has Israeli analysts examining the launch for insight into Iran’s capabilities and looking for a response.

“Concern is increasing, seeing how everyone knows that North Korea is the main provider of missiles to Syria and Iran. This means that every technological advance could be disseminated elsewhere,” said Tal Inbar, deputy director of the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Studies. “Of course, this is disturbing, because a missile of this kind has a range of thousands of [miles], and this is an irresponsible regime with nuclear capabilities and an irrational leadership.”

Intelligence reports suggest Iran’s missiles are more or less copies of those used by North Korea. Iran’s long-range Shahab-5 and Shahab-6 missiles are reportedly based on the Taepodong-2 missile, the type of missile North Korea tested over the weekend.

Analysts also see strong similarities between the first stage of the North Korean missile and Iran’s Safir-2 missile.

Experts, however, say Iran has moved beyond the North Korean-developed technology and has achieved technological independence in the area of missile development.

Mr. Inbar said he believed North Korea’s claim it had attempted to launch a satellite into orbit, rather than test a ballistic missile. However, he said the technology needed to launch a satellite was identical to that used in an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

The fact North Korea has not released any pictures or video of the launch could be cause for suspicion.

Reports suggest the North Korean missile failed during launch, which, coupled with prior North Korean failures, has led many analysts around the globe to question the communist nation’s capabilities.

Western anger, particularly that of Japan, South Korea and the United States, primarily stems from a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution banning such launches.

Despite the angst over the launch, Israel remains confident it has the ability to protect itself from the Iranian variants of the North Korean missiles.

“This is exactly what the Arrow missile system is designed for,” said a senior security source, and stressed that the Arrow anti-missile system can destroy a missile that comes apart in three stages and is geared to evading aerial defense systems.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

A group of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reservists and officers have asked Israel’s attorney general, Meni Mazuz, to file a lawsuit against the daily newspaper Ha’aretz on the grounds a story it broke alleging Israeli soldiers committed war crimes in Gaza last January constituted libel.

The Ha’aretz piece ran almost verbatim in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. According to Google, 2,245 news outlets around the world picked up on the Ha’aretz piece, assuming it was a credible Israeli source.

The newspaper published testimonies from two soldiers at the Yitzhak Rabin Pre-military Academy who claimed that certain actions had taken place in Gaza that violated IDF rules and the Geneva Convention.

The publication of the alleged events triggered an Israel Military Police investigation that determined the allegations were unfounded and that the soldiers’ testimonies were based on hearsay rather than on concrete facts.

Nonetheless, the Ha’aretz article gained prominence in the international media and was presented as proof Israel had committed war crimes during the Gaza operation.

The soldiers told Mr. Mazuz in a letter Ha’aretz had failed to “carry out minimal checks before publishing false information,” and the information it published had been proven to be “hearsay” and an “exaggeration” by Israel’s Judge Advocate General’s Office.

“Ha’aretz did not settle for informing the public about things that were said by individual combatants. It chose to portray the entire activity of the IDF soldiers as the lowest of acts, cold-blooded murder,” the soldiers wrote. “With one stroke of the pen, we turned from messengers of the state, risking their lives in its defense, to emissaries of the Devil, firing indiscriminately and mercilessly at women, children and elderly people.”

Consequently, the soldiers contend the false report painted the entire IDF in a poor light and fell outside the pale of “legitimate news reporting” and “proper public discourse.”

“They were also not presented as the position of one person or another, but rather as an accomplished fact,” they wrote.

These facts, in their opinion, make the story subject to Israel’s libel laws.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has approved a series of measures making it easier for Palestinian Christians to participate in Easter festivities and in the Pope’s visit next month.

The Israel Civil Administration will be issuing entry certificates to Palestinian Christians who meet set security criteria, allowing them to enter Israel without limits on the age of those who are eligible or the number of certificates that can be obtained.

The certificates will allow these Palestinians to participate in celebrations in Jerusalem and Nazareth and to visit family members in Israel.

At the same time, Christians living in Israel will be allowed to enter Bethlehem and Jericho in order to participate in Easter celebrations there.

So far, about 10,000 certificates have been issued and the civil administration predicts that, by the time of the Pope’s arrival, another 5,000 will be issued.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Israeli intelligence sources say Iran has renewed its efforts to smuggle weapons through Sudan into Gaza. This follows on the heels of Israel’s bombing and destruction a convoy of trucks carrying smuggled weapons through Sudan, which had been bound for Hamas in January.

Following the bombing, members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards tried getting at least one other convoy through Sudan, but reports indicate Egyptian authorities turned it back.

This time, agents of Iran’s allies – Syria and Hezbollah – have lent their assistance to the operation by working out of Yemen and various African countries. Following the bombing and Egyptian efforts to block the Gaza-bound arms shipments, Iran realized its smuggling operations had been discovered and decided to change tactics by relying on allied agents.

Hamas leaders who live in Damascus, Syria have also visited Sudan several times since Israel bombed the convoy, reportedly in an effort to renew the smuggling operations. Thus far, the terror group has succeeded in smuggling into Gaza heavy machine guns, dozens of rockets, tons of explosives and anti-aircraft missiles.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

The Spanish Office of the Public Prosecutor informed the Israeli Foreign Ministry yesterday it had submitted a request to a Spanish judge asking him to dismiss a legal complaint against certain high-ranking Israeli officials.

The prosecutor’s office asked Hon. Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles, the investigating magistrate, to dismiss the complaint, which was lodged in connection with the Israeli Air Force’s bombing of a house containing a Hamas leader and 14 bystanders. Everyone inside the house was killed. The incident has commonly been referred to as the “Shehadeh matter.”

In a detailed 28-page submission to the court, the Spanish prosecutor’s office analyzed the legal and factual situation in the case and determined Spanish courts lacked proper jurisdiction to try the case. The decision was made on the basis of Spanish and international law and because “the State of Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary, which has primary jurisdiction over the incident, and which is currently investigating the matter in its own legal system.”

Because Israel currently has the case under legal review, the Spanish prosecutor found Israel “is in accordance with and above the international minimum standards required to a State that applies the Rule of Law.”

The Spanish case was said to be the first of many cases where Israel critics abroad are turning to their local courts to demand that Israeli officers be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”

At least five cases are now pending in British courts against Israeli army officers who hesitate to visit Great Britain on official or private sojourns, for fear of arrest on British soil.

Although the Israelis have been spared a trial in Spain, the Spanish legal theory of universal jurisdiction, however, has not let six former Bush administration off the hook. A Spanish judge currently is reviewing charges against David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Douglas Feith and William Haynes II – all former Bush administration officials – in connection with the waterboarding of al-Qaida mastermind Abu Zubaidah.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Israeli border guards shot and killed a 16-year-old Bedouin girl Saturday afternoon after she fired several pistol shots at their base, located a short distance from Hura, the Israeli south Negev town where she lived.

The girl, identified as Basma Awad al-Nabiri, arrived at the base wearing traditional Bedouin dress, which initially led the border guards to believe she wasn’t a threat. However, that quickly changed after she pulled her gun out and began firing four or five shots at a sentry who then pushed her back.

“She seemed dazed, disconnected from reality,” the sentry said. “I spoke to her in Arabic. I told her that it wasn’t worth it to keep shooting and hurting people. I tried to soften her, to convince her to throw away the gun, that we wouldn’t hurt her.”

While he tried coaxing her to give up, he also called for backup, as she reportedly ran for cover and continued firing. The sentry and other backup guards who arrived on the scene kept trying to coax her to lay down her weapon.

However, she refused to lay down her pistol and kept shooting until an arriving Israeli officer shot and killed her, while the sentry and other border guards took cover.

Israeli intelligence remains skeptical that she acted alone and on her own initiative.

“It is unlikely that a teenage girl would perpetrate a terror attack on her own initiative without someone in [her] town brainwashing her, providing her with a handgun and teaching her to shoot,” said a high-ranking officer of the Israeli intelligence who is investigating the attack. “Our goal is to get to whomever sent her.”

Israeli investigators confiscated the girl’s computer and papers containing correspondence she had engaged in with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and others. She reportedly received information on how to perpetrate the attack on related Web sites.

Her notebooks, seized by Israeli police, contained poems about her desire to be a “martyr” and about her anger over the Arab world’s failure to destroy Israel.

According to her teachers, she attended to the Amal Hura high school, where she was an outstanding member of a program for gifted students.

Israeli police said yesterday they had arrested the girl’s uncle, brother and mother on the assumption they had advance knowledge of the attack. Some in Israel are saying such an attack by a Bedouin is unprecedented.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

On Saturday, for the second time in four days, Israeli troops identified terrorists who were in the process of planting a bomb near the Gaza border fence.

This time, the Golani infantry Brigade opened fire on the armed men and killed two of them.

The armed men were identified drawing near the border fence to the north of the Karni crossing, not far from Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

The soldiers who were dispatched to the scene crossed the border and charged the terrorists. After the incident was over, the troops found the bomb the terrorists had been planning to plant and, in searches of the area, found a pistol, a wire cutter and barbed wire.

One of the terrorists who were killed was identified as Jamil Koufa, a 22-year-old Islamic Jihad terrorist who was involved in the planning and execution of past terror attacks.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, he planted a bomb in March 2008 that killed two Israeli soldiers. Last January, he was involved in killing a Bedouin tracker leading an Israeli Army patrol.

In Israel, the Bedouins who are citizens of Israel are conscripted to full Israeli army service. Israeli Arabs, by contrast, are exempt from compulsory Israeli army service.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

A year ago, the Jerusalem Western Wall (Wailing Wall) Heritage Foundation conducted a survey of the state of the wall, the only remaining part of the Second Temple, which the Romans destroyed in 70 A.D.

The survey revealed the deterioration of the stones in the wall. This led the Israel Antiquities Authority to take urgent action and conduct an extensive physical and engineering study of the wall’s condition. This culminated with the submission of a plan to conserve one of Judaism’s holiest sites.

The plan focuses on the conservation treatment of the stones in the Western Wall and their stability, in accordance with their degree of preservation and the level of risk they present to the visiting public.

The project to conserve the stones in the Western Wall, in particular, and the conservation and development of the Western Wall compound in general, is one of the most complex projects of its kind ever undertaken in Israel.

The Jerusalem Western Wall compound project is an example of the enormous task that confronts us in conserving and presenting Israel’s cultural heritage. It is important on both the national and international levels because the site sees large numbers of visitors.

Consequently, it needs constant maintenance, and preserving the wall’s appearance for the future is a serious challenge.

This undertaking requires knowledge and professionalism in a wide range of fields.

The project is being directed by the Israel Antiquities Authority Conservation Department, which is staffed with architects, engineers and conservators who specialize in different areas.

The conservation department manifests the authority’s obligation to create a body that will lead the way in the field of conservation in Israel, as a result of the state’s responsibility to the cultural heritage in its territory.

In touching the stones of the Western Wall, the conservators of the Israel Antiquities Authority are touching what has been the very heart of Jewish heritage for generations.

The Israel Conservation Department is engaged in preserving heritage sites that date to a variety of periods. A professional team of 55 people implements the conservation work: conservators, architects, engineers, planners, chemists, geologists and archaeologists.

David Bedein can be contacted at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com