Jerusalem – Israel’s security officials have warned the Israeli government that the next flare-up will not be on one front alone and that Israel will fight alone.
Hezbollah intends to renew the fighting, under an Iranian umbrella, coordinated with an escalated Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.
Syria has not given up its aim of “paying Israel back” for what happened in September 2007. “It will be hard for me to get to sleep tonight,” one of the Israeli ministers confessed after the meeting with the media. “I get the impression that only the West does not intend to shoot at us.”
According to this warning, the regime in Lebanon is on the verge of collapse.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is very close to gaining control of the country, perhaps by means of the next parliamentary election. That means that Lebanon will create an extremist Shiite stronghold on the northern border fence.
Meanwhile, even though the regime in Syria is stable, the intelligence experts say, the Syrians bear a deep grudge against Israel and do not intend to let last year’s attack on a facility in their territory pass without settling scores. Syrian missiles can now reach any point in the state of Israel, and they possess a chemical arsenal and biological weapons capability.
The Iranian drive to achieve a nuclear capability will come to fruition toward the end of the current year or the year after. Israel’s intelligence chiefs believe that the Americans will almost certainly not take military action against the Iranians, while the effectiveness of the global effort will not affect the pace of the Iranian progress.
The report envisions the reduction of U.S. influence in the Middle East over the next year.
The Israeli intelligence community has assessed that the United States will reduce both its military presence and political influence in the Middle East in 2008 and 2009. This assessment envisions the start of a reduction of U.S. military presence in Iraq over the next year as well as a reduction in operations in the Persian Gulf.
All these factors point to the possibility that within a year, or at most a year and a half, Israel will be attacked by an armed alliance of terrorism, trained and armed with rockets, with the backing of two border states, Syria and a Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon. Both will be protected by an Iranian nuclear umbrella. “
And as for the Israeli Arab community, who now number more than 1 million citizens, Israel’s intelligence officials warn that their rapid trend toward extremism continues, with the inspiration for this coming from the Israeli Arab Knesset Parliament members. The stoning of cars on the roads of northern Israel is a symptom of this disturbing trend, and the Arab home front could flare up at any moment and join forces with the external fronts.
David Bedein can be reached at Media@actcom.co.il. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com
©The Bulletin 2008