Israeli Intelligence Expects Next Stage In Conflict To Last One Month

Jerusalem – The Middle East Newsline confirms that Israel’s intelligence community has concluded that the next stage in the Israeli-Arab war, which has continued since 1948, would last at least a month and include Syria.

The Israeli intelligence community has drafted a series of scenarios for Israel’s emergency services to prepare for future war. The scenarios envisioned the next war as including massive missile and rocket salvos, some of them containing chemical weapons, on Israeli cities.

“The scenarios are based on Arab military capability rather than intentions,” an Israeli government source said. “The war in Lebanon was also seen as a taste of what a full-scale war would bring.”

Israel’s military, police and emergency services have been on high alert for an attack by Hezbollah, Syria or Iran. The current alert will last throughout this month and continue with high combat-readiness for the rest of 2008.

Under the scenarios, hundreds of Israelis would be killed and thousands injured in missile strikes on Tel Aviv. The missiles would target strategic facilities, including Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Syria was also expected to be a participant in the next war against Israel. The intelligence community envisioned Hezbollah, Iran and Syria coordinating strikes on northern and central Israel. The Hamas regime and the Palestinian Authority would also fire rockets from Judea and Samaria and Gaza.

In one scenario, Iran would also attack the Jewish state. The intelligence community did not expect Iran to fire nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, yet maintained that such an attack could stem from Syria.

The Israeli casualty count would reach 230 in a conventional weapons attack. In a chemical strike, the intelligence community envisioned up to 16,000 deaths.

The intelligence community has also envisioned Iran’s use of Hezbollah as a proxy in a non-conventional weapons attack. One scenario was that Hezbollah launches Iranian-origin Abab unmanned aerial vehicles filled with toxic chemicals to strike a school or government building.

These scenarios reflected the Israeli military’s two leading priorities – defending against missile threats as well as stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The rocket and missile threat was meant to be resolved through the development of defensive systems rather than offensive military campaigns.

Israeli Government Coordinates With Hostile Forces

Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with senior officers of the Palestinian Fatah armed forces in Hebron, despite the fact that the Fatah remains at war with Israel.

The Jewish Community of Hebron responded to Mr. Olmert’s meeting with officers in Hebron by saying that, “It is shocking and frightening that at the very time that the state of Israel is preparing for war, the prime minister decides to suggest renewed cooperation with our mortal enemies.”

The Jewish community in Hebron issued a statement to the press in which it recounted that , “the last cooperation between Palestinian police was the murder of David Reuben and Achikam Amichai, three months ago.” On Jan. 1, Mr. Reuben and Mr. Amichai, young soldiers from Hebron, were on an afternoon hike in a nature reserve. It was there that they were gunned down by Palestinian police, who were later tried and convicted in a Palestinian court of killing them. The Palestinians freed the killers two weeks ago.

Yesterday also marked seven years since a Palestinian sniper killed 2-year-old Shalhevet Pas, the child of a Jewish family in Hebron.

The Olmert meeting with Palestinian armed forces occurred on the same day that the IDF began to collect licensed weapons from Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria, at a same time that the Israeli government is removing road blocks in Judea and Samaria, enabling armed Palestinian terrorists with easier access to movement on the roads of Judea and Samaria. This policy of roadblock removal was taken at the direct request of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

U.S. Wants To Supply PA With M-16 Rifle

The Palestinian Authority wants to be supplied with U.S.weapons.

Palestinian security sources have meanwhile said the United States has agreed to a request by the government of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to procure the M-16 assault rifle for Palestinian security forces. They said the M-16s would replace the Russian-origin AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles used by PA officers.

“The M-16 is a more effective rifle and would enable us to easily obtain additional weapons,” a Palestinian security source said.

Israel has so far refused a U.S. request for the transfer of the M-16 to the PA.

PA officials have been searching for light weapons, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades for its newly-organized National Security Forces and Presidential Guard.

Since the Palestinian Authority is making every effort to include Hamas into its armed forces, that means that the notion that the PA armed forces would engage Hamas in any hostile activity would be almost nil.

That would mean that weapons placed in the hands of the PA armed forces would be used against the Jewish state and its citizens.

As Sirens Blare, Civilian Property Loss In Gulf War Recalled

At 10 a.m. yesterday, sirens blared throughout Israel, on a day when the IDF home front command tested the public’s ability to get to shelters on time, in the event of yet another attack on the Israeli population centers.

Even people in Israel are not aware of just how much damage was caused to Israeli civilians during the early 1991 Gulf War, when Israel coped with sustained missile attacks from Iraq.

Working then as the CNN radio correspondent in Israel, this reporter was not allowed to report the actual number of homes that suffered direct missile hits.

Now the head of the IDF censorship bureau has allowed The Bulletin to publish that figure: 10,500 homes were hit by Iraqi missiles in Israel – mostly in the Tel Aviv area, since the widely understood assumption was that Iraq was aiming at the IDF General Command, located in the heart of Tel Aviv

One of the reasons why the dimensions of these attacks never made the news was that exactly one person was killed as a direct result of the Iraqi missile attacks on Israel. As the media adage goes, “When it bleeds, it leads.” Without fatalities, it is hard for the media to see the trauma and the tragedy caused to a community by sustained missile strikes.

David Bedein can be reached at Media@actcom.co.il. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008