DTN News - ISRAELI DEFENSE NEWS: Israeli Defense Chief Sounds Ready To Hit Iran, Thanks In Part To Iron Dome

Defense News: DTN News - ISRAELI DEFENSE NEWS: Israeli Defense Chief Sounds Ready To Hit Iran, Thanks In Part To Iron Dome

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Spencer Ackerman - Wired
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - November 30, 2012: Israel’s retiring defense chief thinks Iran needs to be “coerced” in 2013 from building an atom bomb, despite any U.S. hopes that sanctions will bring Tehran to the negotiating table. And the recent success of his new, U.S.-funded missile defenses seems to have convinced him that Israel is better able than ever to deter its Iran-backed foes.

“Of course, we would love to see some heavenly intervention that will stop them, to wake up some morning and learn that they’ve given up on their nuclear intentions,” Barak told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday during a joint press conference with Leon Panetta, his American counterpart. “You cannot build a strategy based on these wishes or prayers. Sanctions are working and they are more hurting than anything I remember from the past vis-a-vis Iran, but I don’t believe these kinds of sanctions will bring the ayatollahs to a moment of truth where they sit around a table, look into each other’s eyes and decide that the game is over.”

Not exactly what Panetta wanted to hear during what was supposed to be a friendly press conference in which they celebrated how the U.S.-backed Iron Dome rocket defense system stopped Hamas’ rocket attacks cold. The U.S. defense chief, who effused over the retiring Barak as “a man of peace” and praised their long friendship, said the “unprecedented pressure” on Iran from international sanctions present “time and space for an effort to try to achieve a diplomatic solution.”

Not likely, thinks the retiring Barak. “During the coming year and hopefully before they reach what I have called a ‘zone of immunity’” — a point at which Israeli airstrike couldn’t meaningfully hinder Iranian nuclear work — Iran “will be coerced into putting an end to it this way or another way,” Barak said. “The physical attack option is an option that should be there, should remain on the table, never be removed.”

That may be short of a pledge to attack Iran next year, but it’s hardly a vote of confidence in any alternative. And it reflects a lingering divide in U.S. and Israeli goals on Iran, despite the rhetoric of unity. “We will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Panetta said, “and that remains our policy.” Barak’s policy is different: to stop Iran from even getting to the point in its technological nuclear work where an airstrike is senseless, before Iran gets the bomb. The Israeli defense chief acknowledged “sometimes slight differences” with U.S. policy “that should be better discussed behind closed doors.”

However much Barak seems resigned to Iran’s determination “to go in the footsteps of Pakistan and North Korea,” he also mused out loud about Iron Dome as a security game-changer for Israel. Not because a system that was “extremely successful” at stopping unguided Qassam rockets can also stop Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles — it can’t. But because of the demonstration effect that Israeli missile-defense technology can have on Iran and its proxies.

“The very knowing of the other side that you have such an effective system, especially when we’ll be equipped with many more interceptors, it will change the balance of contemplation on the other side,” Barak said. “It creates a logical kind of deterrent, not a psychological one, because any enemy that tries against Israel is exposed to the effectiveness of our efforts that we’ve seen during in this operation.” Especially since, Barak noted, Iron Dome’s big brothers — David’s Sling and the Arrow — are in development to stop more powerful missiles launched by Iran and Hezbollah.

Barak won’t be defense minister next year, as he announced this week he’s retiring from politics. But if other prominent Israeli decision-makers think that Iron Dome restored Israel’s ability to deter adversaries, imagine the value they might place on an Iran attack next year.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Spencer Ackerman - Wired
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - SPECIAL REPORT: Israeli Forces Deploy For Protests At Borders

Defense News: DTN News - SPECIAL REPORT: Israeli Forces Deploy For Protests At Borders
*Israeli security forces in riot gear Friday confronted Palestinian demonstrators after deploying in high numbers along Israel's frontiers on an annual protest day
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources The Telegraph UK
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 30, 2012: By midday, minor skirmishes had broken out between thousands of protesters and security forces in the Jerusalem area. Palestinians threw rocks and Israeli troops responded with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber pellets. No serious injuries were reported.

In Gaza, Palestinians said Israeli forces shot and wounded two men who approached the border during a demonstration by about 15,000 people, organized by Gaza's Hamas rulers. The Israeli military said soldiers shot and wounded one protester Elsewhere, it were calm.
The "Land Day" rallies are an annual event marked by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who protest what they say are discriminatory Israeli land policies.

Supporters in neighboring Arab countries also planned marches near the Israeli frontier, but organizers said they would keep protesters away from the borders.

Last year, demonstrators from Lebanon and Syria tried twice to break across the borders into Israel, setting off clashes with Israeli troops in which at least 38 people were killed.

In southern Lebanon Friday, more than 3,000 Lebanese and Palestinians gathered outside the Crusader-built Beaufort castle 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Israel. Lebanese security forces kept them from moving any closer to the border.

Sobhiyeh Mizari, 70, said she always taught her 12 children "never to forget Palestine."

"We will liberate our land against the will of Israel and its backers," said Mizari, who said her husband was killed in Israeli shelling of Lebanon in 1978.

Security forces were preparing for demonstrations in northern Israel, where a large portion of Israel's Arab minority lives.

Several dozen Palestinians who live in east Jerusalem waved their national flag outside Jerusalem's walled Old City. "One, one homeland!" they chanted.

Palestinians were banned from entering from the West Bank except for medical emergencies, and police barred Palestinian men under 40 from praying at a volatile Jerusalem holy site, citing security concerns.

The demonstrators performed their communal Muslim Friday prayers where they stood, praying on their flags instead of traditional mats.

They were surrounded by what appeared to be an equal number of Israeli security forces.

"Israel has no trouble with peaceful protest and respects the rights of people to demonstrate peacefully," said government spokesman Mark Regev.

Many Palestinians, energised by Arab Spring uprisings that have overturned decades-old authoritarian regimes, see massive, coordinated marches as one of the most effective strategies to draw attention to their cause.

"After the Arab revolutions, there's awareness of the importance of popular participation," said Arab activist Jafar Farah. "This has rattled the Arab regimes, and now it's frightening the Israeli government."

 


*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources The Telegraph UK
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - ISRAELI~PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: Fighting Between Israel, Gaza Continues For 3rd Day

Defense News: DTN News - ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: Fighting Between Israel, Gaza Continues For 3rd Day
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Ibrahim Barzak and Karin Laub - The Washington Post
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - March 12, 2012: Cross-border fighting between Gaza and Israel, touched off by Israel’s killing of a top Palestinian militant leader, showed no signs of letting up after three days Sunday. Gaza militants fired dozens of rockets at Israeli towns, hitting an empty school, and Israeli airstrikes killed three Gazans, including a boy and a farm guard.

Egypt tried to mediate but failed to end the violence, the worst in more than a year. The fighting has killed 18 Gazans, all but two of them militants, and disrupted the lives of about 1 million Israelis living within range of rocket fire from Gaza.

Even so, Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers seemed eager to avoid a full-scale conflict. A three-week war three years ago left both sides badly bruised, Israel in the diplomatic arena and Hamas on the battlefield.

In the current round, Hamas has pointedly kept its large rocket arsenal and thousands of fighters out of the confrontation, even though it has not tried to stop two smaller Gaza groups, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, from launching rockets and mortar rounds.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged that Hamas did not take part in the rocket salvos. Up to now, Israel has blamed the Islamist movement for all violence directed from Gaza because it rules the territory.

Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said Sunday, “We are not interested in escalation in and of itself.”

On a visit to southern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the airstrikes would continue as long as necessary. “We have a clear policy: We will hit anyone who plans to harm us, who prepares to harm us and who harms us,” he said in a meeting with local leaders.

Israel said it launched the initial Friday airstrike, which killed PRC leader Zuhair al-Qaissi in a car in Gaza, to stop a plan by his splinter group to infiltrate into Israel through Egypt’s lawless Sinai Peninsula. Israel says the PRC was behind an August attack on the border that killed eight Israelis.

Palestinians across the political spectrum accused Israel of deliberately escalating tensions. The groups involved in firing rockets dismissed truce offers presented by Egypt.

On Sunday, Palestinians fired more than 30 rockets at southern Israel. One struck the courtyard of an empty school in Beersheba, police said.

Three Israelis have been hurt by rocket fire since Friday, two of them seriously, the Defense Ministry said.

At Israel’s weekly cabinet meeting, Barak asserted success in the first major battlefield test of the Iron Dome antimissile system, which has intercepted 30 of the more than 120 rockets fired from Gaza since Friday, according to a statement from his office. He said anti-rocket batteries were deployed near three southern cities close to Gaza.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Ibrahim Barzak and Karin Laub - The Washington Post
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*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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