Eye on the Enemy: “Israeli” Army: PA’s collapse will lead to an Intifada
Winograd: Striking Iran will lead to a "rain of missiles"
Globes
The retired judge in a sharp attack on the prime minister and defense minister, in an interview to Army Radio: "you are both on the verge of endangering our state, all that we have built, both physically and the economy."
Six years after the end of the Second Lebanon War, four and a half years after submitting his final report with the rest of the four members of the commission of inquiry he headed, and with the expected winds of war that have become very tangible, the Retired judge of the Supreme Court, Dr. Eliyahu Winograd is very concerned.
He said in an exclusive interview for "Good Morning Israel" broadcasted by the Army Radio: "I am not convinced that the decision-makers who are governing now who must sew up the issue of attacking Iran or not, will actually implement the findings of this report," He continued, referring to the thick report on his desk: "If that is the case we are all in big trouble."
Winograd added, "did the government as a whole, receive from the Department of Homeland Security on all the repercussions, all possible options with and against this operation? Will the government take into account seriously all the unexpected things I posed? Is the Foreign Ministry ready to provide answers about what could happen to us in terms of political ties with the United States of America?
United States is begging, pressuring "Do not do it without us," Obama demands, saying: "Do not do it before the elections." It is worth mentioning that Winograd is not privy to intelligence estimates. He is trying to draw the image through the media in specific, and the media itself is causing discomfort and so much anger. He is angry because the decision-makers are paying no heed to the common position of the heads of the security establishment, who are issuing accusations against an "Israeli" attack on Iran.
Winograd said angrily, "All the heads of the defense establishment, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, both former and current, and Military Intelligence, everyone is saying ‘Don't attack!' - and only Barak and Netanyahu have decided yes?" For what? With all of these risks and all that is happening, perhaps there is another solution? Probably we will wait and at one point the Americans will say: let's do this together, let us do it, or do something else? Meanwhile they deal with sanctions and enough is enough. What Netanyahu is saying: I take responsibility, if we fail, this is my responsibility? This comforts me a lot ... Does this solve my problem?"
"Netanyahu is complaining about officials talking publicly about an Iran strike while he himself had been more vocal than anyone."
"Did he take into account the new reality we are facing, if "Israel" attacked the nuclear facilities? Asked Winograd surprisingly, the Iranians will respond with a barrage of missiles, they won't fire intermittently, and other allies in the region might support them. This is a reality we never faced."
"If we attacked Iran, we must assume not only that it will examine its power to launch rockets - and it have the means to do so - on all kinds of strategic points in "Israel", but also Hizbullah may take this opportunity to help Iran, and Hamas from Gaza and Sinai," Winograd explained. In short, we expect a rain of rockets from all directions, and I do not know to what extent the Home front ready. We read reports in the newspapers about the unpreparedness of the Home Front; it appeared that "Israel" had neither enough bomb shelters nor gas masks to deal with such a counter-strike. The former judge criticized Netanyahu for complaining about former defense officials talking publicly about an Iran strike while he himself had been more vocal than anyone.
"You intend to act - sit down and shut up," Winograd said. "Decide secretly if you're attacking, and if you decide to attack, attack. But what are you talking for? So that the Iranians will be even more prepared and ready their missiles to target us?" He also charged both Barak and Netanyahu with acting irresponsibly in advocating a unilateral strike on Iran.
"You are going to endanger our entire country, everything we have built," he said during the interview. "Both the country physically and the economy."
He slammed Barak for his comments that no more than 500 "Israelis" would die in a potential Iranian counterstrike.
"No more than 500 killed.
Did you count, do you know? I don't know what your considerations are. It is irresponsibility of the highest order," he said.
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Netanyahu: West not doing enough to stop Iran's nuclear program
Barak Ravid - Haaretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the West's stance on Iran Sunday.
"The truth must be told," Netanyahu said at a government meeting in al-Quds (Jerusalem) . "The international community is not drawing a clear red line... and Iran is not seeing international resolve to stop its nuclear program. Until that happens, Iran will not stop its program. Iran must not have a nuclear weapon."
Furthermore, in recent weeks many leaders in the world pleaded the prime minister not to implement an "Israeli" military attack on Iran. This happened two weeks ago, when the Adviser of the Prime Minister in Germany, Angela Merkel, contacted Netanyahu and conveyed this message. And her position is highly similar to the officials of Britain, France and other leading countries in the European Union, who believe that there is still enough time to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The "Times" Magazine reported at the end of the week that due to the disagreement between the United States and "Israel" on the subject of the attack, the United States will significantly reduce its participation in the joint military exercise with "Israel", which is estimated to take place in October.
Earlier on Sunday, former Supreme Court Justice Eliyahu Winograd, who headed the government-appointed committee in 2007 that investigated "Israel's" shortcomings in the Second Lebanon War, warned that an "Israeli" strike on Iran "may endanger the future of the country, and said he doesn't support either the PM or the Minister of Defense.
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Obama, fly to Tehran
Akiva Eldar - Haaretz
It is difficult to believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected that the fuss he made over Ban-ki Moon's decision to attend the nonaligned nations summit would persuade the UN secretary general to cancel his trip to Tehran. We can assume that Netanyahu does not expect the prohibitions and exclusions to stop Iran's nuclear program. After all, he argues that even heightened economic sanctions do not affect the ayatollahs.
The main "accomplishment" of the media battle Bibi is waging against the Islamic Republic is to turn the dispute over nuclear capabilities into an unsolvable religious disagreement.
How would the religious clerks explain to their followers Iran's public rejection of a strategic weapon that can be found in the arsenals of India, Pakistan and North Korea, as well as "Israel" (according to foreign sources)? And how would the regime justify the long years of shortages in the stores and soaring gasoline prices? From the Iranian perspective, agreeing to open the Natanz facilities to International Atomic Energy Association inspectors (assuming that the gates of the Dimona remain shut) constitutes a humiliation of the Muslims by the Jews.
Issues of honor must be solved with honor. U.S. President Barack Obama holds the key. The tense relations between the United States and a fundamentalist Iran, on the eve of the 2012 presidential election, bears great similarity to the deep crack between America and communist China. Richard Nixon's surprise meeting with Mao Zedong 40 years ago, in the elections of 1972, changed history.
In a conversation with aides prior to his historic journey to China, the conservative president said: "No no one in this world knows how great the gap is between their philosophy and ours, their interests and ours," adding, "But also no one in this world, I think, knows better than I do, how necessary it is to see that great nations that have enormous differences, where you've got the nuclear issue hanging in the balance, have got to find ways to talk, and get along."
The Republic presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn't believe in dialogue with the enemy. In his speech at the party's national convention on Thursday he noted sarcastically that Obama, in his first television interview, proposed talks with Iran.
"We're still talking, and the centrifuges are still spinning," Romney said, adding, "Obama has thrown allies like "Israel" under the bus."
Obama has indeed thrown "Israel" under the bus, but it's not the bus Romney meant: Obama is standing in front of a bus whose driver, blind to reality, is steering "Israel" into war, and risking face-to-face collision with all of its neighbors and international isolation.
Obama lost the battle for Netanyahu's fans in the U.S. Jewish community and among the Christian right. If the Iran issue was critical to the US presidential election then Obama should have already started packing. Instead of trying to bring the Iranians to their knees, he can offer them a way up toward restoration of their self-respect. What does Obama have to lose by flying to Tehran to begin a dialogue about ending the nuclear arms race and stopping Iran's support for terror organizations and for the genocide in Syria?
Here's a suggestion for Obama's reconciliation speech in Tehran. "No single nation should pick and choose which country holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations possess nuclear weapons. And any nation - including Iran - should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And I'm hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal" (from Obama's speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009 ).
By the way, after his historic visit to China, Nixon won the presidential elections.
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Netanyahu's management of Iranian issue must be respected
Army Radio
After years of tension between the two, Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom praises the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his management of the Iranian issue.
Minister Shalom said that "Netanyahu has vowed to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb threat in any way, and it must be respected."
During the Likud Hanukkah Toast ceremony, the Deputy depicted relations with the United States as "intimate and close" and said the differences are related to the conduct to be taken against a nuclear Iran.
Early this evening, the Prime Minister said that "the Iranian regime is a brutal regime running quickly with its nuclear plan, because it does not see a clear red line from the international community, as it does not see the needed decisiveness and determination from the international community."
As for the tension between Washington and Jerusalem, the Prime Minister added that ""Israel" and the United States face threats; large ones are Iran's programs to develop a nuclear weapon. The clearer the red line is, the more our differences will shrink." He said these words after the news published this morning that the President of the United States Barack Obama is taking into consideration to set the red line on Iran.
The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, explained that Washington did not send a message to Tehran saying that the US won't support Israel if it attacked Iran. He denied this message this morning in Yedioth Ahronoth, where he said that such a message is usually transferred in secret channels and the whole thing is a lie.
In the meantime as well, coalition chairman Zeev Elkin said that the prime minister's political opponents don't possess the required qualifications for the management of the state of Israel. "Who will lead? The journalists' coalition, Lapid and Yachimovich? who never managed a television studio? They will lead the country? Have we gone crazy?"
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US-"Israel" joint exercise: to be implemented next month with Pentagon cutting back
Ynet- Ron ben-Yishai
Reduction of the American troops and systems that are supposed to participate this year in an exercise with "Israel" largely reflects the economic situation of the United States more than the lack of trust between Jerusalem and Washington. Even the name of the exercise "Austere Challenge 12" implies that.
Security sources in "Israel" confirm what the Pentagon and the U.S. military spokesmen said: the outline and operative scenarios of the exercise, to be held in late October, were not changed and in these respects it is really a US-"Israeli" exercise on defense missiles and aircraft, the largest and most complex of their kind. At this point, it must be noted that a virtual simulation exercise is being considered, where US identification, detection and interception systems practice to collaborate among each other. The personnel's disclosure and fire control vehicles of the US Patriot batteries and the operations center of the missile destroyer are learning to communicate with their centers of command and the control of Air Force and divide the work in between.
Therefore, the scope of the exercise is not determined according to the number of people to man the Patriot battery. Operators do not need launchers because in any case nobody will fire any missile. Everything goes on in communications and computer monitors according to scenarios already been set to the maneuver. Hence downsizing the manpower, and including a single missile destroyer instead of two is not significant. According to reliable sources in the "Israeli" defense establishment, the physical reduction is due to US financial reasons and it has been for months with "Israel".
The decision to launch one Aegis destroyer instead of two was conveyed to "Israel" month and half ago. In the military no one raised an eyebrow or was interested in the issue except in terms of saving resources. The army is certainly aware that the Americans are now strengthening the naval power in the Persian Gulf and they need all missile interception means. Not to mention that these reinforcements well-serve the interests of "Israel".
Several people of senior posts in various sectors of the security system say that "in general, cooperation and coordination with the Americans on a daily basis and exercise is conducted at all levels, high to very low." For example, the Pentagon announced to the members of the IDF Planning Division a few months ago that some officials from the American leadership will operate from their bases in Europe in order to provide transportation and housing in Israel for hundreds of American officers without any practical need during exercise. The body responsible for the cooperation with "Israel" and the European Command is "EUCOM" of the U.S. armed forces. The exercise is conducted anyway on computer monitors, so everything can be managed from Europe. Also a number of Patriot batteries were reduced for the same reason of the command and control teams.
In addition from the operational simulation, which is supposed to be real, the physical lesson the exercise is trying to make is the ability of sending to Israel, in a short time, American Patriot batteries to reinforce the "Israeli" Patriot system. This part will be applied in full even if few hundred American soldiers are sitting idly under the "Israeli" blazing sun. The main objective of the exercise is not military nor physical but political: implementing it every few years shows the countries of the region, the Israeli public and the American electorate the U.S. support for Israel. "Physical presence of thousands of American uniformed men in "Israel" has a meaning," says a senior official in Tel Aviv, "but there is no big difference if they are 5,000 or 1,500. The readiness displayed by the Obama administration to send thousands of uniformed men to "Israel" is important and that's what makes a difference."
It is worth mentioning "Austere Challenge 12" was supposed to be held in May this year. Its physical scope should have been greater in the size of personnel than the former ones. Instead of a single destroyer like the previous exercises, "Israel" should have received two destroyers equipped with Aegis systems to intercept ballistic missiles at long ranges and heights even the Arrow system still cannot intercept.
Obama will not make a move shall be construed as hostile
"Israel's" assessment was that the US government would use the common air defense to display the huge support for "Israel's" security needs. The goal: to provide the motivation for Netanyahu and Barak to attack Iran and accumulate credits for President Obama in the elections among Jewish voters and non-voters - Jews who support "Israel". At that time (January 2012) Washington estimated that "Israel" intends to attack Iran in the spring - as a clear sky and a weather that does not limit the operations of the "Israeli" Air Force. But back then, Israel surprised Obama when Defense Minister Barak sought to postpone the exercise. The official reason was "Problems in schedule and budget in "Israel"."
Someone assessed that "Israel" had asked to postpone the exercise to prevent an attack on Iran for American soldiers are present on its land. Such presence would implicate the US in the international arena as collaborator with the "Israeli" attack and would have exposed the American military personnel to danger as a result of the reaction of Iran and Hizbullah. Therefore, in a conversation between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and US counterpart Panetta, it was decided to postpone the exercise from May to October this year. But then the Pentagon took the opportunity and took advantage of "Israel's" delay request to save tens of millions of dollars, maybe even hundreds, of its budget that had been cut drastically this year.
However, the exercise planners in the Pentagon were ordered not to damage the operational pattern of exercise or the political goals the government wanted to draw. It is also likely that the Obama administration will not make a move three months before the elections that shall be construed as hostile by the voters of his country and give validity to the claims of his opponent Romney; that he is throwing "Israel" under the wheels of the bus.
There is no doubt that presently there is tension and lack of trust between the Obama administration and the "Israeli" government because of disputes regarding Iran. Hostility can also be noticed. But at this particular time conducting joint exercise is an American interest, just for those same reasons for which the Americans wanted a big maneuver estimate in May of this year. "Israel", as mentioned asked to postpone the implementation, in order to freely launch a military action against Iran. Therefore, the reduction, which was carried out by the Pentagon in the size of the forces participating in the maneuver has no meaning beyond the desire to save. Only if the exercise will be canceled entirely - or if delayed again - it would be a serious reason to wonder about.
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"Israeli" Army: PA's collapse will lead to an Intifada
NFC
A deep division between the political level and the "Israeli" army regarding the future of the Palestinian Authority; "disintegration of authority scenario" was presented before the "Israeli" army command and the political echelon , as defined in one of the documents, in the light of the difficult economic situation of the Palestinian Authority. In the discussions that took place in the leadership of the central region, between the defense minister and the prime minister, the issue which may lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority was discussed and what will be the consequences of such developments.
The estimate of intelligence in the "Israeli" army since many months is that the Palestinian Authority constitutes an important impediment to any terrorist attack and must be supported.
Therefore, according to the intelligence estimate, the disintegration of authority, frees the terrorist incentives of the Palestinian people. In the scenario, which has recently been submitted to the GOC central command Nitzan Alon, it has been claimed that the meeting of conditions such as the destruction of illegal Palestinian buildings in the southern Hebron Hills, and non-payment of wages to the workers of the Palestinian Authority, may inflame the region.
According to the scenario, in case of breaching the public order, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen won't be able to halt terrorism. Instead, "Dayton forces" that combats terrorism will be dispersed. In addition, this will allow the organization to return to its terrorist activities and gives moral and verbal support to break into the region.
In such a case, according to the "Israeli" army, suicidal terrorism operations in the popular centers in the cities of "Israel" will be renewed, infiltration will return to the settlements and shooting ambushes on the streets. In addition, there will be massive demonstrations throughout Judea and Samaria. According to estimates by the Israeli army, Abu Mazen will not try to pressure the wave of terrorism, but "will join that wave, as Yasser Arafat did in the second intifada, as he will also reject the pressures of the United States of America.
Political echelon divided
To improve the economic situation of the Palestinian Authority, Israel has recently taken a number of important steps. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in his letter to the international Quartet companies said that "Israel" gave the Palestinian Authority a deposit of $ 45 million, at the expense of future tax revenues. In addition, the number of Palestinians who receive permission to work inside the Green Line has significantly increased, and new commercial agreement that increases the Palestinian Authority revenues from taxes is signed.
However, at the political level, officials are divided over the IDF estimate which says that the Palestinian Authority is the obstacle to the explosion of terrorist attacks.
Ministers in the Cabinet believe that the position of the Palestinian Authority within the Palestinian people is not respected and that its struggle with terrorism is only limited. Makor Rishon, a senior minister said that "since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority no one was trialed for hurting Jews because of this misdemeanor."
Another senior minister said, "The army is issuing wrong estimates regarding the Palestinian arena and these mistakes are becoming chronic. Only a year and a half ago the Israeli army recommended the political echelon to cede the Golan Heights to reach a quick settlement with Assad, arguing that peace with Syria is a national interest that is more important than the continuous control over the Golan Heights . Two weeks before the fall of Mubarak, the heads of security in Aman in the Knesset's Committee of foreign affairs and security estimated that the Egyptian regime will survive and everything is under control. The army better make sure of the expectations provided by the political level before the disengagement from Gaza. As in those cases, now the army estimates with regard to the Palestinian issue and the "Israeli" national interest are a big mistake. "
Source: "Israeli" Press
