Friday, February 09, 2007

Bumbling into War?

So asserts Caroline Glick’s latest column at the Jerusalem Post:
Today Israel's leaders claim that Saudi Arabia is our new best friend. The Wahhabis will protect us from Iran and its proxies they promise. It's difficult to see how this view jibes with reality.

Indeed today, in a manner eerily reminiscent of last spring, we are on the precipice of a new war and our leaders stubbornly reject truth for delusion. Unless they acknowledge reality soon, they will again bar the IDF from fighting effectively, again maneuver us into diplomatic isolation and so again lead Israel to defeat.
With this in mind, it is our duty today to take a hard look at reality.

As they did in the months that preceded the outbreak of their jihad in September 2000, for the past several months the Palestinians have been accelerating their preparations for war. On Monday Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director Yuval Diskin revealed some of those preparations.

Diskin said that in 2006, the Palestinians imported 30 tons of explosives into Gaza from Egypt. Hamas has dug 10 tunnels into the western Negev from which it will be able to launch attacks against the IDF or against civilians. The situation along the breached Gaza-Egypt border is even worse. Diskin referred to the weapons and personnel smuggling tunnels there as "one big rabbit warren."

As the Palestinians prepare themselves for battle, this week they invented their justification for attacking the Jews. Just as they did in September 2000, this week Palestinian and Israeli Arab leaders opened their propaganda campaign for war by falsely accusing Israel of conspiring to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount.

Like its excavation by the Western Wall that has been going on quietly for the past several months, the Israel Antiquities Authority coordinated its salvage dig by the Mughrabi Gate of the Old City with the Islamic Wakf, the Jordanian government and all other relevant authorities before its archeologists began their work this week. Everyone understood that the excavation is being conducted 70 meters away from the Temple Mount and will in no way affect it.

But facts are irrelevant. The Arabs are not interested in the facts. They are interested in war. Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, the head of the southern branch of the Israeli Islamic movement, made this point clearly Thursday morning when he told Israel Radio that the war will likely begin when the heads of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, return from Mecca. It can be reasonably concluded from Darwish's statement that the Fatah-Hamas unity talks taking place in Mecca have more to do with coordinating the coming jihad than with dividing government ministries in their soon-to-be-formed, Saudi-sponsored terrorist unity government.

However the talks conclude, there is no doubt that the PA is gunning for war with Israel. Palestinian television, which Abbas and Fatah control, has been showing incendiary live and archival footage from the Temple Mount for the past three days. The images are interspersed with speeches by Palestinian and pan-Islamic leaders calling on the Muslim world to protect Al Aksa mosque.

As Israel's leaders praise the Saudis for their role in promoting the peace process, Al-Jazeera satellite network is broadcasting live calls to war to the entire Muslim world live from the Temple Mount. While Al-Jazeera reporters have been kicked out of Algeria, Iraq, Sudan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan for calling for war against anyone who doesn't talk like Osama bin Laden, and even the PA closed its offices twice, the Israeli government apparently has no problem with Al-Jazeera reporters calling the Islamic world to launch a genocidal jihad against the Jewish state from the Temple Mount.
(…)
So too, today, the escalation of enemy incitement and operations is anything but random. On February 21, IAEA inspectors are scheduled to report to the Security Council that in defiance of Resolution 1737 from two months ago, Iran has not ceased its uranium enrichment activities. In the wake of this report, the sanctions set out in the resolution are supposed to be firmly enforced.

On the Iraqi front, hostilities between the US and Iran escalate daily and signs abound that the much awaited US offensive in Baghdad is about to start. If successful, the offensive will seriously weaken Iranian proxy forces in that country and similarly weaken Iran's influence over the Iraqi government.

All in all, a two-front war against Israel would go a long way towards advancing Iran's interests today.

Indeed. It’s well worth reading the whole column here.

1 comment:

Michael said...

I saw the column in Friday's paper, and read it over Shabbat.

She's right, you know. The current gov't is just limping along, more concerned with staying in office than staying Israeli.

Really, the only think I don't like about Glick's columns is the way she sometimes comes off as a campaign ad for Bibi.