IDF readying itself for threat from ISIS in the Sinai - Matan Tzuri - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4752586,00.html
The Islamic State terror organization's forces have been combating Egyptian forces for some time, but Israel is now preparing for the possible day when the fighting crosses its border.
A tense kind of quiet has characterized the Israel-Egypt border for the past year. The desert area has seen the threat of the Islamic State group grow in that time, leading the IDF to realize that it could end up affecting Israel directly - specifically its southern towns. The IDF has taken this danger to heart, and has been preparing.
The IDF Southern Command has changed its war plans three times, updating them to fit the expected threat. For instance, troops are focusing more on fighting in urban areas and protecting southern Israeli agricultural farms, which may be vulnerable to infiltration by ISIS elements.
The number of IDF troops along the border has been greatly reinforced as well: Tanks and artillery batteries have been spread throughout the area, and joint army-air force drills are being conducted.
One of the main visible changes is the vehicles infantry forces are using: The Jeeps and Humvees have been reinforced, and equipped with rooftop machine guns.
One of the units in charge of the Israel-Egypt border is the IDF Caracal Battalion (Battalion 33, an integrated infantry unit that has women and men serving alongside each other), which has dedicated much of the past year training for this new threat. This change is defined as "improving lethality."
"The bottom line is that ISIS isn't right outside our gates yet, it's concentrating its forces fighting against the Egyptians, but that's out of choice," said a senior IDF official, "In the last six months, the Egyptians have went through a maturation process. They grew to understand that the rules have changed, meaning it's no longer armies fighting each other, but an army facing a terror organization."
"We in the IDF have improved our lethality. We also understand that the threat has changed, and have made moves that will answer the blows that have yet to land. All along the 220 kilometer border, we've significantly improved our defensive array, before the enemy even moves towards us. This shift is expressed in all fields, according to the threats faced," he added.
Israel and the Four Powers - By Ben Cohen -
http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/58671/israel-and-the-four-powers-opinion/#7Itch4h7dgT641Au.97
The rulers of the Arab Gulf states are, it seems, increasingly attentive to what Israel has to say about the balance of power in the region. As a rising Shi'a Iran faces off against a Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia, the core shared interest between Israel's democracy and these conservative theocracies-countering Iran's bid to become the dominant power and influence in the Islamic world-has rarely been as apparent.
Hence the interview given by a senior IDF officer to a Saudi weekly, Elaph, which laid out how Israel analyzes the present wretched state of the Middle East. In the Israeli view, there are, the officer said, four powers that have coalesced in the region. The first power centers on Iran and its allies and proxies, such as the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria, Shi'a rebels in Yemen and Iraq, and most pertinently for Israel, Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The second power contains what the officer called "moderate" states with whom Israel has "a common language"-Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf countries. The third power, one that is obviously waning, is represented in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, now vanquished in its Egyptian heartland but still reigning in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Finally, the fourth power is another non-state actor, the combined forces of jihadi barbarism like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
Israel's goal in this situation is a modest one. As the IDF officer put it, "There is a danger that the strife will reach us as well if the instability in the region continues for a long time. Therefore, we need to take advantage of the opportunity and work together with the moderate states to renew quiet in the region."
The key phrase here, it seems to me, is "renew quiet." Foremost for the Israelis, that means counteracting Iran and especially its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, and then minimizing the potential for jihadi terrorists to operate on or near Israeli-controlled territory. A broader strategic vision can also be detected here: ultimately, both Israel and the conservative Arab states share the common interests of neutralizing Iran and eliminating the jihadi groups.
The partnership between Israel and these states is already in operation, at the levels of intelligence sharing and-not for the first time-cautious exploration of trade relations. That there is a strong military dimension as well to all this is entirely conceivable. And for the time being, it seems that neither side wants to expand or contract on their public ties with each other; Israel has long had embassies in Cairo and Amman, but that doesn't mean there'll be an Israeli ambassador in Riyadh anytime soon, much less a film festival or trade expo.
There's another factor that has accelerated the formation of this undeclared, look-the-other-way alliance: the shift in American Middle East policy under President Barack Obama. Some readers will remember that back in 1991, the first Bush administration pointedly left Israel out of the coalition to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, so as not to antagonize the Gulf states. Now, frustration with Obama has compelled these very same states to recognize that they have an existential interest in cooperating with Israel.
You might say that the president deserves credit for bringing about a situation, in the wake of the nuclear deal with Iran, that has compelled the Gulf states to grasp the reality and permanence of Israel as never before. Still, the visions and prophecies of a Middle Eastern equivalent of the European Union, much indulged during the Oslo Accords years in the late 1990s, are not now in evidence, and that's welcome. For their own reasons, neither Israel nor the Arab states feel obliged to articulate a sense of what their region should look like in the event that the Iranian threat is overcome.
Indeed, there's a case that doing so would be counterproductive-it would impose political pressures upon a discreet yet strategically vital relationship that above all requires, in the parlance of the IDF officer, the "moderate" states to remain as moderate states. With the reorientation of American policy towards a rapprochement with Tehran, along with Russia's active involvement in the Tehran-Damascus axis, Israel is the nearest reliable, not to say formidable, power that these countries can turn to.
In the present Middle Eastern context, then, the realism and discretion that has always underwritten Israeli foreign policy continues to prevail. That realism presumably extends to recognizing that regimes like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain might eventually succumb to their internal instabilities, already exacerbated by the further collapse of the price of oil.
When you consider the alternatives, the region's architecture could be much worse for Israel than it is currently. Long an anomaly as the only open society in the region, the target of Arab military and economic warfare throughout the latter half of the last century, Israel in this century is now a partner in a regional bloc. To be sure, this is a bloc based upon interests, not common values, and is therefore necessarily limited in scope. But in the present storm, and amidst the appalling human suffering generated by the clash of these rival interests in Syria, it's the closest thing we have to progress.
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