The first order that Avigdor Liberman gave when he entered the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv May 31, was to complete an operative plan to defeat Hamas in the Gaza Strip. According to one senior security source, Liberman expressed disbelief that no such Israel Defense Forces (IDF) plan was elaborated.
The policy advocated by his predecessor Moshe Ya'alon did not aim to defeat Hamas, overthrow its government or reoccupy Gaza. Instead, Ya'alon supported a policy of "containing" Gaza (adjusting to the existing reality), isolating Hamas and postponing the next conflict for as long as possible. All of this was based on the assumption that right now, there is no rational alternative to Hamas, and that Israel should not involve itself in changing the regime in any neighboring Arab state or entity. Liberman arrived with a very different approach, shaking up the entire system.
No, he doesn't think that Israel should conquer the Gaza Strip, summon former Fatah senior Mohammed Dahlan and install him in power over the local residents. Even he knows that these kinds of plans will eventually come crashing down, leaving more damage in their wake. The last time Israel attempted such a move, during the first Lebanon War (1982), it ended up mired in the bloody Lebanese swamp for almost 20 years, and with Hezbollah emerging as the most powerful political and military force in Lebanon.
Besides, while Dahlan may be considered ''close'' to Liberman (reportedly, Liberman met with Dahlan in Paris last January), he is unfit to govern in Gaza, or at least Liberman thinks so. Dahlan leads an easy life. He has all that he can want, he travels the world and he lives well. At this stage of his life, he lacks the constitution to throw himself into the sewer that is Gaza.
On the other hand, Liberman does believe that the Gaza Strip is ready to overthrow Hamas. The group's standing among the general population is being challenged, and quite a few of the local clans and tribes are already seeking an alternative. In the event that Hamas is deposed, the Egyptians could play a productive role by offering Gazans a change in policy. They could open the Rafah border crossing and provide aid, on condition that the people of Gaza install a saner leadership with no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Cairo deems beyond contempt.
Liberman believes that Hamas is the ultimate evil. As such, its regime must be brought down, and its growing stock of rockets, within touching distance of the southern city of Ashkelon, must be eliminated. Furthermore, the defense minister believes that if Israel doesn't do that now, within just a few years it will have another Hezbollah on its hands, this one along Israel's southern border. That is why Liberman has instructed the IDF to prepare an operational plan to defeat and overthrow Hamas in the next round of fighting.
Will that next round of fighting occur soon? It remains an open question. Right now, the stability of Netanyahu's government depends largely on the police inquiry/investigation into the prime minister's dealings. Liberman wants to serve at least one year as defense minister, since this will allow him to keep his promise. It is not at all clear if he has that year.
It has been a little more than five weeks since he assumed the position of Israel's defense minister, and Liberman is enjoying every moment of it. He never worked so intensely. He had it easy as foreign minister, with all sorts of little indulgences. In the other ministries, he was never known as someone who worked from dusk to dawn, and certainly not around the clock. His attention span is limited. He is not the kind of person who looks at things at the highest resolution, and prefers to leave the little details to his staff. He lets the chief of staff and the General Staff do their jobs, without involving himself in appointments, because he has no interest in the minor processes. He is focused on the directives involved in establishing overall policy.
Liberman is no longer willing to receive a presentation of all possible scenarios that the IDF provides before every operation. The outcome must always be the same: There should be just one possible result, under any and all circumstances, in any encounter, on any issue. As he tells it, the result must be decisive. Israel must not leave any conflict without a decisive, clear (winning) outcome.
One security source confided that Liberman is excited about the IDF's High Command and says that there hasn't been a General Staff like this in a very long time. His relationship with Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot is quite successful.
In a security Cabinet meeting July 3, bellicose right-wing Education Minister Naftali Bennett attacked one of the generals who briefed the ministers by subjecting him to an endless barrage of questions. Suddenly Liberman interrupted the discussion and instructed the general to stop answering Bennett. According to one security source speaking on condition of anonymity, Liberman said to Bennett, "Wait until he's finished speaking and then ask your questions." Though the education minister still insisted on quizzing the general, he didn't get any more answers. After that heated meeting, Liberman received several enthusiastic reactions from his generals. "We've been waiting a long time for someone to put Bennett in his place," said one general to Liberman.
When it comes to Judea and Samaria, Liberman's position is different from that of the defense establishment. Given this, he is expected to get into quite a few conflicts with the General Staff and the Shin Bet. For one thing, Liberman believes that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is Israel's worst enemy and that Israel should strive to end his rule. He considers Abbas' diplomatic offensive against Israel to be particularly serious, in fact, no less serious than a military offensive.
Here, too, Liberman doesn't really know what "the day after Abbas" will look like.
Like many others in the security establishment, he believes that there is no single successor to fulfill all of Abbas' three roles: head of Fatah, head of the PLO and head of the Palestinian Authority. These three positions will most likely be divided among three claimants to the succession, and the West Bank government will be less centralized. Be that as it may, he does not believe that there will be chaos. He rejects warnings of those prophets of rage, who claim that Israel will be forced to run the Palestinians' day-to-day life and tend to matters such as health, welfare, infrastructures, education, etc. According to Liberman, there is absolutely no basis for that prognosis.
Israel's defense establishment has already identified quite a few senior Palestinian officials, who could fill Abbas' positions. The names of people like Yasser Arafat's nephew Nasser al-Qudwa or head of Palestinian intelligence Majid Faraj have been bandied about in various scenarios.
Liberman believes that Abbas has completed his historic role and that it is now time for him to go. There is no chance of reaching any type of arrangement with him. If he didn't say "yes" to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's exaggerated plans in 2008 (according to Liberman), he will certainly be incapable of saying yes to anything else. For that reason alone, Liberman thinks, Abbas' continued presence (or attempts to negotiate with him) is nothing but a hindrance.
Abbas says Cairo peace summit only after settlement freeze - By Avi Issacharoff - http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-says-cairo-peace-summit-only-after-settlement-freeze/
Palestinian preconditions include talks on basis of pre-1967 lines, set timetable; Netanyahu said open to meeting Abbas under Egyptian aegis
Palestinian leaders have presented several preconditions for participating in a trilateral Israeli-Egyptian-Palestinian peace summit in Cairo, including a freeze on Israeli settlement construction, a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reportedly told Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry he would be willing to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo for talks hosted by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
The Prime Minister's Office did not deny the report by the Saudi-owned, pan-Arab news outlet Al-Arabiya. It said in a statement that "whether the issue was discussed or not, Israel has always said it is prepared to conduct direct bilateral negotiations with no preconditions."
The senior Palestinian official said Tuesday that Abbas had conditioned his participation on Israel agreeing to stop settlement construction and accepting a set timeline for negotiations. Israel would also have to acquiesce to negotiations based on the pre-1967 lines and pledge ahead of time to implement any agreements reached in the talks.
A senior Egyptian official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday that Egypt was seeking a formula for renewal of negotiation that would be accepted by both sides. The official said it might be too early to invite both sides to a summit, since the sides did not yet agree about the goals of the talks.
The Egyptian proposal of hosting tripartite talks may have been part of Sunday's high-profile meetings between Netanyahu and Shoukry in Jerusalem.
Sissi reportedly offered to host direct talks between the sides as part of Cairo's initiative to kickstart the moribund peace process.
The summit, which would also be attended by senior officials from Jordan and Egypt, would seek to engage in confidence-building measures in an effort to calm the 10-month surge in violence in the West Bank, Palestinian officials told both the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper and Israel's Haaretz daily.
Shoukry's visit to Israel was the first by an Egyptian foreign minister since 2007. The visit came amid speculation over the renewal of an Arab peace initiative and as Israel's military recently saluted "unprecedented" intelligence cooperation with Egypt to combat the Islamic State group.
Speaking to journalists alongside Netanyahu before their meeting on Sunday, Shoukry said the Middle East was at a "crucial and challenging juncture." Cairo, he added, is dedicated to "a just and comprehensive peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people."
"The goal we aim to achieve through negotiations between the two parties is one that is based on justice, legitimate rights and mutual willingness to coexist peacefully in two neighboring independent states in peace and security," he said.
"Egypt remains ready to assist in achieving this goal," he said, stressing that "such a momentous achievement will have a far-reaching, dramatic and positive impact on the overall conditions in the Middle East. The current state of affairs is, unfortunately, neither stable nor sustainable."
Shoukry, who visited Abbas in the West Bank last month, urged leaders from both sides to resume negotiations.
According to Israel's Channel 2 television, Shoukry's surprise visit was also aimed at arranging a first meeting between Netanyahu and Sissi in Egypt in the coming months.
The TV report said Shoukry's first visit to Israel was coordinated between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose Arab Peace Initiative is backed by Sissi and much of the Arab world as the basis of any regional peace effort. Netanyahu has rejected the initiative in its current form, but said in late May that it "contains positive elements that could help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians."
IDF bulldozers with tanks enter Golan DMZ - http://www.debka.com/article/25539/IDF-bulldozers-with-tanks-enter-Golan-DMZ
Israeli military bulldozers backed by tanks have crossed into the demilitarized zone dividing the Israeli and Syrian Golan borders. They are building a line of fortifications and anti-tank trenches 300-500 meters inside the DMZ.
This is the first time in the six-year Syrian war that the IDF has openly operated on the Syrian side of the border. The force has not so far run into opposition- or indeed any word of protest - or even mention - by Assad regime officials in Damascus.
The sole reference to Israeli military movements in the DMZ has come from a small Syrian rebel group which described them.
debkafile's military sources report that the IDF operation was still going forward Wednesday, July 12, on a patch of terrain facing the Israeli Golan village of Ein Zivan, on the one hand, and the Syrian town of Quneitra, on the other.
The enclave splitting the Golan between Syria and Israel is defined in the 1974 armistice agreements as a demilitarized zone under the military control of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and Syrian civilian administration. It is bounded by two strips of land around 10km deep where each side is permitted to maintain diluted military strength. No ground-to-air missiles may be deployed inside a 25km radius from the DMZ.
It was agreed that Syrian nationals forced by the October 1973 war and its aftermath to leave their homes would be able to return. Ruined Quneitra was later handed back to Syria against a commitment by its government to repopulate the town and ban terrorist activity and infiltrations of Israel from the Golan sector.
Both commitments were given orally to the US government.
However, the Syrian war as it unfolded in the last two years turned the deal on its head. The UN observers abandoned their posts, leaving behind a void that was partly filled by Syrian troops and a motley assortment of rebel groups.
But the DMZ was left mostly unoccupied as both Israel and Syria tried to preserve at least the semblance of the deal intact. However, Assad's allies Iran and Hezbollah have repeatedly attempted to plant a forward military and terrorist presence opposite Israel's Golan defense lines - with avowed hostile intent.
The silence from Damascus on Israel's military steps on the Golan may be no more than a respite as the Syrian ruler waits for Tehran's endorsement of joint Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah counteraction.
Our sources add that IDF military steps on the ground were accompanied by unusual Israeli Air Force movements over Syria and Lebanon, and elevated preparedness on the 10th anniversary this week of the Lebanon war fought between Hezbollah and Israel.
It was noted that Hezbollah refrained from celebrating the occasion and omitted its customary boasts of a "great victory" - thereby intensifying the sense in Israeli military circles that Iran's Lebanese proxy may be cooking up a surprise operation.
Egypt said offering to host direct Netanyahu-Abbas talks - By Tamar Pileggi - http://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-said-offering-to-host-direct-netanyahu-abbas-talks/
As Cairo FM makes rare visit to Israel, Palestinian officials say Sissi's proposed tripartite summit will seek to deescalate regional tensions
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has reportedly offered to host direct talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as part of Cairo's fresh efforts to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The tripartite summit, which would also be attended by senior officials from Jordan and Egypt, would seek to engage in confidence-building measures in an effort to calm the 10-month surge in violence in the West Bank, Palestinian officials told both the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper and Israel's Haaretz daily.
The reports comes on the heels of Sunday's rare visit to Israel by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem in an apparent effort to further Sissi's bid for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.
Shoukry's visit to Israel was the first by an Egyptian foreign minister since 2007. Recently, Israel has emerged as a discreet ally of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who has positioned himself as a central player in jump-starting the stalemated peace process.
The Shoukry visit came amid chatter over the renewal of an Arab peace initiative and as Israel's military recently saluted "unprecedented" intelligence cooperation with Egypt to combat the Islamic State group.
Speaking to journalists alongside Netanyahu before their meeting on Sunday, Shoukry said this was a "crucial and challenging juncture for the Middle East." Cairo, he added, is dedicated to "a just and comprehensive peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people."
"The goal we aim to achieve through negotiations between the two parties is one that is based on justice, legitimate rights and mutual willingness to coexist peacefully in two neighboring independent states in peace and security," he said.
"Egypt remains ready to assist in achieving this goal," he said, stressing that "such a momentous achievement will have a far-reaching, dramatic and positive impact on the overall conditions in the Middle East. The current state of affairs is, unfortunately, neither stable nor sustainable."
Shoukry, who visited Abbas in the West Bank last month, urged leaders from both sides to resume negotiations.
According to Israel's Channel 2 television, Shoukry's surprise visit was also aimed at arranging a first meeting between Netanyahu and Sissi in Egypt in the coming months.
The TV report said Shoukry's first visit to Israel was coordinated between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose Arab Peace Initiative is backed by Sissi and much of the Arab world, and would form the basis of any regional peace effort. Netanyahu has rejected the initiative in its current form, but said in late May that it "contains positive elements that could help revive constructive negotiations with the Palestinians."
How Can There Be Peace with A Government That Pays Terrorists to Murder? - http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=480
For more than 20 years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) or the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has encouraged the murder of innocent Israelis by paying the murderers and their families.
Israel has known for a long time that these payments were formal policies approved by Palestinian Arab leaders and not decisions by renegades in the Palestinian Arab movement. In fact, Israel found documentary proof of payments to suicide bombers in PLO leader Yasser Arafat's compound.
How many Israelis were killed because of this deplorable bounty program? The Quartet -- a group comprised of the European Union, Russia, the United States, and the United Nations -- reported that about 250 Israeli Jews have been attacked by Palestinian Arabs since October, 2015.
Bloomberg View reported in its article "The Palestinian Incentive Program for Killing Jews" that the attackers, who are mostly very young people, have also been encouraged by popular songs and social media.
Israelis, of course, have been justifiably outraged by the attacks on innocent Israelis and the bounty program that has encouraged it for decades.
Remarkably, though, the financiers of these unprovoked attacks were not penalized financially. Not by Israel. Not by Western governments such as the United States, which has deducted the cost of settlement construction from its loan guarantees to Israel, according to the Commentary magazine article "Stop Subsidizing Terror Murder."
But everyone has a boiling point that inspires them to say "enough is enough." For many Israeli and American leaders and lawmakers that boiling point occurred on June 30.
On that day, an innocent young girl was murdered -- in her own bed. Hallel Yaffa Ariel was only 13 years old. She will never have the opportunity to go to high school, pursue her professional dreams, have her own family, and grow old.
Hallel, who was also an American citizen, was sleeping when she was stabbed dozens of times by a boy barely older than she was. Who knows what Muhammad Taraiyre, 17, was thinking, but if history is a guide it's plausible that he might have preferred being recognized as a hero by his family and neighbors -- a martyr because he was killed by a civilian rapid response team, but a hero nonetheless.
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett said that the boy's family will be compensated for his murderous act by August. How much? According to the Commentary magazine article, terrorists and their families are paid salaries of 2,400 to 12,000 shekels per month for so long as the terrorist is in jail.
Even the lower figure is about 40 percent higher than the average wage in the Gaza Strip while the higher figure is a salary that "most Palestinians can't even dream of."
"The PA has made terror far more lucrative than productive work," wrote Evelyn Gordon in Commentary magazine. "The highest payments go to those serving life sentences, meaning those who managed to murder at least one Israeli, while the lowest go to those serving the shortest sentences-i.e. failed terrorists who didn't manage to kill or wound anyone.
Thus, not only does the PA incentivize committing terror over getting a job, but it also incentivizes mass murder over minor offenses."
The Jerusalem Post reported that the murder of Hallel, along with the murder of Rabbi Michael Mark on July 1, spurred Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decide, finally, to penalize the Palestinian Authority for its payments to terrorists and their families.
Effective July 1, Israeli policy is to deduct the amount of money that is paid for attacking Israeli citizens from the amount of money that Israel pays the Palestinian Authority via monthly tax revenue transfers, according to the Post article "Israel to deduct Palestinian terror funding from tax fees it hands to the PA."
American lawmakers have also been spurred to action by the recent attacks on Israeli citizens. Last week, a U.S. Senate subcommittee voted to change its policy on development assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
The United States has committed over $5 billion in bilateral economic and non-lethal aid to the Palestinians since the mid-1990s in order to prevent Palestinian terrorist groups from attacking Israel and promote peace in the West Bank, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued in March.
If the change is approved by Congress and President Barack Obama, aid to the PA will be cut "by an amount the secretary [of state] determines is equivalent to the amount expended by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization and any successor or affiliated organizations, as payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism, and by individuals who died committing acts of terrorism during the previous calendar year."
Yigal Carmon, the president and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the Palestinian Authority is investing $137.8 million this year in salaries to terrorists jailed in Israel and payments to the families of imprisoned terrorists or suicide bombers, in violation of the Oslo peace accords with Israel.
Some members of Congress took a hardline approach toward the issue. Rep. Ted Yoho (R., Fla.) said that the United States should send a clear message to the PA that "if these policies continue, we're done."
"We are funding hatred. We are funding terrorism," Yoho said, labeling it "unconscionable" to provide such aid in the name of peace while the Palestinian Authority is subsidizing terrorists.
Royce said that the United States and its European allies must do more to use leverage against Palestinian Authority to halt the practice of rewarding terrorists.
"If the PA's irresponsible behavior continues, the whole premise for funding the PA needs to be reconsidered. The U.S. needs to do better at bringing the parties together while holding the parties responsible for their actions. This has traditionally been our role," Royce said. "Unfortunately, in recent years, the Obama administration has been hesitant to hold the PA accountable--yet has consistently pressured Israel."
U.S. Senator Dan Coats (R.-Ind.), who wrote the language in the subcommittee's bill, told The Jerusalem Post that he understands that foreign policy experts are concerned about the impact of cutting aid on the 'stability' of the Palestinian Authority, but "there's a moral issue here that transcends that concern."
Hopefully, Obama and Coats' colleagues in Congress will choose morality over concerns about practicality when they make a decision on whether bounties should be deducted from aid to the Palestinian Authority.
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