As war clouds gather, northern storm looks more foreboding - By Avi Issacharoff -
Hamas disinterest in conflict despite humanitarian deterioration makes Israeli war with Hezbollah over Iran's missile manufacturing the more likely course
Reading the headlines, there is a clear sense that Israel will soon enter a two-front war against Hamas in Gaza and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Statements made by senior officials, lawmakers, ministers and military personnel, one after the other, seem to be prepping their respective constituencies for such a scenario.
While tensions are rising on both fronts, it is the northern border that presents the more combustible situation and higher likelihood of actual conflict breaking out.
The IDF's large parachute drill and Beirut's leaks to various media outlets about its Iranian-financed underground rocket factories both create a feeling that there is serious potential for escalation along the Blue Line.
Israel has made it clear on more than one occasion that it does not intend to agree to the establishment of precision rocket factories in Lebanon.
A similar facility in Syria no longer exists, as a result of an Israeli airstrike, according to Arab media outlets.
But Iranian-backed efforts to build missiles continue in Lebanon and Yemen, where the regime is backing the Houti rebels, though it officially denies this. While the Yemen challenge is Saudi Arabia's problem, efforts in Lebanon are of utmost concern to Jerusalem, and Israeli military action seems only a matter of time.
This is where Hezbollah's response comes into play. The Shiite organization has made it clear in the past that while it may let Israeli actions in Syria pass with no more than angry denunciations, when it comes to Lebanese soil, there is no such grace. Rather, there is a distinct possibility that an Israeli attack would invite a Hezbollah military response.
Both sides have made it clear that they are capable of causing serious damage to the other, and both are right.
The question now is whether either side will choose to blink - Israel by ignoring Hezbollah's missile factories or Hezbollah by ignoring an Israeli attack.
No interest from Hamas
Things are a bit less explosive in Gaza, where, though there is a growing humanitarian crisis, war is apparently not necessarily on the horizon.
The distress there is indeed severe - apparently unprecedented, even for the coastal enclave. On Monday, three more medical clinics were closed due to electricity shortages, and more than 15 others are only functioning partially.
With the unemployment rate at roughly 46% and more than half of the population - 1 million people - requiring food aid from human rights organizations to survive the month, Gaza's economic collapse, as Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot stated Sunday, is only a matter of time.
It is true that the more severe the humanitarian crisis in the Strip, the greater the danger of a violent outbreak, since Hamas has less to lose. And yet, Hamas still has no interest in war.
The terror group does not want a violent confrontation, and that has been made clear from its actions in recent months. Hamas has reportedly been cracking down on Salafi groups in the enclave, in an effort to prevent additional rocket fire at Israel.
The endless Israeli jabbering on this issue has created a feeling in Hamas that Jerusalem might be the one to make the first military move as it has in past wars.
For this reason, Hamas headquarters have been evacuated and the terror group announced a "state of emergency" in an attempt to create as few targets as possible for the Israeli side to hit.
And again, in almost every conversation, sources in the Gaza Strip say that despite the severe economic situation, Hamas is not interested in an escalation in violence.
5 reasons why Israel is ready for war with Hezbollah in Lebanon - Ron Kampeas -
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a simple, straightforward message this week when he toured Israel's border with Syria and Lebanon with top security officials.
"Our face is turned toward peace, we are ready for any eventuality, and I don't suggest anyone test us," he said Tuesday in a video message he posted on Twitter, the sound of helicopter blades whirring in the background.
The mixed message signaled Israel's ambivalence about taking on the terrorist group Hezbollah 12 years after Lebanon and Israel were left gutted by a summer war.
The 2006 war was costly for both sides: Hezbollah, the preeminent militia in Lebanon, lost political capital for inviting a devastating response to its provocations along Israel's border. Israel's military and political class at the time paid a price for not decisively winning a war that precipitated a mass internal movement of civilians southward.
Yet the sides are making increasingly belligerent noises. Here are five factors contributing to increasing tensions along the border.
Syria may be winding down, and Iran is winding up.
The Assad regime, along with its allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah - Iran's proxy in the region - have the opposition in Syria's civil war on the run. Iran and Hezbollah are striking while the iron is hot, establishing preeminence in the region. Iranian brass recently toured southern Lebanon and Tehran, according to Israeli reports, and Iran is financing a military factory in Lebanon.
Israeli officials reject a permanent Iranian presence on its border - a message that Netanyahu delivered to Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met last month in Moscow.
"I told him that Israel views two developments with utmost gravity: First is Iran's efforts to establish a military presence in Syria, and second is Iran's attempt to manufacture - in Lebanon - precision weapons against the State of Israel," he said after the meeting. "I made it clear to him that we will not agree to either one of these developments and will act according to need."
A U.S. leadership vacuum is creating anxiety.
President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on a Syrian missile base last year after it was revealed that Syria used chemical weapons against civilians, but otherwise the U.S. engagement with shaping the outcome of Syria's civil war has been desultory. Russia is filling the vacuum, which is stoking Israeli anxieties. Despite generally good relations between the Netanyahu and Putin governments, Israel cannot rely on Russia to advance Israeli interests in the same way it has with the United States.
"As the shape of the Syrian war changes, Israel may find its working relations with Russia undermined by Moscow's desire to exercise influence in Syria generally from afar, and by its shifting relations with Iran," Shoshana Bryen, the senior director at the Jewish Policy Center, wrote this week in The Algemeiner.
Absent focused U.S. leadership, Israel may strike out on its own to prevent Hezbollah from becoming the preeminent force in the nations to its north.
There are signs that the Trump administration, albeit belatedly, is noticing what its absence has wrought: Last month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said 2,000 U.S. troops currently in Syria to assist pro-Western rebels would remain stationed there to mitigate against a permanent Iranian presence in Syria.
New fences make restive neighbors.
Israel is building a wall on its northern border along a line demarcated by the United Nations in 2000, when Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel is building the wall in order to prevent the deadly Hezbollah incursions that spurred the 2006 war, which claimed 1,200 Lebanese lives and more than 60 Israeli lives.
But neither Lebanon nor Hezbollah accepted the demarcation as a permanent outcome, citing disputes over small patches of land that extended back to the 1949 armistice, and the Lebanese government and Hezbollah have threatened action.
Oil and gas
Lebanon last month approved a joint bid by Italian, French and Russian oil companies to explore seas off its coast. Israel claims a portion of the waters. Israeli leaders have called for a diplomatic solution to the dispute, but the competing claims are aggravating tensions between the countries.
Hezbollah, intermittently, has also threatened to attack Israeli platforms in the Mediterranean extracting natural gas.
Gaza
The Gaza Strip also is restive, with an increase in rocket attacks from Hamas and Israeli retaliatory strikes after Trump in December recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. An Israel distracted by an engagement with Hamas and other terrorist groups in the south could be seen by Hezbollah as an opening to strike in the north.
Iranian Weapon Factories In Lebanon Pushing Israel To Respond - By Yaakov Lappin -http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=1981#clurvKApvEsz9VGD.99
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah-Iran have risen sharply this week, following the discovery of an Iranian program to set up weapons factories on Lebanese soil, for the manufacture of missile guidance systems.
Such guidance systems can be placed on Hezbollah's arsenal of rockets and missiles, and turn inaccurate projectiles into precision-strike weapons, capabilities that were once reserved for the great powers. It would allow the Shi'a armed organization to target strategically sensitive targets deep in Israel, and cross a red line drawn by Israel over how far its enemies can build up their military capabilities.
These developments have led to a flurry of Israeli warnings in recent days, as part of a diplomatic attempt make Iran and its Hezbollah client desist from their activities. Israeli officials have made it clear that if their warnings will go unheeded, military action will become likely.
"There is no doubt this is a new stage in the attempts by Iran, to build independent capabilities to build advanced missiles systems in Syria and Lebanon," Dr. Ely Karmon, a senior scholar at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, told JNS.
The weapons factories in Syria are likely under direct Iranian control "and those in Lebanon under Hezbollah control," Karmon said.
By building weapons factories in Lebanon and Syria, Iran can kill two birds with one stone, Karmon argued. It can arm its proxies with advanced weapons, and cut out the need for ground transportation of the weapons, across routes that have proven vulnerable to Israeli detection and repeated alleged Israeli air strikes.
Israel has made no secret of its determination to disrupt the Iranian arms trafficking network. So far, it's campaign to do so in Syria has succeeded in dodging a wider conflict. Military strikes in Lebanon, however, could change all of that. Hezbollah has warned in the past that it would respond to such attacks differently from its muted responses to alleged Israeli strikes in Syria.
Still, Iran has a clear incentive to take such risks. The factories make Iran's proxies even more powerful, Karmon said, while limiting the "liberty of the decision making of the two legitimate governments [in Lebanon and Syria]."
Israel's response in recent days has been urgent, and unusual. The spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis, took the rare step of writing a letter directly to the Lebanese people, and publishing it on Lebanese opposition websites, warning of dire consequences if work on the factories continued. Manelis said the entire future of Lebanon and the region is being jeopardized by "the takeover of those who take their orders from Tehran."
"The most severe things are hidden from view. Lebanon is actually turning, due to the failure of the Lebanese authorities and the turning of a blind eye by many members of the international community, into one large missile factory," Manelis wrote. "Iran opened a new de facto branch in Lebanon. Iran is here."
He described Lebanon a powder keg, which could blow up at any time due to Iran's conduct.
"Will Lebanon and the world community allow Iran and Hezbollah to take advantage of the naivety of the heads of the Lebanese state, and set up a factory for accurate missiles, as they are trying to do so these days?" he asked. "The IDF is prepared for all scenarios."
Days later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the commander of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, flew to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin.
It is believed that during their meeting, Netanyahu warned Putin what Israel would do if Russia's partners, Iran and Hezbollah, continued building the factories.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has, for his part, been issuing a steady stream of warnings about events in Lebanon, adding that if residents of Tel Aviv are forced to sit in air raid shelters, "all of Beirut will sit in shelters."
He added, however, that the threat could be stopped "not just with bombs. We are activating all of the diplomatic levers, and other levers, to prevent the production of missiles. The last thing I want is to go into a third Lebanese war... we are taking advantage of all options. What I can stress is that we are determined to stop Lebanon from turning into one big factory for the production of accurate missiles."
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu's former national security advisor, told JNS that Israel's warnings have a dual purpose.
They represent an attempt by Jerusalem to deal with the threat without resorting to military force, and at the same time, they help create needed legitimacy for military action, in case diplomacy fails. The warnings achieve "both" of these objectives, Amidror said.
Karmon said it was far from clear whether these warnings will be effective.
"Israel will have to respond, either by pressing Russia and the U.S. to stop this adventurous Iranian move, or directly by attacking it, including if necessary in Lebanon, which was until now not in Israeli plans to attack preventively," he said.
"I think the threats by Israeli politicians and military to attack and destroy Lebanese infrastructure in order to deter Iran are not sufficient - and counterproductive in relation to Israel's standing in the international arena - as the Iranians, like the Syrians before them, will fight to the last Lebanese. Therefore, Israel should threaten Tehran directly," Karmon, stated.
"It should be remembered that the decision of [former Iranian Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Khomeini to accept the end of the eight- years Iraq-Iran war in 1988 came only after a wave of deadly missile bombings of Iran's capital."
In addition, Karmon said, a recent Kremlin delegation visit to Israel could create an "opening for a strategic dialogue between the two countries at the highest level, but the question is how much the Russians are willing to deliver on the Iranian file."
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