Wednesday, January 07, 2009
The Bible of Israel and OBAMA: Divorcing thyself from the Palestinian issue.
The Bible of Israel and OBAMA: Divorcing thyself from the Palestinian issue.
http://geoplotical.blogspot.com/2010/10/barack-obamas-mother-is-key-to.html
In short, the Gaza operation is not Israel’s end-all offensive against the Palestinians – merely another chapter in an intractable conflict that will continue to draw the world’s attention from time to time.
For several years, Israelis and Palestinians played the land-for-peace game. Each side engaged in a series of elaborate maneuvers designed to get the best possible deal when it came time to negotiate a final status agreement.
But when Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran became leading players in the Middle East struggle, that land-for-peace game was suspended. A different game with different rules was begun. This new game is not oriented toward a final agreement. The extremist groups believe in the eventual extermination of Israel. They're not interested in a handshake on the White House lawn, because it had been tried in 1991-1993 with Madrid talks and the Oslo accords..., and both proved to be an utter failure and a ruse on the part of the Israelis, and the best deal that could be gotten has become a wild chimerical dream, simply unattainable after 15 years of trying genuinely by the Palestinian "moderates".... , in other words, both Hamas and Hezbollah are right in believing that the Israelis and their American Patrons do want any kind of Peace, it's just a process for the process, and a game of chicken and egg...
In this new game, both sides seek the destruction of the other, but neither has the power to achieve it. They are engaged in a struggle that has no near-term practical end. The extremists' goal is to kill as many Arabs as possible and wait for God (or USA) to kill the rest. Israel's goal is to expand the brazenness of the extremists until their movement somehow burns itself out or is destroyed from within Israeli society. Israel's realistic immediate goal is not to achieve some permanent resolution, but to merely suppress Arabs livelihoods week by week and month by month....and kill and maim as many as possible, in the hope that the rest will flee, disappear in thin air, or immigrate for ever...leaving the land of Israel free for them to grab for good, free of any Arabs, even those who are within Palestinian borders of 1948, now Israel...
The writer Michael Oakeshott captured Israel's quandary in this game in a famous passage: "In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbor for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to kill afloat on an even keel...."
By trial and error, Israel is learning to kill an even keel. For while Hamas and the extremists are dogmatic about ends, they are pragmatic about timing and means. On several occasions, Israelis have managed to temporarily suppress violence. The assassinations of Abdel Aziz Rantisi and Ahmed Yassin in 2004 temporarily suppressed Hamas suicide bombings. Israel failed miserably their stated goal of destruction of Hezbollah's command and control structure in Beirut's Dahiya district in 2006,and have reinforced the leadership and added vigor and will of the Resistance activity in the north, throughout Lebanon and with the backing of the majority of the Lebanese.
In this game, violence necessarily begets violence. It sometimes adds to it on purpose by the Israelis . The difference between successful Israeli actions and unsuccessful ones is not in the amount of destruction they achieve, but in the psychological messages they send. The attacks on Hamas terror leaders in 2004 demonstrated Israeli prowess. They demonstrated superior intelligence capability and suggested that Israel is never one step ahead. These sorts of accomplishments sapped Hamas's confidence and created a cycle of resistance, leading to certainty and more risk-averse behavior...
Israel's invasion of Lebanon, on the other hand, created plenty of physical and human destruction, but it also displayed Israeli ineptitude. This time it was Israel's turn to suffer a crisis of confidence. Resistance on the Arab side gained prestige, while moderates never had it.
This new game isn't a war of attrition. It's a struggle for confidence, a series of psychological exchanges designed to shift the balance of morale. The material destroyed in an episode can be replaced, but the psychological effects are more lasting. What is really important is how each episode ends, because the ending defines the meaning - who mastered events and who was mastered by them.
Over the past several weeks, Israeli leaders seem not to have adjusted to the new game with new rules. The initial incursion into Gaza was an ineffective display of prowess. According to The Jerusalem Report, in the first wave, 80 Israeli planes hit more than 100 targets and nearly all of the Hamas military compounds within 3 minutes 40 seconds. The IDF has clearly addressed many of the weaknesses exposed by the Winograd Commission, showing the recuperative powers a democracy is incapable of, because it failed again in the strategy game.
But recently the quotations in the Israeli press have taken on a different tone. Israeli leaders have listed an assortment of vague war aims. The habits of mind from the old wars have resurfaced. Some generals seem to think they are engaged in an old-fashioned war to hold territory for extended periods of time. Some seem to imagine that if they bomb Hamas enough, they will turn it into the more puppeteering Fatah.
Many Israeli leaders seem to have taken the momentum of the past weeks and concluded that they can force through a permanent solution to their quandary. That's the perfect way to dilute the psychological effect, and to lose control of the endgame.
In one scenario, Israel finishes a quick ground assault with a lightning effort to clean out the tunnels in the Philadelphia Corridor. Then it withdraws from Gaza, at a time of its own choosing, to let the psychological reverberations begin. In another scenario, Israel's assault drags on. The suffering of the innocents in Gaza magnifies. The meaning changes.
The architects of the first scenario understand the rules of the new game. The architects of the second miss the core concept: psychology matters most....
Israel's endgame...
At the birth of Israel, there were 87 million Arabs. Today, there are 320 million. In 2020 -- the same time that has elapsed since 1988 -- Arabs will number half a billion. Gaining time and pushing back all Palestinians remaining in Palestine into the other 21 Arab states for good while killing and maiming as many of them as possible, rendering their lives as miserable as possible, are the ingredients of Israeli strategy....
The immediate objective in Gaza against Hamas is to restore Israel's image of military invincibility, badly damaged 2 1/2 years ago when a punitive raid into south Lebanon triggered a hail of Hezbollah resistance and beat the IDF dead in their tracks that forced the population of northern Israel into underground shelters. A botched Israeli military operation gave the Israel Defense Forces a black eye -- and invincible Israel, in the eyes of its enemies, became evincible.
Hezbollah on Israel's northern border and Hamas to its south are seen in Israel as extensions of Iran's asymmetrical terrorist capabilities. Given Iran's nuclear ambitions, it became imperative to demonstrate to Iran's strategic planners that Hamas would never be allowed to act as a surrogate for those who plan Israel's destruction. So far, the only demonstration in Gaza is that Hamas now has 1 million Israelis within range of its missiles.
Four Israelis killed by Hamas' unguided rockets provoked a massive retaliation that killed over 500 and wounded 2,500, left 1.5 million Palestinians without power or running water, short of food, overflowing hospitals, too few doctors -- and triggered anti-Israel demonstrations throughout the world. The mobilization of IDF reservists and a massive eight-day aerial bombardment were followed by a tank-led ground invasion of Gaza.
IDF reservists were also needed to reinforce the northern front in Lebanon, should Hezbollah decide to open a second front in solidarity with Hamas. In the south, the Israelis estimate 400 to 600 tunnels run along Gaza's "Philadelphia Corridor," the strip of land along the Egyptian border. Mossad, the Israeli CIA clone, estimates the amount of explosives smuggled in via tunnels, courtesy of Iran, at 4 tons. Iran's Revolutionary Guard trained some 950 Hamas volunteers, according to Mossad, in building rockets and bombs and in guerrilla warfare tactics. Iran's secret aid to Hamas is estimated at $130 million a year....
Since neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be eliminated, what is Israel's endgame?
For two of Israel's three principal contenders in the Feb. 10 elections, Defense Minister (and former Prime Minister) Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, hundreds of air strikes, a massive artillery barrage and a ground offensive against Hamas targets demonstrated they could be just as tough as the challenger, superhawk and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. For those whose priority objective is the creation of a viable Palestinian state -- 22 Arab countries -- it was yet another setback.
The geopolitical can named "Palestinian state" has been kicked down the road one more time, as usual since 1978 and the infamous Camp David Accords. Slowly working its way back center stage, first in 1991 in Madrid and Oslo in 93, then was the 2002 Saudi plan that called for the recognition of Israel by all 22 Arab states in return for ALL the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War (with minor adjustments ). Originally put forward by Saudi King Abdullah seven years ago, and endorsed by the entire Arab world, gullible Arab leaders have been hinting President Obama would adopt it for his new Middle East roadmap......
Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas in 2008/09 have convinced an overwhelming majority of ARABS that an Israeli state cannot coexist peacefully with the Arab states. The 260,000 Jewish settlers in 140 settlements in the West Bank are not about to upstake to make room for a revanchist Palestinian state. The lessons of Hezbollah's resistance in 2006 and Hamas' in 2008 have convinced most Israelis a Palestinian nation in the West Bank, even if demilitarized under U.N. or even U.S. control, would not give up the dream of recovering the homes their fathers and grandfathers lost 62 years ago....and it shouldn't.
A month after Israel forced 8,500 Jewish settlers out of Gaza in December 2005, Hamas defeated the corrupt, ineffective and puppet Fattah movement in parliamentary elections. By 2007, a civil war drove Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his government out of Gaza to the West Bank, now under Israeli control, after Hamas had won democratic elections and Israel's savage imprisonment of their speaker of Parliament and many members of parliament and an endless blockade over Gaza.
Another showstopper for a Palestinian state is Jerusalem, specifically Arab East Jerusalem, where several thousand Israelis have moved in piecemeal over the past four decades. No Palestinian leader could accept anything less than a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, which no Israeli leader, expecting to stay alive politically, could endorse.
Meanwhile, Israel's rekindled status as evincible carried the day, unaided nor assisted in the midst of the Gaza offensive by the IDF's new YouTube channel, using the blogosphere as another war zone. Israeli politicians, drowned out by the voices of Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war, dominated news networks with footage from unmanned drones and fighter-bombers that showed Hamas loading rockets onto a pickup truck to be driven closer to the border -- but hit by an IAF air strike almost immediately....
Writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper just before Israel's air raids against Hamas targets, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said: "What is changing before our eyes is a clear process of recognition by Hamas leaders that their ideological aspiration is attainable, and will remain in the foreseeable future. Therefore, its leaders in Damascus take the trouble to say to the many interlocutors who visit their offices, including in the past week, that they are willing or want the establishment of a Palestinian state within the provisional 1967 borders. Provisional until when? They do say, and they do know." Demography is KEY, and time is on their side.
The confidence of the Arabs in the strategic war, while Israel will continue its policy of divorcing itself from the Palestinian issue, content to have the Palestinians fighting among themselves as long as their militant assets do not threaten Israel proper...
The Obama administration faces a number of issues with far more geopolitical significance than the current Israeli offensive. The India-Pakistan crisis is still far from resolved, with officials in New Delhi now in the process of making the case to the international community that elements of the Pakistani state were involved in the Nov. 26 Mumbai attacks. The Indian home minister expected in Washington this week to present evidence on the Pakistani link, and there is no guarantee that Pakistan will be able to evade military action from the Indians unless Islamabad somehow follows through with politically costly demands to purge its intelligence apparatus and crack down on its militant proxies — demands that it may simply lack the capacity to fulfill.
Meanwhile, the situation in Afghanistan shows little sign of improving, as the Taliban continue to strengthen. In Iraq, a number of problems are on the horizon as the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and Tehran both exploit constraints placed on U.S. forces by the new Status of Forces Agreement to contain Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish factions. Meanwhile, Russia has cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine — just one of many steps the Kremlin intends to take to secure its influence in its near abroad, at the expense of the United States and its Western allies, while Washington remains preoccupied. All of these foreign policy challenges are unfolding against the backdrop of a global financial crisis that is knocking the wind out of the world’s most active economic hubs.
Obama will have to hit the ground running Jan. 20, but the Gaza situation could slow his administration down in the early phase of his presidency. Whether a cease-fire is negotiated, Hamas is crippled or Israel suffers another symbolic defeat, little will change in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (though any of these outcomes could absorb significant international attention). The effects of a resurgent Russia, a crippling financial contagion or a potential crisis on the Indian subcontinent, however, will be felt long after events in Gaza disappear from the headlines.
Meanwhile, New Trouble for an Obama Nominee: Admiral Dennis Blair Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings in East Timor, and this is precisely why he is a good candidate to be a great cover-upper for all the American crimes on the international scene since Vietnam... it is revealed that Admiral Dennis Blair played a critical role in backing the Indonesian occupation of East Timor during the 1990s. At the height of a wave of ruthless attacks on Timorese that killed hundreds and displaced tens of thousands, Blair personally informed top Indonesian general, Wiranto, of unwavering US support....
Admiral Blair was involved in supporting the Indonesian armed forces as they were massacring churches in East Timor, as they were killing civilians in 1999 in the run-up to a UN-sponsored free election. That election was due to decide whether East Timor would become independent. The Indonesian army was trying to stop the occupied Timorese from voting for independence, so they set up militias, which went on rampages.
In one incident, they went into a church in Likisia where refugees were hiding. They massacred them with machetes. Their flesh was found plastered to the walls. Two days after that, Admiral Blair went to meet with the Indonesian commander, General Wiranto, and he gave him reassurances that the US was still behind him. He offered him new US military aid. And even though Blair had been told by the State Department and the White House to tell Wiranto to stop the massacres, Blair did not do that. This is according to classified US cables which I obtained in 1999 and reported on...earlier.
After that, when people at the State Department heard about what Blair had done, he was told to talk to Wiranto again. He again spoke to Wiranto, on the phone, and again reassured him, offered him new US military aid. Blair even offered Wiranto aid for the specific unit, the Brimob, the paramilitary police who had gone into that church as they chopped up the refugees and chopped up the clergy who were hiding there. General Wiranto naturally took this as reassurance. He escalated the attacks. Wiranto was later indicted for crimes against humanity. Blair has not been held to account.
And now, they say Obama wants to make him Director of National Intelligence. This is more proof positive that the Obama presidency is but a mirage and a subservient charade working for the elite power behind the power in USA, and that the infamous White House Murder Inc, will flourish even further, within the Obama sectarian divide of the UKUSA alliance and the evil nexus of CIA2/MOSSAD....
He continued to support the Indonesian military until international outcry forced the Clinton administration to withdraw its military and diplomatic backing....
Provisional or permanent, that's precisely where Israel's leaders are determined not to go, but their strategic failures shine through and through daily. The endgame is inevitable.