Israel preparing for 'large scale war' in Middle East: cable

“I am preparing the Israeli army for a large scale war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite,” Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted as saying .

• Palestinians during a protest at the security zone near the Gaza Strip border with Israel, outside Beit Lahia.
• Image Credit: AFP

Oslo:  Israel’s army chief told a US Congress delegation in late 2009 he was preparing for a large war in the Middle East, probably against Hamas or Hezbollah, leaked US diplomatic cables showed Sunday.

“I am preparing the Israeli army for a large scale war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite,” Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted as saying in a cable from the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

The document, dated November 15, 2009, was quoted on Sunday in Norwegian by Oslo-based daily Aftenposten, which said it had obtained WikiLeaks’ entire cache of 251,187 leaked US embassy cables.

“The rocket threat against Israel is more serious than ever. That is why Israel is putting such emphasis on rocket defence,” Ashkenazi told the US delegation led by Democrat Ike Skelton, the cable showed.

The army chief lamented that Iran has some 300 Shihab rockets that can reach Israel and stressed that the Jewish state would have only between 10 and 12 minutes warning in case of an attack.

However, it was Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed the most acute threat, he cautioned.

According to the quoted cable, Hezbollah is thought to have more than 40,000 rockets, many of which are believed capable of reaching deep into Israel.

US officials meanwhile reportedly estimate the militant group has acquired an arsenal of around 50,000 rockets.

A 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel killed 1,200 Lebanese, many of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

And in his comments made nearly a year after Israel on December 27, 2008 launched the deadly Gaza war, Ashkenazi said “Israel is on a collision course also with Hamas, which rules Gaza.”

“Hamas will have the possibility to bombard Tel Aviv, with Israel’s highest population concentration,” he was quoted as saying.

The Gaza war killed some 1,400 mainly civilian Palestinians and 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers. It ended on January 18, 2009.

Israel had been harshly criticised for putting civilians at risk during fighting in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

However, in the cable leaked Sunday Ashkenazi is quoted saying Israel next time will not accept “any restrictions on warfare in populated areas,” and insisted the army had never intentionally attacked civilian targets.

 

Recognition hurts Israel: Abbas

• From left: The President of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim after a meeting in Brasilia on Friday.
• Image Credit: AFP

Brasilia:  Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday that a recent wave of nations recognising a Palestinian state based upon 1967 borders is pressuring Israel and the US to return to negotiations and reach a peace deal.

Abbas, in Brazil to lay the cornerstone of a Palestinian Embassy and attend the inauguration of President-elect Dilma Rousseff, told The Associated Press in an interview that recent recognition of a Palestinian state by several Latin American nations would help push the US and Israel into new talks.

“These recognitions of a Palestinian state will help us to convince the Israelis on the necessity to reach a two-state solution,” said Abbas.

Colonies

The current round of peace negotiations collapsed in late September, just weeks after they were launched, when Israel ended a slowdown on colonies in West Bank areas it captured in 1967, land where the Palestinians plan to build their state. By December, the US abandoned trying to persuade Israel to halt the colonies.

The Palestinians refuse to negotiate while Israel builds homes for Jews in the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem.

Abbas said he expects other Latin American and European nations to soon join Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia in recognising a Palestinian state.

Uruguayan officials have said they’ll likely recognise the state soon. Cuba and Venezuela did so long ago.

Eventually, Abbas said, “It will only be Israel and maybe the United States who do not recognise the Palestinian state — and this will put pressure on them.”

The Israeli government has reacted testily to the recognitions, saying that inaugurating an embassy for a nonexistent state — and Palestinians efforts for recognition of that state — is not the best way to achieve peace.

Azani said that the Palestinians “must remember that at the end of the day peace is done with your neighbour and not in faraway continents or with the United Nations.”

Last week, Palestinian officials said they plan to ask the UN Security Council to declare Israeli colonies illegal and demand a halt to their construction.

That would be a key element in a Palestinian campaign to rally international support for independence. Abbas said the colonies were the cause of the stalled talks.

“It’s not that we don’t want the negotiations. We were extending our hand always to the negotiations with the Israelis,” he said.

Despite the deadlocked talks, Abbas said he is “optimistic that 2011 will be the year of peace.”

“The Palestinian people have suffered a lot. They need to live free in their own state and they hope this will be achieved in 2011,” he said.

 

Palestinians To Approach UN For State Recognition

By Mohammed Mar’i – Ramallah

The Palestinian Authority (PA) will present the UN Security Council (UNSC) with a draft of a resolution declaring statehood in the coming days, a senior Palestinian official said on Wednesday.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said in a press statement that the resolution is scheduled to be filed when Bosnia takes the UNSC’s presidency in January.

Erekat added that the Palestinian leadership is “waiting for Bosnia to take the presidency of the Security Council.”� The Palestinian negotiator expressed his hope that the US would not veto the move.

He added that Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand would recognize the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

Erekat said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will leave for Brazil on Wednesday to lay the cornerstone of the Palestinian Embassy there on Jan. 1. Brazil recognized the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in early December.

According to Erekat “the Israeli government is witnessing an international isolation that it hasn’t witnessed before.”�

According to other reports the Palestinians will submit a proposal calling for a Security Council resolution to halt Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Wednesday that Palestinians expect wider recognition of their statehood in the coming year and it will mean more than the mere “Facebook state” predicted by an Israeli minister.

Fayyad said recognition by many countries would “enshrine” the Palestinians’ right to a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured along with East Jerusalem in a 1967 war.

Seventeen years of peace efforts had failed to deliver this promise, he told reporters. The current Israeli coalition’s stated commitment to a two-state solution could not be relied on “given the erosion that has taken place,” he said.

Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador announced recognition of Palestinian statehood in the past month. Chile, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua are reported to be weighing the same move.

“These are welcome developments,” Fayyad said.

However, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that the US and Europe are straying from the idea of unilaterally establishing a Palestinian state.

The European Union has staved off Palestinian pressure in favor of waiting until an “appropriate” time, while the US House of Representatives passed a resolution this month saying only peace talks could set such a process in motion.

In September, the US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed after Israel refused to extend a 10-month moratorium over freezing settlement constructions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Abbas and other Palestinian officials had threatened to use other diplomatic options, including dissolving the Palestinian Authority, in case Israel keeps insisting not to freeze building settlements.

While the Palestinians say they are still committed to a negotiated peace deal, they have grown increasingly frustrated and have started taking alternative actions to put Israel on the defensive. As part of that campaign, they have been seeking unilateral recognition of an independent Palestinian state, even in the absence of a peace deal.