Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Turkey Badly Needed to End Row With Israel. Netanyahu’s Apology Gave Obama a Diplomatic Breakthrough
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu granted the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan a face-saver for ending their three-year rift out of willingness to crown US President Barack Obama’s three-day visit with an impressive diplomatic breakthrough. He swallowed Israel and its army’s pride and, at the airport, with Obama looking on, picked up the phone to Erdogan and apologized for the killing by Israeli soldiers of nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists in 2010 aboard the Mavi Marmara, which was leading a flotilla bound on busting the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The crowing comment by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - “Turkey’s basic demands have been met; we got what we wanted” – was out of place, spiteful and ill-mannered.

He knows perfectly well that for the past year, amid a constant stream of ranting abuse from Ankara, Israel has been quietly responding to Turkey’s desperate need for cooperation in four essential fields, which are disclosed here by debkafile:
1. The Turkish armed forces are heavily dependent on Israeli military technologies from the long years of the close alliance between the two countries, which Ankara cut short. This dependence applies most particularly to its drones, the backbone of today’s modern armies. It is also holding up the huge transaction for the sale of American Boeing Awacs electronic warning airplanes to Turkey.

Boeing was unable to deliver the aircraft without Jerusalem’s consent, because a key component, the early warning systems, is designed in Israel. This consent has been withheld in the face of Turkey’s urgent need and the US aviation firm’s impatience to consummate the deal.

Turkey is in need of those planes - not just to monitor events in neighboring wartorn Syria, but to complete its air defense lineup against Iranian ballistic missiles. Without the AWACs, the advanced FBX-radar system the US has stationed at the Turkish Kurecik air base is only partly operational. The Kurecik battery is linked to its equivalent at a US base in the Israeli Negev, a fact which Ankara chooses to conceal.

2. In view of the turmoil in Syria, the bulk of Turkey’s exports destined for the Persian Gulf and points farther east have been diverted to the Israeli ports of Haifa and Ashdod, whereas just a year ago, they went through Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Since no end is seen to the Syrian conflict and the closure of the Turkish-Syrian border, more and more export traffic from Turkey is making its way through Haifa port and thence by rail across Israel to Jordan. Turkish goods bound for destinations in Europe and the US are diverted to Israeli ports too as Egyptian ports are made increasingly dysfunctional by that country’s economic crisis..
3. In the first year of the Syrian uprising, when Davutoglu was still a frequent traveler to Damascus for talks with Bashar Assad, Ankara entertained high hopes of becoming a major player for resolving the Syrian debacle. But he also sought to strike a deal with the Lebanese Hizballah, Assad’s ally, for obstructing Israeli gas and oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean
Three years on, Turkish leaders have woken up to the realization that they had better hurry up and jump aboard the US-backed Israeli energy bandwagon or else they will miss out on an outstanding and lucrative economic development, namely, the forthcoming opening up of a Mediterranean gas exporting route to Europe.

4. Turkey, Israel and Jordan are all in the same boat as targets for the approaching large-scale use of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons.
This topic was high on the agenda of President Obama’s talks with Jordan’s King Hussein Friday, March 21, in Amman, after he had explored the subject with Israel’s prime minister in Jerusalem.
Obama presented them with his plan to consolidate into a single US-led Turkish-Israeli-Jordan HQ the separate commands established six months ago in each of those countries to combat the use of unconventional weapons.
This unified command would stand ready to launch units of the four armies into coordinated land and air action inside Syria upon a signal from Washington.
The US president used his visits to Jerusalem and Amman to tie up the ends of this contingency plan with Netanyahu and Abdullah, while Secretary of State John Kerry got together with Erdogan in Ankara.

However, this four-way military effort to combat the Syrian chemical threat could not have taken off with Ankara and Jerusalem not on speaking terms.
This had been going on for three years, ever since Erdogan suspended military ties with Israel and downgraded diplomatic relations pending an Israeli apology for the Marmara incident, compensation for the victims and the lifting of its naval blockade on Gaza.

The Turkish prime minister insisted on the Israeli prime minister paying obeisance to Turkish national honor. And finally Netanyahu relented. But Israel stood its ground on the last condition; a UN probe had pronounced the Israeli blockade legal and legitimate although its raid on the Turkish ship was deemed “excessive.” So the blockade remains in place and, indeed, Friday, March 23, Israel’s new defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, tightened it by restricting the Gaza offshore areas open to Palestinian Mediterranean fishermen.

This was punishment for the four-rocket attack staged from Gaza on the Israeli town of Sderot Thursday, the second day of President Obama’s visit to Israel.
debkafile’s military sources comment that the new defense minister may have also been directing a reproach at the prime minister for apologizing to Turkey and admitting to “operational errors,” thereby casting aspersions on the professionalism of the Israel Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit and its legitimate action in defense of Israel’s legal Gaza blockade.

Small, Self - Contained Forces Instead of One Big Army
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Moshe Ya’alon, 63, just appointed defense minister in Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, spent most of his long years of military service in elite paratroop units, before rising to chief of staff from 2002-2005. He was an outstanding commander of Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli equivalent of the American SEALs and its top commando unit.
It was during his stint as chief of staff, that Ya’alon developed the habit of gathering around him at weekends a group of valued and high-performance commanders for brainstorming sessions. He drew on this regular small and intimate “think forum” to provide extra depth and multidimensional thinking for his perspectives on current situations.
This custom persisted after he shed his uniform and went into politics in 2008 as Netanyahu’s Vice Premier and Minister for Strategic affairs. The support team he has put together since of senior players from Military Intelligence and the Mossad has kept him up to date for policy decisions in a constantly shifting environment.
Ya’alon has chosen to break with some of his predecessors, like Ariel Sharon or Ehud Barak, who as defense ministers acted as virtual chiefs of staff themselves. He prefers to delegate, entrusting the management of the armed forces to the reigning chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, and leaving the IDF’s high command and its operational tactics in the hands of professional soldiers, in the same way as he means to leave the running of Israel’s sophisticated military industries to professional executives.

The defense minister’s motto: Delegate

By delegating these tasks, Ya’alon will draw a strong line between the professionals and himself as senior policy-maker. It leaves him free to focus on finding the right answers for three overriding issues vitally affecting the country’s national security:
1. Iran’s nuclear aspirations;
2. Designing Israel’s final boundaries after disposing of extremist threats;
2. Shaping the defense budget around the enhancement of Israel’s military might.
The new defense minister is very clear on his approach to Iran, which is that Israel must do its utmost to win American partnership before proceeding to attack Iran and its nuclear facilities.
Only if Washington rules out any form of attack and Iran is on the verge of obtaining an operational nuclear arsenal, must Israel and the IDF undertake an offensive on its own, independent of a US role.
A swelling stream of intelligence reaching the US and Israel in the last few months attests to Iran’s rapid progress in piling up enriched uranium and developing weapons for the delivery of nuclear weapons.
It has brought Ya’alon around to the conclusion that 2013 will be the decisive year for action. And if Washington decides against a military strike, it will be up to the Israeli prime minister to authorize a solo operation.

To secure its borders, Israel must reclaim S. Lebanon and Gaza positions

Along with the perils of a nuclear Iran, the new minister perceives the unresolved wars on Israel’s doorstep with the pro-Iranian Shiite Hizballah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip as abiding threats to its borders that will ultimately foist on Israel the need for military initiatives.
The advent of the Syrian civil war, now entering its third year, and Hizballah’s active combat on behalf of the Assad regime, have strengthened Yaalon’s long conviction that unfinished business with Hizballah since the 2006 war ended without a decision, and with the Palestinians over Israel’s unconditional disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, are destined to blow up one day in Israel’s face.
Israel’s border with Lebanon will never be peaceful, he believes, until the Hizballah militia is defeated and disarmed (as mandated by UN Security Council resolution 1731 but never carried out) and sections of southern Lebanon south and north of the Litani River are recaptured.
Yaalon, who fiercely opposed the Gaza disengagement plan executed by Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, maintains that this tiny, militant enclave will continue to menace Israel militarily and strategically so long as the IDF does not recover its former positions in the southern region and cuts the enclave off from Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.

Cyber unit as important as air force and navy

Extensive planning for the restructuring of the Israel Defense Forces from the bottom up is partially completed, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report.
The defense minister proposes the substantial downsizing to the minimum of the IDF’s ground and armored forces in stages, starting with the heavy Chariot 4 tank and large Tiger troop carrier units. He maintains it is time to do away with the classical divisions, brigades and professional corps like artillery and replace them with small, self-contained armies which would operate independently of one another.
Each mini-army would be equipped with its own attack helicopter, tank, artillery and special forces units and self-supply facilities.
At the same time, Ya’alon plans to substantially expand the Navy, Air Force and Missile Arm for securing Israel’s airspace and territorial waters. Defending these strategic spaces will also call for special forces units.
He ascribes equal importance to the establishment of a new cyber warfare command, our military sources say, and plans to earmark for this new unit a generous allocation in the next defense budget.

Obama, Netanyahu Stay Out for Now, But Agree on Possible Action
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Dodging an issue that deeply affects Israel and its security, the White House Tuesday, March 19, found no evidence that either Assad forces or the opposition had used chemical weapons in an attack in northern Syria, which left 20-30 dead (the figure depends on the source) and put more than a hundred victims in hospital.
This evasiveness struck a jarring note in Jerusalem the night before President Barack Obama started a visit to Israel. The Israeli government felt bound to respond: "Chemical weapons were used on civilians in Syria on Tuesday,” said an official statement that night.
Two leading Republican lawmakers, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, said bluntly: Reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, if true, mean the president's threshold for involvement in the country's civil war has been met, they said. If the reports of a Scud B hitting Aleppo with a poison warhead are substantiated, “The President’s red line has been crossed, and we would urge him to take immediate action to impose the consequences he has promised."
The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, spoke of a "high probability" that the Syrian government had used the weapons. “… they are either positioned for use and ready to do that or in fact have been used," Rogers said.
But Britain's UN envoy Mark Lyall Grant reflected the US administration line, pointing out that reports of a chemical weapon attack in Syria had not yet been "fully verified."
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry had no problem with blaming Syrian rebels for firing the poisonous rocket outside the northern city of Aleppo.

Assad’s first step toward chemical war

By the time this edition was published, the Syrian government and rebels had traded accusations, but neither had offered proof of which side had actually fired the Scud B missile that hit the Khan al-Assal area of Aleppo - or the consistency of the poison substance used.
In theory, Red Cross medics stationed in Syria were on hand to examine the victims for some answers. But before they were asked to do so, the diplomatic mechanisms of evasion were put in place in Washington and also Jerusalem.
After his first working session with the US president Wednesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was amenable to joining his visitor in stepping back from the red line they had placed on a chemical Syria for now but they agreed on the circumstances that would necessitate their intervention.
(Obama-Netanyahu interaction and its ramifications are discussed in a separate article in this issue)
The upshot was that no world power was prepared to admit that, on Tuesday, March 19, the Assad regime had taken the Syrian conflict into the realm of chemical warfare as it entered its third year (also the 10^th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq),
Twenty-four hours earlier, Obama was shown around an exhibition at Ben Gurion airport of the Israeli Iron Dome, Magic Wand, and Arrow 3 missile interception batteries developed with US assistance and funding – the first such exhibit to be staged at a civilian airport.
But while he was on his way to Israel, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources, Bashar Assad summarily kicked over the US president’s red lines in an effort to determine how far Obama would let himself be pushed before picking up the phone to Russian president Vladimir Putin for a fresh “red line” in the Syrian quicksand.

Lebanon bullied into lining up behind Assad

On Monday, March 18, Syrian Air Force planes and helicopters went into action in northern and eastern Lebanon to strike Syrian rebel bases of departure for operations in Syria.
Both targeted areas were at least one kilometer inside Lebanon. The Syrian ruler wanted no one to mistake his intentions or try to gloss over his decision to launch aerial incursions into Lebanon.
Neither was this a one-off; Assad was clearly bent on following up on the ultimatum he slapped down for Lebanese President Michel Sleiman on Saturday, March 16, giving Beirut 48 hours to meet his demands or face an air offensive: Sack Lebanese Chief of Staff Gen. Jean Khawaji immediately; have the Lebanese army break up Syrian rebel rear bases of operations in Lebanon, stop the traffic of men and arms into Syria and hermetically seal their shared border against smuggling.
If the Lebanese army failed to crack down on Syrian rebels using its territory for crossover attacks, the Syria military would do the job.
This ultimatum amounted to a declaration of war.
Lebanon has already been dragged willy-nilly into the Syrian conflict by the buildup on its soil of the Shiite Hizballah militia of 30,000 men, which is totally subservient to Iran, Assad’s closest ally, and the planting of Iranian al Qods Brigades command centers in the country.
But now, Damascus had put a loaded gun to the Lebanese president’s head, forcing him to align his country unreservedly with the Assad regime and jump into the boat piloted by Iran leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
To save Lebanon from more Syrian violence, he must join Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who has provided Tehran and Damascus with a vital air and land bridge through his country, and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose combatants fight shoulder to shoulder with the Syrian army in the northern town of Homs.

Lebanon has no one to count on for help

When we closed this edition, the Lebanese president had not responded to the Assad ultimatum.
But his back is to the wall. He knows that Lebanon’s national army is no match for Syrian might, especially when more than half of its troops are Shiite. He also understands that he can’t count on any Western or Arab military assistance should he choose to stand up to Assad.
When Syrian jets and helicopters were making free of Lebanese airspace for two-hour sorties, no Patriot missiles ran interference from the batteries deployed on the Turkish-Syrian border. Their radar easily identified the intruders. Yet no US or Turkish plane took to the air from the Incirlik Air Base – not even as a deterrent for containing Syrian air action in Lebanese skies.
Neither did Israeli warplanes get in Syria’s way although, according to Israeli political and military quarters, for the past seven months, they have imposed a no-fly zone over the Syria-Lebanon border, especially the points targeted by Syrian flights, to prevent Syrian chemical weapons moving across to Hizballah.
Encouraged by the universal inertia greeting his outrages, Assad crossed an even bigger red line this week: Tuesday, March 19, a unit of the Syrian army’s 4^th Division, the elite Republican Guard, launched a Scud B missile with a chemical warhead against the Khan al-Assal region of Aleppo. The chemicals identified – phosphorus and chlorine - pointed to Agent 15, the choking gas, known also as BZ.

Assad may even get away with chemical warfare

Scud B missiles loaded with chemicals are only found in one place, according to our military sources: the big Al Safira base southeast of Aleppo, which houses Syria’s largest store of chemical weapons. Repeated rebel attempts to seize this strategic facility were repulsed. So it would only take a simple exercise in elimination to nail the Assad government as the culprit which fired the missile.
It may be also taken for granted that the Syrian ruler would not have gone to the extreme lengths of embarking on chemical warfare without prior consultation with Tehran, especially after both President Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced publicly that he would not be allowed to cross this red line.
The prime minister originally intended to place the Syrian conflict’s dangerous expansion into chemical warfare at the top of the agenda of his three rounds of talks with the US president, even ahead of the Iranian nuclear issue. He therefore issued a statement affirming the use of “chemical weapons on civilians in Syria,” shortly after his cabinet took the oath of office Tuesday and before Obama’s arrival.
But Assad’s gamble paid off at this stage. It failed to draw immediate counter-action.
The US president announced a “thorough investigation” would be launched to establish the facts of the chemical weapons attack, a handy cover for procrastination, and the Israeli prime minister did not demur.
Our sources learned later that the two leaders had decided that certain developments in the chemical weapons crisis would necessitate their intervention.
Assad’s brazen actions this week and their close incidence elevated the brutal Syrian civil war to even more unacceptable levels. The war itself and the situation on Syria’s borders with Lebanon, Jordan and Israel are already fragile and liable to grow more perilous.

Obama Moves Alliance Into “Cyber Age”
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

Any study of the “red lines” held up over any Middle East crisis in recent years would soon discover how short-lived they are, bandied with loud fanfare - only to be blown down by the tumultuous crises they were designed to preempt.
One such red line was laughed away Wednesday, March 20, by a one of the most prominent red liners.
“Where do you want to start?” President Barack Obama asked an Israeli military official after the grand welcoming ceremony in his honor at Ben Gurion Airport.
TV cameras following the president and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu walking together toward an Iron Dome battery picked up the official’s answer: “We are following the red line, sir,” he said, indicating the line painted on the tarmac leading to the batteries.
“The red line, okay,” said the US president, smiling and pointing to Netanyahu. “He’s always talking to me about red lines.”
While spoken in jest, those words later assumed real substance. Addressing a news conference after their three-hour conversation that day, Obama and Netanyahu appeared to have reached accord on a surprisingly broad range of hitherto intractable issues which had long clouded their relations. But, quite remarkably, both seemed to have jettisoned their ominous red lines once and for all.

A US-Israel relationship transcending current crises

An American official familiar with the content of that conversation was quoted exclusively to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources as remarking: “In the cyber age there are no more red lines.”
It was the cyber age, rather than burning Middle East issues, that occupied pride of place in the first conversation the US and Israeli leaders held in Jerusalem Wednesday, and which turned into the springboard for the broad agreements they reached on a whole range of issues.
Both moved beyond the current crises posed by a nuclear Iran, a chemical Syria and a stalled peace process, to set US-Israeli cooperation on a brand new footing which transcended them all.
In his speech Thursday to Israeli students, the US president spoke at length about Israel’s high tech contributions to the world. He said that Israel is in the first rank of world economies and “a center of global invention.”
That was the clue to the reset of relations with the Netanyahu government the day it was sworn in that US president’s visit to Israel ushered in, our sources disclose.
What Obama was proposing was a revamped technological-cum-intelligence partnership which reverted to a format similar to the give-and-take and sharing trust that governed Cold War relations between the two intelligence agencies in the second half of the 20^th century, until the fall of the Soviet empire.
Obama offered a worldview that looked ahead to a future era, when historians would refer to the “global diplomatic philosophy” he had introduced.

Obama: Israel’s innovativeness is a high-value security asset

He explained that it is up to the US and Israel to join forces to preserve their paramount standing – the United States, as the world’s supreme military and technological power, and Israel, as a world-class hi-tech leader. To this end, they must not only combine their technological, military and intelligence capabilities – as they have done since the mid-1950s - but deepen and broaden the cooperation between them.
When Obama told an Israeli student audience that “Israel’s innovativeness is as important to our relations as security,” he was absolutely serious.
One of his primary missions, as he sees it, is to keep up the continuous development of Israel’s electronics industry and its military and intelligence capabilities in the field of cyber technology.
He stressed that the US would continue to invest in Israel’s missile interceptors industry and promote its work on creating a multi-tiered missile defense shield.
This consists of the Arrow 3 at the outer perimeter, followed by Arrow 2, which stops ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere; David's Sling (also known as Magic Wand), which is still under development and designed to stop intermediate rockets and missiles; and the Iron Dome, which was hailed for blowing up Palestinian short- and medium-range rockets in mid-flight from Gaza before they landed on southern Israel.

Cooperation assured for the next decade

President Obama also made a point of commending the joint Israel-US Missile Defense Agency test a few days ago of Arrow 3, the latest generation in the series of missile defense systems.
This model differs from its predecessors in that it can intercept missiles from Iran or elsewhere as they fly outside the earth’s atmosphere, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report. It is therefore the upper tier of the exo-atmospheric interception system Israel has designed.
This was the first “flyout” in military history of an interceptor taking off and flying packed with all of its equipment. No other world army, including that of Russia and China, commands this level of technological prowess, said Obama, rejoicing that it is under exclusive American and Israeli control.
The US president then proposed to Netanyahu that US-Israeli relations would by driven henceforth by five guidelines:
1. Negotiations on a set of updated military, technology and intelligence accords covering their cooperative work for the next decade, through 2022.
2. While expanding US-Israeli cooperation in these areas, the subjects of missile development and new cyber-warfare systems must be added. "We and you can and must surpass China in this area," Obama said.
3. Israel will not attack the Iranian nuclear program without obtaining Washington's consent and would offer US forces a lead role if such an attack were to be judged necessary.

Obama to Israel: Just carry on working; we’ll take care of security

4. Obama advised Netanyahu to adapt his regional policies to the overall American posture of avoiding direct involvement – especially in Syria. Otherwise, he said, Israel would be distracted from its most important missions.
To leave Israel free to continue its work, the US was ready to take Israel's defense upon itself and shield the Jewish state against neighborhood aggressors.
As a model of US helpfulness, he held up Washington’s support for Israel last November in the Pillar of Defense operation for stopping missile attacks from the Gaza Strip. The US joined Egypt and Turkey in bringing about a ceasefire.
Obama also cited Washington's unceasing efforts to make Cairo uphold the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
5. Progress would be made along the Israeli-Palestinian peace track (details of which appear in a separate article in this issue). Jordan's King Abdullah would be a lead player in the process.
Indeed, preserving the Hashemite throne against its enemies would be one of the main US-Israeli objectives in the region, Obama said.

Tough tests to come after the hugs and smiles

Since this blueprint was in the bag before the president set foot in Israel, put together in Washington in the last few weeks by the joint efforts of US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and his Israeli opposite number, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu’s instantaneous concurrence should not have been surprising, nor the relaxed smiles and warm hugs that characterized Obama’s visit to Israel.
The gift Netanyahu prepared for Obama symbolized the next chapter of US-Israeli relations. It was a one-of-a kind replica of the Israeli and American Declarations of Independence etched on a tiny, gold-plated silicon nano-chip designed by researchers and scientists of the Technion University’s Nanotechnology Institute.
The declarations are inscribed on the chip side by side on a surface no larger than 0.04mm by 0.00002mm using a focused beam of gallium ions. The chip is affixed to a Jerusalem stone dating back 2,000 years or more to the Second Jewish Temple, which was used as a stopper to seal clay vessels.
The US president’s visit and the affection he manifested deeply touched many Israelis. However, his departure means that the party is over. Now they are waiting to see how the sympathetic affinity evinced by their visitor and prime minister withstands the tests to come.
The tough issues, skirted at their joint news conference, were articulated eloquently over the heads of the politicians in Obama’s speech to an audience of Israeli students in Jerusalem Thursday.

No Major Peace Initiative – Only Small Steps
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel;Peace Process

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reached a momentous decision Wednesday, March 20. They shelved their long argument over a potential unilateral Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear program.
Instead they decided that in their current terms of office, they would focus on harboring the harmony and friendship befitting the two close allies. Even the incendiary Iranian issue was set to rest by an agreed formula, which DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report was tailored to respect both their sensitivities.
The US recognized the principle of Israel’s right to independently defend itself against a perceived genuine threat from Iran - even if Washington does not share that perception.
In practice, however, Obama and Netanyahu emphasized the overriding importance of the unparalleled level of military and intelligence cooperation their governments had attained. It was understood, therefore, without being put into words, that the Netanyahu government would not risk jeopardizing this cherished bond by attacking Iran without a by-your-leave from Washington.
This bond it was agreed would be the key to deeper and broader military and intelligence cooperation between the US and Israel - not just in the present but well into the future.
(See the opening item in this issue).

No signs of intervention in Syria after chemical attack

“We have your back,” said President Obama at their joint news conference in Jerusalem Wednesday night, and pledged additional funds and technology - despite America’s economic difficulties - for developing Israel's missile interceptor systems such as Iron Dome, for which Washington has already advanced $203 million.
He also promised to appoint a team to work on the extension of the US military assistance program for Israel by a further 10-year period beyond the date of its expiry in 2017.
This extension would be highly pertinent to Israel’s sense of security against the menace of a nuclear-armed Iran and the threats posed by the Islamist regimes rising to power in the surrounding countries. Getting it approved in the coming year would provide the US President and Israeli Prime Minister with a shared legacy: a guarantee of long-term US support for Israel’s security after they leave office – in 2016 for Obama and Netanyahu too, if his coalition government lasts the course.
This message was relayed after their three-hour conversation to an audience of reporters and US and Israeli officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon.
Moving on to Syria, both Obama and Netanyahu appeared to be saying that neither the US nor Israel proposed stepping into Syria militarily to curb the civil war’s expansion to air raids over Lebanon and chemical attacks on Aleppo – both in the 48 hours before the US president’s arrival.
(See the article on the Syrian war)

No major peace initiatives, only small steps for the Palestinians

The US president and Israeli prime minister also appeared at one on the Palestinian issue – a far cry from the bitter frictions of yesteryear. Netanyahu repeated his acceptance of a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian dispute whereby independent Palestine recognized Israel as the state of the Jewish people. But no major initiatives were launcded, only small steps for bolstering the Palestinian Authority and propping up Mahmoud Abbas.
The PA was to be handed control over additional pieces of West Bank territory and the US would pump more aid into its bare coffers. The Palestinians in return would stop vilifying Israel at the UN and in other international institutions.
President Obama is to bid for Saudi and other Arabian Gulf endorsement of these steps. Abbas was encouraged to dust off the peace plan Saudi King Abdullah drafted in 2000 and have it re-endorsed at the Arab League summit in Doha on March 26-27 – with minor changes.
The original was adopted at the time by the Arab League and rejected by Israel. One of the key changes of the resubmitted blueprint is the placing of Jordan’s King Abdullah in charge of its execution.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Middle East sources report that after the formality of Arab League ratification, the US, Israel and the PA will work together on the gradual steps agreed during the Obama visit.

Opening a door to federation or even confederation

The Jordanian monarch will join the effort after his role is approved by the Saudi king.
Those steps, though small, should keep the peace process continuously alive for the duration of President Obama's second term. If Israel and the Palestinians can be brought to the table, he would be credited as making the biggest contribution of any US President towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Introducing Jordan’s Abdullah to the Israeli-Palestinian process means -
1. That Jordanian security forces, especially their General Intelligence and Military Intelligence services, will make a comeback to Palestinian-controlled territory on the West Bank, alongside their US, British and Israeli opposite numbers;
2. The groundwork can be laid and institutions established for a potential federation between the Kingdom of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
3. The option of a confederation between Israel, Jordan and the PA will come under close scrutiny as a framework for resolving the future of Jerusalem and the administrative oversight of the Holy Places sacred to three world faiths.
These contentious topics were notably absent from Obama’s joint statements with the prime minister, especially the intractable core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – Jerusalem, final borders, settlements, Palestinian refugees, future territorial links between the West Bank and Gaza and the extremist Hamas’s role in any future accommodation.

Gaza has its say by shooting four missiles

Gaza though was not ready to be shunted aside in this way. Thursday, the second day of the US President’s visit, as he prepared to visit Ramallah for talks with Hamas’s rivals, Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Authority officials, four Qassam missiles flew from Gaza to the southern Israeli town of Sderot, battered by Palestinian rockets for a decade until the ceasefire of last November.
Property was damaged but no one was hurt
Hamas had made its point to Obama: Ignore us at your peril. We too must be at the table.
Many Americans were surprised by the relaxed friendliness and broad measure of understanding exhibited by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu from the moment the American visitor set foot on the tarmac of Ben Gurion airport. After years of disharmony, they appear to have reenacted the traditional strategic relationship binding the US and Israel, and even deepened their military and intelligence cooperation.
The question now is how this re-start will stand up to the test of the next Middle East crisis.

Let the Headlines Speak
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

What happens if Cyprus collapses?
What happens if Cyprus' banks collapse? If its government goes broke? If it leaves the euro? The European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the country's leaders are trying to find a deal to secure a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) loan for Cyprus and stave off a failure of its banking system. The Cypriot parliament has already rejected one deal, which would have taxed all bank deposits in the country. The ECB has now put a ticking timer on this drama by declaring it would cut off emergency support to Cyprus' banks on Monday if no deal is found.

Sequester! FAA To Close 149 Air Traffic Towers That All Have This One Thing In Common
The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday released a list of 149 non-fed staffed air traffic control towers that it will close due to budget cuts stemming from sequestration. The 149 air traffic facilities slated to begin closing on April 7 are all staffed by contract employees who are not FAA employees. There were 65 other facilities staffed by FAA employees on the preliminary list of towers that could be closed.

Bashar al-Assad vows to 'cleanse' Syria of extremism
Bashar al-Assad vowed to "cleanse" Syria of extremism, in the wake of a suicide bomber which killed dozens including a key pro-regime Sunni cleric. Some 49 people were killed, including Mohamed Saeed al-Bouti, the most prominent Sunni Muslim cleric to back the Syrian president's Alawite minority-dominated regime against a Sunni-led uprising.

Health Insurers Warn on Premiums
Health insurers are privately warning brokers that premiums for many individuals and small businesses could increase sharply next year because of the health-care overhaul law, with the nation's biggest firm projecting that rates could more than double for some consumers buying their own plans.

More Docs Plan to Retire Early
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As Obama Continues Visit, His Themes are Confirmed
Mar 23rd, 2013
Daily NewsRubin Report
Categories: Commentary;The Nation Of Israel

As President Barack Obama continued his visit to Israel the themes remained the same as the ones I covered here. The two main public events were a speech by Obama to Israeli university students and a joint press conference with Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas.

In his speech, Obama spoke at great length about Israel’s history, concerns, and related matters to try to show that he “gets it” when it comes to Israel. The basic phrases were in many cases similar to those used by previous presidents. The intention was to show warm sympathy and support for Israel.

But there were three things strange about the point of the speech, showing that Obama was completely out of touch with contemporary sentiments and thus showing that in many ways he doesn’t get it. These points are:

First, Obama’s big theme is that, and I’m not being satirical here, peace is good. He tried to make the students understand that peace is better than continued conflict and has many advantages. Yet all the students in the audience probably knew everything he was saying. Of course they think peace is good. They are the ones who have to serve in the military and risk their lives, not to mention know that they and their loved ones are the targets of terrorism and war.

Can Obama possibly not comprehend all of this? No, I believe he doesn’t. He seriously thought that he was bringing new ideas to his audience that they had never thought about before nor heard about for years.

Second, he did not deal with a single one of what I call “the day after” issues. In other words, assume that there is a peace agreement between Israel and the PA. Well, how do we know Hamas won’t take over the PA or more radical forces will come to power that will not recognize the deal?

--What is a deal with the PA worth when it won’t include the Gaza Strip, where Hamas would redouble its efforts to attack Israel and work hard to undermine any such agreement?

--What reason is there to believe that there won’t be cross-border terrorism across the new international frontier and the government of Palestine doesn’t do anything about it?

--What about the likelihood of the Palestine government inviting in the armies of other countries or at least getting advanced weapons from them?

--How is Israel going to deal with the PA’s passionately held demand that millions of Palestinians be allowed to come and live in Israel?

--Why should Israel believe in any guarantees and assurances from the United States and Europe when such promises have been repeatedly broken, including ones made by Obama himself?

These are only some of the questions Israelis have about what a peace would look like and whether a formal agreement would really be better than the status quo. This is especially true with the 30-year-old peace Egypt-Israel peace treaty possibly under dire threat. For Obama, none of these problems exist. To his mind, you get a peace agreement on paper and that’s the end of the problem.

Third, Obama has not made one serious mention of the changed regional situation except to say that the United States wants democracy in the Arabic-speaking world and will try to work for that and Egypt’s continued adherence to its peace treaty with Israel. Yet he is still backing Islamists seeking or holding power.

To cite only one example, Obama has supported the new head of the Syrian opposition—apparently against real resistance in the opposition—despite the fact that this man, Ghassan Hitto, has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and support for terrorism against Israel.

Other than wishful thinking, how does Obama think that Israel can make new big concessions and take risks in the face of radical Islamist regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, the Gaza Strip, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria? This is especially true when none of these regimes--except for Iran and to some extent the Hamas regime in Gaza—is strongly opposed by the current U.S. government?

So there is a disconnect between Obama’s new policy on the peace process which fits with Israeli interest despite is criticism, and a regional policy that is a big headache for Israel.

The other development was Obama’s visit to Ramallah. There he gave a message to the PA leadership that also preached the benefits of a two-state solution. He even referred to Israel as a Jewish state, which was a significant phrase.

In response, however, Abbas made it clear that he would only negotiate with Israel if certain preconditions were met, Including a new freeze on construction within existing Jewish settlements on the West Bank and also Israel providing its final proposal for where the border should be. Presumably, if Israel seeks to change the pre-1967 borders Abbas will not come to the negotiating table.

I wonder if Obama and his advisors noticed two things about Abbas’ statement and I think they did.

First, the last time Obama got Israel to do a freeze, Abbas did not negotiate seriously, leaving Obama looking foolish. Netanyahu cooperated; Abbas and the Arabic-speaking regimes didn’t. So why should Obama fall for the same trick twice?

Second, the situation is similar to what happened early in Obama’s first term when Abbas arrived in Washington and gave an interview to Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post making it clear that he was not interested in negotiating with Israel. Abbas has given several interviews recently in which he explicitly stated that now that the UN General Assembly has declared Palestine a “non-member state” he doesn’t need to negotiate with Israel.

In other words, Obama’s trip to Ramallah reinforced his view that the “peace process” is going nowhere and he cannot expect the PA to cooperate with any big effort by him to try to get talks going. So why should Obama bother to pressure Israel in trying to push ahead?