The IDF wants to pacify the Arabs

Ted Belman.  My take away from this analysis is that the IDF concern is to maintain calm. That is their agenda and thus they are against political agendas that incite rather than calm. It is clear that Netanyahu sees eye to eye with them.  So his policies focus on pacifying the Arabs rather than advancing our national rights.  When Netanyahu talks tough it is mostly for show to Israelis. He prefers to offer big carrots to the Arabs to restore and maintain calm.

Escalation in Jerusalem and the West Bank brings fear of religious warfare. ‘Road attacks’ are on the rise. Threats in the north and south demand attention. Meanwhile, the IDF waits for new chief of staff to be announced.

By Ron Ben-Yishai, YNET

Shuafat[..] But there is a rising number of so-called “road attacks” such as the use of cars as weapons, stone-throwing, and use of firearms.

This type of violence was also common in previous intifadas, but this time religious motivation is stronger than before, and may drag us along with the entire region into a religious war. The Hamas plan to assassinate Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is but one example of the “road terror” the IDF faces in the West Bank.

Another cause for concern is growing evidence that the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatuses are losing motivation. They are following Mahmoud Abbas’s orders and curbing a significant portion of disturbances — even disrupting Hamas infrastructure — but not with the level of efficiency and thoroughness seen mere months ago.

Security officials believe that the main reason for this is that the Palestinian public isn’t supportive and brands them collaborators. Security forces perceive that most Palestinians view the struggle to stop Jews from gaining control of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem as legitimate. Thus, a Palestinian who interferes with this jihad is a traitor.

This narrative, which plays on religious fervor, is the reason for Abbas’s fiery rhetoric. Like his people, he is anxious about his physical and political survival. Only under American pressure did he voice any condemnation of the synagogue massacre and advise Palestinian media to tone down their ire.

The IDF general staff estimates that we are not yet in the middle of a full-blown intifada and that the escalation can still be controlled – it may even be possible to reverse the trend. That depends largely on us, say security forces.

The main thing is to neutralize the religious element that is driving Palestinians to violence. We must do everything to remove the Temple Mount from the agenda, politically, publicly, and in the media.

The IDF is obviously alluding to declarations and Temple Mount visits by Israeli politicians, building in East Jerusalem, archeological digs, and tourist sites, all of which Palestinian media present as proof of Israeli scheming to take over Muslim holy sites.

Besides neutralizing the religious element, government officials recommend maximum effort to economically benefit Palestinians in the West Bank and to give them freedom of movement. They say that improving the economic situation will have a pacifying effect. Thus, preventing license-holders from working in Israel, as well as checkpoints and closures, are incendiary rather than mitigating measures.

The IDF says that if necessary, they will join police forces in Jerusalem, but with definite reluctance. Soldiers are not trained to confront crowds using riot control equipment, and may end up in distress, forcing them to use live fire and cause casualties. This would only fan the flames. But the army has already transferred two border patrol regiments from the Palestinian territories to police command in Jerusalem. The border patrol units are being replaced by regular and reservist units.

Gaza on the brink of catastrophe

Gaza is another tumultuous area. The Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza claims that the Gaza Strip is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis in every possible way. Unemployment is reaching 50%. Sanitation and medical services are failing, and the Gaza coast long ago became a cesspool of sewage that may be carried away and reach Israeli shores. Power cuts are frequent.

Worst of all, there is no adequate housing for hundreds of thousands of residents whose homes were destroyed by bombing during Operation Protective Edge. $5.4 billion of aid promised by various countries have not arrived, because the Palestinian Authority headed by Abbas is at odds with Hamas, and because Abbas is not willing to perform the role he undertook to manage rehabilitating the Strip.

But the main reason is the blockade that Egypt imposed following the Sinai terror attack in which more than 30 Egyptian soldiers were killed. Worse still, Egypt didn’t convene talks about rehabilitating the Strip in exchange for disarmament, which were to begin last month. In their absence, there’s also no hope of promptly implementing the reconstruction program the UN formulated with Israel.

The IDF warns that this situation could blow up in our faces before long. Deterrence exists as long as there are no other factors to weaken and neutralize it. That may be the fate of the deterrence attained by Protective Edge, if Hamas decides that the only available option to bring change is another war against us, which will finally bring attention to their distress.

Some claim that this could happen much faster than we thought, and the evidence for that is the speed with which Hamas is rebuilding its military power and production capabilities. It now has no problem recruiting the jobless to its cause for 1,000-1,400 shekels a month, and it is also restoring its rocket production system. This is the reason for its frequent experiments in shooting rockets into the sea. The only conclusion is that we must act quickly to rehabilitate Gaza before it’s too late.

Aggressive response policy
Analysts think that the Islamic State and other radical Islamic organizations do not post an immediate and tangible threat to Israel on the northern front, or even in the Sinai. However, Islamic extremism and the collapse of familiar regional nation states may eventually endanger Israel. Radical Islamists may, for example, manage to seize modern weapons stored in Syrian warehouses, including rockets and anti-aircraft weapons.

We must also be aware of the recent change in the conduct of Hezbollah in south Lebanon and in other areas of friction. Until recently, the group was preoccupied on a number of fronts: fighting the war in Syria alongside Bashar Assad, supporting Shi’ites in Iraq, and especially battling Sunni radicals who have crossed from Lebanon to Syria or have committed terror attacks.

The prevailing assumption, which has been validated in the past, was that Hezbollah does not currently want to deal with us, the more so because the organization’s Iranian patrons will not allow it to spend its enormous rocket arsenal unless it directly serves Iran’s interests. One such use would be to threaten retaliatory attacks if Israel dares to hit Iran’s nuclear weapons project.

Recently, however, it appears that Hezbollah has changed its mind and adopted an aggressive policy towards us. Anything that Nasrallah sees as an Israeli attack on Hezbollah assets provokes immediate, violent retaliation. The danger in Hezbollah’s new policy is that a minor incident could quickly spiral out of control and turn into a third Lebanon war without either side really wanting that. The situation requires full preparedness in the explosive and uncertain northern front.

November 23, 2014 | 4 Comments »

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  1. The primary obligation of any government anywhere is to protect its people. By continuing the mirage of living together in peace with those who are murdering us our government has failed in its most primary obligation to those it presumes to govern. It has tied its own hands and thus cannot protect us.

    Soldiers and police in the best of circumstances are told to shoot in the air. The Arabs are not stupid. They can see that we do not have the courage to throw them out of our country no matter what they do. Until now they were hoping do defeat us via the so called “peace process”. Which, by the way was working out pretty well for them. But when they see how much violence we are willing to tolerate, they are impatient and want to move in for the kill now.

    Thus we see random attacks with cars, tractors, knives, rocks, bullets and fire bombs. Jews are being maimed and murdered and our leaders are still making peace. Jewish leaders are so busy trying to convince us, and themselves, that most Arabs really want peace, that they refuse to open their eyes to reality! No Arab wants to be an equal citizen in a Jewish State. He wants to make Israel into an Arab state. When we are strong they quietly accept reality. When we show weakness they show their fangs. We have convinced them that they can defeat us. This is the real reason for the rise in terrorism. When we fail to address reality and pretend that individual “terrorists” are in the minority and that most Arabs want to live in peace with us, we are aiding and abetting the enemy!

  2. Netanyahu, the IDF, the whole defense establishment, all the rest who want to take out the Islamic element are ignoring the elephant in the room. It will NOT be pacified by concessions. In their way, they are right: they have NO IDEA about true religion. They see the Jewish religion as a relatively innocent pastime, which has had great influence on the Jewish people in the past, and to them is mainly irrelevant, but perhaps nice folklore, but they have no understanding of the meaning of religion. They are totally incompetent to handle the current situation. They are behaving like foot-soldiers against an air-force. All they think of is more of the same: more concessions, or more military and police action.

    This is missing the point! An army must be met by an army, diplomacy by diplomacy, so must religion must be met with religion.

    The fact is, that the Islam which is now preached by ISIS and El Qaida etc, Wahabi and Salafi Islam, is not the only kind. Besides Sufi Islam, and Ismaili, see http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/islamic-sects/.
    The Wahabi and Salafi are a real threat to the free world. There is no reason they should be allowed in Europe of in North or south America. Freedom of Religion does not give freedom to preach killing others, no more than a licence to hold a gun gives the right to aim it a people.

    Israel needs to take up the challenge of Arabs speaking in the name of Islam. Israel CAN. Israel has a great counter-argument from within Islam: see “Allah is a Zionist”, By Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi
    http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/28575/allah-is-a-zionist/
    See also the recent book by Professor Nisim Dana “?? ?? ???? ????” with many more facts and quotations.

    The greatest problem is our Jewish politicians, who are afraid of religion.

  3. Ted Belman. My take away from this analysis is that the IDF concern is to maintain calm. That is their agenda and thus they are against political agendas that incite rather than calm. It is clear that Netanyahu sees eye to eye with them. So his policies focus on pacifying the Arabs rather than advancing our national rights. When Netanyahu talks tough it is mostly for show to Israelis. He prefers to offer big carrots to the Arabs to restore and maintain calm.

    Behind this is the ongoing relationship which BB has been responding to since at least POD. This desire to maintain and grow this relationship governs BB. egypts cooperation is based on the relationship. Without the GCC there is no egypt cooperation which has been pivotal in Israels war against hamas. I beleive that Iran desires to create an incident to refocus the arab street and the jihadis on the war against israel rather than the sunni war against their proxies; this is the reason for the religious element. If Iran can defuse the sunni war agianst their proxies the entire negotiation process on nukes, syria, lebanon and Iraq will go in their favor.

    This narrative, which plays on religious fervor, is the reason for Abbas’s fiery rhetoric. Like his people, he is anxious about his physical and political survival.

    he cannot control his street in this circumstance and in order to survive he must give the rhetoric.
    Hamas wants their survival and their share of the trough as does Abbas but Iran wants the whole thing to blow up.

  4. The chocolate generals who run the IDF would rather feed Jews into the jaws of Molech than do their jobs. Its been decades since they won a war. So they and the police run around and blame Jews rather than put an end to Arab terror. This kind of ostrich policy advocated by them and the Israeli elite is liable to blow up in their face. The Arabs will not be satisfied by Jewish kindness, concessions or restraint. All that will do is lead to more dead Jews. In Israel, the security establishment is a case of the truly blind leading the blind.