August 28, 2007:
Palestinian terrorists are
firing about a hundred rockets into southern Israel each week. Meanwhile, Hamas
is still struggling to gain complete control of Gaza. There are still lots of
Palestinians who oppose Hamas, either for social (they don't want an Islamic
lifestyle imposed on them) or religious (Hamas is too cozy with Shia religious
fanatics from Iran) reasons. Arabs, in general, are wary of Iran, and any Arabs
that ally themselves with Iran. To make matters worse, Hamas tolerates Shia
missionaries who seek to convert Sunni Arabs to the Shia sect of Islam. Many
Sunnis, particularly al Qaeda types, see Shia as heretics.
Hamas has amassed a large arsenal of rockets in
Gaza, and is allowing terrorists to continue attempting attacks on Israel.
These are failing, and getting about a dozen Palestinians a week killed. Hamas
has smuggled about 40 tons of weapons into Gaza, from Egypt, in the last two
months. That's about five times the rate of two years ago, when Israel
controlled the border with Egypt. Israel is angry at Egypt, which has
apparently made a deal with Hamas (to ignore the smuggling as long as Hamas
does not support Islamic terror operations in Egypt.)
Hamas has not attempted any terrorists operations
inside Israel for three years, mainly because Israeli counter-terror operations
have made that extremely difficult. So now the plan is to launch a large scale
rocket attack on southern Israel, similar to the one Hizbollah launched from
Lebanon last year. This would have no chance of military success in the
traditional sense. But Hamas sees such an action as making them big heroes in
the Arab world, and forcing Arab governments to support them. That's unlikely
to happen, but reality was never a large component of Hamas planning.
Iran is very active in supporting both Hamas and
Hizbollah. Training camps in Iran provide technical and terrorist training for
men from both organizations. The Hizbollah rocket arsenal is believed to be
larger than it was before Hizbollah launched its attack last year. That
operation saw about 4,000 rockets fall on Israel, and about twice as many
destroyed by Israeli air and ground forces.
Meanwhile, the UN has extended its peacekeeping
operation in southern Lebanon for another year. The UN troops keep Hizbollah
rockets out the area about 20 kilometers north of the Israeli border. But just
outside that zone, Hizbollah has stored thousands of rockets. This sets up the
opportunity for Hizbollah to fire longer range rockets over UN troops, into
Israel. In response, Israel could use air attacks on Hizbollah. But these, it
knows from last years experience, don't do the job. Israeli ground forces would
have to push aside UN peacekeepers to get to Hizbollah. The current Iranian
plan is apparently to encourage Hamas and Hizbollah to launch their rocket
attacks simultaneously. Israel would kill lots of Arabs, and Iran would declare
itself the winner. Nothing would really be accomplished, except for the
creation of another mythical Arab victory over Israel.