"Israelis brace for missile firestorm"

This article from UPI:

Israelis brace for missile firestorm

For months, military leaders and commentators have been warning Israelis their cities face an unprecedented threat of missile attacks even as the country invests heavily in developing air-defense systems experts say cannot provide adequate protection.

This uncharacteristically downbeat theme was summed up by Maj. Gen. Amod Yadlin, the outgoing chief of Military Intelligence, in a Nov. 21 briefing to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Cabinet.

"Tel Aviv will be a front line in the next conflict," he warned.

A few days earlier, he'd told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that "future wars … will be much bigger, much wider and with many more casualties" than Israelis have experienced before.

Indeed. Biblical prophecy makes this point abundantly clear.

"The enemy has achieved aerial supremacy without even having aircraft," Rubin said, referring to Hezbollah and the Palestinians' Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli leaders say Hezbollah has more than 40,000 missiles and rockets, almost four times the number it had when it fought Israel in a 34-day war in 2006.

During that conflict Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel, about 120 a day. That's the heaviest bombardment Israel has experienced.

Most of Hezbollah's arsenal consists of short-range weapons but it is also reported to have Syrian M600 missiles, Iranian Fateh-110 guided rockets and Soviet-built Scud-B ballistic missiles.

Syrian has dozens of Scuds and Iran has an estimated 200 Shehab-3b ballistic missiles but is developing the more advanced and more accurate Sejjil-2.

So it would only need a few dozen of the larger missiles to wreak havoc and inflict far more damage than Hezbollah did in 2006, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians.

Four years after Hezbollah exposed Israel's vulnerability to attack by short- and medium-range rockets, and billions of dollars in development programs, it seems that Israel's cities and air bases are still exposed.

The statements made by Yadlin, Rubin and others about the dangers the country now faces indicate Israel's leaders are preparing the country for the worst.

As mentioned so many times, almost all that we see now in the news coming from the Middle East , Involves "wars and rumors of war".

The article below is related:

Will Israel attack Iran by Christmas?

Personally, I doubt it, but the article contains some interesting quotes:

To me, the most revealing parts of the Wikileaks diplo-docu-dump are about the Middle East. We already knew that the Sunni Arab autocrats cannot bear the thought of a Shiite nuclear bomb and are almost as worried as the Israelis. But now the evidentiary proof brings it home:

The Saudi king was recorded as having "frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme", one cable stated. "He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.

The defence minister, Ehud Barak, estimated in June 2009 that there was a window of "between six and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable". After that, Barak said, "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."

Officials in Jordan and Bahrain have openly called for Iran's nuclear programme to be stopped by any means, including military. Leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran as "evil", an "existential threat" and a power that "is going to take us to war".

If we take Barak's word for it, the Israelis could launch World War III within a month. And would carry much of the Sunni Arab autocrats with it. One notes that Saudi foreign diplomats and functionaries are more wary about war with Iran than the royals. But there seems little discussion about the momentous consequences of a third war launched by the West against a Muslim country in less than a decade.

It is hard to believe that such a war could be launched during the next 2-3 weeks. However, the article reveals just how close we are to seeing major conflict in the region. It will happen according to God's timing and not a moment sooner.

But one gets the uneasy feeling that God's timing may be approaching rapidly. We shall see.