Sunday In The News: Syrian War Expanding Into Lebanon, Israeli Jets Fly Over Region

Syrian Rebels, Hezbollah In Deadly Fight In Lebanon

Several fighters were killed in an overnight clash between Hezbollah fighters and Syrian rebel forces in Lebanon's eastern border region with Syria, Lebanese security sources said on Sunday.

One source said 15 rebels were killed in the fighting east of the Bekaa Valley town of Baalbek, but the exact toll would not be clear until bodies could be retrieved from the remote and rugged border area. One Hezbollah fighter also died, he said.

Syria's two-year-old conflict has increasingly sucked in its smaller neighbor, with deadly fighting shaking the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli and rockets hitting the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut.

Guerrillas from Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah, which supports the Iranian-backed President Bashar Assad, are fighting alongside his army to drive rebels from the Syrian border town of Qusair, while Lebanese Sunni Muslim fighters have joined the anti-Assad revolt.

Rebels have said they will carry out attacks inside Lebanon in response to Hezbollah's support for Assad's assault on Qusair, a strategic town for rebel weapons supplies and fighters coming into Syria from Lebanon.

Israeli Jets Fly Over Lebanon

Israeli fighter jets on Sunday flew at a low altitude over Lebanon, circling Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, and passing over the town of Baalbek near the Syrian border, Lebanese security officials and the country’s Naharnet news site reported.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman asked Adnan Mansour, the country’s foreign minister, to file a complaint with the UN regarding Israel’s flyovers, the report said.

The flights Sunday were carried out only weeks after Israeli jets reportedly targeted weapons convoys in two airstrikes near Damascus, preventing Iranian-made missiles from reaching the hands of Hezbollah, a Shiite terror group based in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Arrow II Ready For Syrian Missiles. U.S. Patriots For Jordan. Moscow Backs Hizballah

“Syrian batteries are in a high state of operability, ready to fire at short notice,” said Israel Air Force Colonel Zvika Haimovich in special briefings to international media Friday. He disclosed that Israel tracks every missile fired in the Syrian civil war, since southward launches would give Israel mere seconds to determine it was not the true target. “All it would take is a few degrees’ change in the flight path to endanger us.”

In Washington, Pentagon sources reported that the United States was sending Patriot missile defense systems and F-16 fighter jets to Jordan for the annual joint Eager Lion exercise between the two armies. The sources did not say whether the Patriots and fighter jets would withdraw after the two-month exercise.

Moscow, for its part, continues to sow confusion about the delivery of its S-300 anti-air missile batteries to Syria, but has shown its hand on another issue, by blocking a UN Security Council motion that would have condemned Hizballah. 

Hizballah forces fighting with the Syrian army captured most of its urban area.
Our military sources report heavy fighting is raging in the northern sector of al Qusayr since the rebels brought in reinforcements for their last stand late last week.

A Hizballah siege force has cut off food and water supplies for the 10,000 civilians and 2,500 opposition fighters trapped in that corner of the town. At least 1.200 wounded people are without access to medical attention.

Moscow claimed it blocked a Security Council motion on al Qusayr because there was no UN condemnation when the Syrian rebels captured the town in 2012.

For Israel, the Russian UN action is of great concern because it amounts to the extension of Moscow’s patronage not just to the Assad regime but also to Hizballah which spearheaded the al Qusayr offensive.  This is consistent with the pledges of support Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov gave Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah during their secret conversation in Beirut on April 27.
When questioned on this score, Russian diplomats were evasive - in the same way as they are ambiguous about the S-300 missiles. However Moscow’s Security Council action leaves no room for doubt that Hizballah’s military intervention in the Syrian war has won a powerful champion in Moscow.

'Syrian Government Aided By Iranian, Russian Tech'

Already buoyed by a large infusion of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, in recent months the Syrian government has also been enjoying a tactical edge in the form of advanced surveillance and defense technology courtesy of Iran and Russia, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

The equipment includes surveillance drones provided by Iran, anti-mortar systems, special intelligence-gathering equipment, and communications jamming devices, Middle Eastern intelligence officials told the paper.

“We’re seeing a turning point in the past couple of months,” an official was quoted as saying. “It has a lot to do with the quality and type of weapons and other systems coming from Iran and Russia.”

Another source was quoted to the effect that the Syrian army had recently displayed new tactics that were likely acquired through training from foreign advisers. 

A Jordanian general who monitors the fighting in Syria, sometimes from across the border several kilometers away, described seeing “many things we haven’t seen before,” including armored vehicles, night-vision devices, thermal imaging instruments and vehicles with jamming equipment.

Saudis, Gulf States 'Unnerved by U.S. Pivot Away From Middle East'

In a bid to calm regional concern that the United States is withdrawing from a troubled Middle East, the Obama administration is working to strengthen ties with several Persian Gulf states, according to experts.

Many of America’s staunchest regional allies believe the Obama administration is seeking to focus less on the Middle East and its troubles and more on other regions with greater geopolitical clout, like East Asia. Several Middle Eastern countries have read American behavior — the so-called strategic “pivot” to Asia, cuts in the defense budget, and the unwillingness to intervene in Syria — as signs of growing American reluctance to shoulder the burden of regional security.

The tensions in the region are on the rise. Saudi Arabia recently announced it has captured at least 28 members of an alleged Iranian spy ring in two waves of arrests in March and May, and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned last week that the Iranian nuclear program was a “danger” to the “security of the whole region.”

While tensions with Iran are on the rise, America’s allies are questioning the Obama administration’s desire to stay the course in the region.

And despite repeated requests from allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Obama administration has declined to order military action to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, instead opting for continued diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. 

Middle Eastern allies have also noted the administration’s much-discussed strategic “pivot” away from what many administration officials view as the distractions of the Middle East to the more geopolitically weighty issues related to the growing influence of China.

If the US fails to prevent Iran’s attainment of a nuclear weapons capability, “the Saudis would have to reassess” their security dependence on the US.

The Saudis might opt to use the threat of launching their own nuclear weapons program – a scenario that could lead to a domino effect of nuclear proliferation in an unstable region – to obtain stronger US security guarantees.

Iran's Arak reactor Looms Into Israeli, Western View

Iran aims to start a reactor next year which the West fears could arm an atomic bomb;Israel, which has bombed such construction sites around the Middle East before, may try to stop the plant being completed.

The timetable for the planned start-up of the Arak heavy-water research plant is closely watched: Israeli and Western experts say any attacker would probably prefer to act before it becomes operational - to avoid generating radioactive fallout.

The Islamic Republic says it will make isotopes for medical and agricultural use. But analysts say this type of facility can also produce plutonium for weapons if the spent fuel is reprocessed - something Iransays it has no intention of doing.

Time may be pressing for adversaries who want to act.

"Whoever considers attacking an active reactor is willing to invite another Chernobyl," former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said, referring to the 1986 Soviet reactor accident which sent radioactive dust across much of Europe.

"And there is no one who wants to do that."

A State Of Palestine No Solution

With the Obama Administration intent on a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestinian problem there are a few things we think ought to be considered.

Currently, sparks are flying between Israel and Syria over those Russian S-300 missiles about to arrive in Syria.
You are kidding yourself if you believe, for one moment, that Israel will allow those Russian missiles to be successfully deployed before Israel takes them out.

Israel has no choice.  With those missiles, Assad can shoot down Israeli aircraft while the planes are still in Israeli air space.  From Israel’s standpoint—that cannot be allowed.

If you think things are bad in the Middle East today, wait until there is a “state” of Palestine!
The creation of a Palestinian state will do nothing to bring stability to the region.  In fact, there will be more war, more instability, and more suffering.

A Palestinian state would effectively open up a front that starts ten miles from Tel Aviv and reaches 1,000 miles deep across the Arabian Peninsula to Teheran. That, alone, will be cause for Israel to go on their highest military alert and stay there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In other words… all the time. 

The buffer zone Israel counts on to give her time to activate her reserves and get them mobilized will no longer exist.  That short period of time,  so vital for the defense of Israel, will be gone.  Therefore, Israel will have no choice but to adopt what, for all practical purposes, will be a “state of war” as a normal, everyday, lifestyle.

And it won’t just be Israel in the gun sights of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.  Little Jordan will be toast!

If you are among those who have bought into the school of thought, which says Israel would be the first target of a Palestinian State military, then may we respectfully suggest that you “think again!”
No.  The military minds have another thought on that.  They think Jordan will be Target One.

Why?

Think about it for a moment.  Eighty percent of Jordan’s population is made-up of those Arab refugees who call themselves Palestinians.  They HATE the Hashemite Kingdom. In fact, they tried to overthrow the little kingdom over 40 years ago—in 1970.

Think about this, also:  Jordan is the only remaining moderate, western-oriented Arab state in the Middle East.  The Palestinian State cannot allow the continued existence of Jordan as it is today.  Nope.  Jordan has to be brought to heel.

Once Jordan has been taken back, effectively, to the 11h or 12th century, then the State of Palestine’s military will be enlarged by the wholesale enlistment/conscription of those Palestinians already in Jordan—THEN they can turn their attention—and their guns—on Israel.

What we can expect is a blood bath in the Middle East.  These so-called Palestinians are the people who personify HATE and teach it to their children less their vigor for killing Jews grows dim.  Even their children’s textbooks teach hate!

Why is no one—outside the world’s banking community—asking about Palestine’s preparations for taking its place among the nations of the world?  It’s a legitimatequestion and one, I think, for which the answer is chilling.

Creating a State of Palestine is, itself, a terrorist plot against the world.  The UN will be creating a second rogue state in the Middle East.  It would better be named “West Iran” than Palestine. The state of Palestine will be run from Tehran, owned and operated by the mad mullahs of Iran.
A Palestinian state will only ensure the continuation of war, terrorism, and bloodshed.  The one thing we can be sure it will NOT bring to the Middle East is… peace.

When one stands back and considers, as objectively as possible, the problems caused by recognizing a Palestinian state one can instantly see that the stage is being set for a massive regional war in the Middle East with Israel, Iran, Syria, the US, Russia, and China ALL involved.

For my Christian brethren this may sound uncomfortably familiar.  Things happen in that part of the world when the “ancient markers” are moved—or removed.  (Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. Proverbs 22:28)
Establishing a State of Palestine would not necessarily be the beginning.  It could, in fact, mark the end.