Updates From The Middle East

Joel Rosenberg has an excellent and timely update:

Israel Scores Enormous Intelligence And Operational Coup, Killing 3 Senior Hamas Commanders In Airstrike

The last 48 hours have seen a dramatic surge of violence here in Israel, and horrific atrocities throughout the epicenter. At the moment it is 2:15 in the morning here, the beginning of Day #46.

Here is the latest:

• Hamas and its allies have fired more than 320 rockets at Israel since Tuesday night when it broke its 11th ceasefire agreement.
• This represents one of the largest surges of violence in the past 46 days.
• Why such a ferocious barrage by Hamas? Because the Shin Bet and IDF just scored an enormous intelligence and operational coup — IDF airstrikes killed three very senior Hamas military commanders.
• Hamas’ remaining leaders seem stunned by how Israel could have known where such key men were.
• They are now reportedly arresting and murdering suspected collaboratorsand trying desperately to figure out how Israel penetrated their most tightly held secrets.
• Is there an Israeli mole inside Hamas? Did Israel intercept Hamas phone calls? How did they do it?
• Israeli officials warn Hamas could become desperate and launch a wave of attacks inside of Israel if they have sleeper cells inside the country.
• Meanwhile, senior Israeli sources are telling us they believe Hamas is down to the last 25% of their rocket arsenal.
• They started with about 9,000 to 10,000 rockets. They have fired about 4,000 so far. The IDF believes it has destroyed another 3,500 or so through airstrikes and its recent ground campaign. That leaves an estimated 2,500 or so.
• On another front, ISIS has beheaded an American journalist, James Foley, after failing to receive the $100 million-plus ransom they were demanding.
• ISIS continues beheading and crucifying Christians and Muslims in Syria and Iraq.
• Increasingly, U.S. officials see ISIS preparing to attack Americans directly in the homeland.
• “ISIS today represents a direct and growing threat to the United States,” reports National Journal. “It has attracted an estimated 12,000 foreign fighters to its black banner flying over Syrian and Iraqi territory, including hundreds of Europeans and Americans who can travel freely with Western passports. It has a bigger sanctuary, far more money, and is more indiscriminately murderous than al-Qaida was on Sept. 10, 2001. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has assured anyone who will listen that he eventually intends to direct his jihad at the United States, telling the U.S. soldiers who released him from prison in 2009, ‘I’ll see you in New York.'”
• Headline in the Washington Times: “Americans brace for new wave of Islamic State terror.”
• “They are an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon,”reports Reuters. Asked if the hardline Sunni Muslim organization posed a threat to the United States comparable to that of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hagel said it was “as sophisticated and well-funded as any group we have seen.”
• The U.S. has launched more than 90 airstrikes against ISIS forces in northern Iraq to keep them from taking over the region known as “Kurdistan,” a key friend of America inside Iraq.
• Meanwhile, the death toll in Syria’s horrific civil war has climbed past 190,000 people.

Hamas Vows Revenge, Fires Rockets, Kills 'Collaborators' After Strikes On Terror Chiefs

The Times of Israel is liveblogging events as they unfold through Friday, August 21, the 46th day of Operation Protective Edge. As the fate of Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif remained unknown, Israel confirmed Thursday that it killed three top Hamas commanders; Gazan terrorists continued heavy rocket fire into Israel, bringing the total since a truce was breached Tuesday to over 300. The cabinet okayed the call-up of 10,000 reserve soldiers, even as the US and others attempted to get ceasefire efforts back on track.

Haniyeh: Israel to pay ‘heavy price’

Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas PM in Gaza, released a statement late Thursday promising Israel will pay a heavy price in retaliation for the elimination of three senior members of the organization’s military wing.

“The path is long, and the fighters of the al-Qassam Brigades will cause the enemy to pay a heavy price. The crimes of the enemy only strengthen our adherence to our demands of a stop to aggression, a lifting of the siege and a life of freedom,” Haniyeh wrote, according to a Ynet translation.

European powers discussing ceasefire resolution

UN diplomats said late Thursday that Britain, France and Germany are discussing a possible Security Council resolution calling for a sustainable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and an international monitoring mission to ensure its implementation.

One diplomat says both Israelis and Palestinians officials have privately suggested Security Council action would be helpful in persuading their constituents to accept measures to end the conflict.

The diplomats say the resolution would include opening up Gaza’s borders and a return of the Palestinian Authority in the territory. It would also include security assurances for the Israelis, including ways to prevent Hamas from acquiring more arms and building more tunnels. The international monitoring mission would likely be a joint-UN-European effort.

The countries have circulated a document entitled “Elements” to diplomats, outlining key points in the potential resolution, Haaretz reports. Major features include PA control of Gaza, a ban of unauthorized weapons sales, reconstruction of Gaza under international supervision, and restarting peace talks based on the 1967 lines.

The document recommends the full reopening of border crossings, and the lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Israeli diplomats were briefed on the document, but did not receive a copy themselves. They were eventually able to obtain a copy.

The resolution would condemn “all violence and hostilities directed against civilians, as well as indiscriminate attacks resulting in civilian casualties, and all acts of terrorism.”

UN failing to fight tyranny, Islamic terror — Israeli ambassador

The UN is failing to fight tyranny in the world, with the international community remaining silent on the growing threat of Islamic terror groups and the rise of anti-Semitism, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, says during an address before the Security Council.

“In 2004, there were 21 Islamic terrorist groups spread out in 18 countries. Today, there are 41 Islamic terrorist groups operating in 24 countries. These groups have crippled communities and brought entire nations to their knee,” says Prosor.

Killing Of Hamas Chiefs Will Spark Desperate Attacks Against Israel

Hamas has suffered a fair number of blows since the start of the conflict with Israel. Hundreds of gunmen from its military wing have been killed, many of its tunnels have been destroyed, and its rocket stores have been depleted. But the overnight strike on a home in the Tel al-Sultan district of Rafah was the harshest blow – militarily and in terms of morale – that it has sustained since the start of Operation Protective Edge.

Three of its most senior commanders in the southern area of the Strip were assassinated in the Israeli airstrike, in an operation that, for the first time, demonstrated that Hamas has been penetrated by Israeli intelligence, enabling the targeting of its most senior command echelons

This was not just another strike, not just another assassination. The killing of the three constituted an indication that something in the intelligence discipline at the very top of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades has cracked.

The Shin Bet, as the intelligence behind the strike, and the IDF, as the operational arm, targeted the trio in a building in a crowded Rafah neighborhood on one of the heaviest days of fighting thus far. Thus this was a very different strike from the one at the start of the Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 when the Hamas military commander, Ahmed Jabari, was assassinated in a surprise attack that marked the beginning of that operation. Given that the fighting had re-escalated since Tuesday, and that Israel was known to be trying to hit the Hamas military leadership, the three had taken every possible precaution to evade Israeli intelligence. Those precautions simply were not good enough.

It can be assumed that whether or not Muhammad Deif is still alive, those members of the Hamas military leadership who have survived are now desperately trying to figure out what went wrong. How could it be that after long weeks in which Israel was unable to get to any of the heads of the military wing, now, within 48 hours, the Shin Bet located one of Deif’s hideouts and killed three other members of the Hamas general staff?

It should be stressed again: Two of the three were not mere senior commanders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Muhammad Abu Shamala, the “head of the southern command” and Raed al-Attar, the commander of the Rafah area, were part of the founding generation of the Hamas military wing — along with Deif and several others who are no longer with us, including Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh and Emad Akel. They were among Deif’s closest brothers-in-arms — long-term veterans with experience and knowledge that cannot be easily replaced.

Abu Shamala and al-Attar are tied to almost every major attack in and from the Rafah area since 2001. These include the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit on a tunnel raid into Israel in which two other soldiers were killed, and even the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers on the Gaza-Sinai-Israel border two years ago. Thus the two had tangled not only with Israel, but also with Egypt, which knew of their ties to terrorist organizations in the Sinai.

European Nations Working On UN Ceasefire Resolution

UN diplomats said Thursday that Britain, France and Germany were discussing a possible Security Council resolution calling for a sustainable ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and an international monitoring mission to ensure its implementation.

One diplomat said both Israeli and Palestinian officials have privately suggested Security Council action would be helpful in persuading their constituents to accept measures to end the conflict.

The diplomats said the resolution would include opening up Gaza’s borders and a return of the Palestinian Authority in the territory. It would also include security assurances for the Israelis, including ways to prevent Hamas from acquiring more arms and building more tunnels.

Haaretz reported that a copy of the document obtained by Israel also called for measures against financing of terrorism and the lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

The international monitoring mission would likely be a joint-UN-European effort.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private and sensitive.

Also on Thursday, UN aid workers stepped up calls for an urgent Gaza ceasefire, warning that spiraling violence endangered their ability to respond to the needs of the 1.8 million affected population.