Analysis: Fortress Gaza.......
Shocking to no one, Hamas has been using its "truce" with Israel to turn Gaza into a fortress, rearm with new weapons and Qassams, train its fighters in new strategies, etc. The inevitable Israeli ground invasion of Gaza will be a bloodbath on both sides, and this ill-advised hudna will be to blame....
Since the agreement on the tahadiyeh (lull) was reached between Hamas and Israel on June 19, the border crossings between Israel and Gaza have already been closed six times in response to Palestinian rocket fire. Israeli officials acknowledge that none of these attacks was carried out by Hamas. Hamas, nevertheless, is keeping itself busy.
The organization's military wing is putting in place preparations based on a comprehensive strategy for facing an expected eventual large IDF operation into Gaza. Hamas gunmen are training extensively to play their allotted roles within this strategy.
The model for Hamas is Hizbullah's preparations for and conduct of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The evidence suggests that Hamas is using its uncontested control in Gaza to effect a qualitative change in its abilities and ambitions.
Hamas's strategy derives at the highest level from the group's muqawama (resistance) doctrine. According to this view, Israel's Achilles' heel is its inability to absorb large numbers of military and civilian casualties. Hamas believes Israel's will can be broken through attrition and a steady toll of unexpectedly high numbers of both military and civilian casualties.
In the event of a major IDF incursion into Gaza, Hamas would seek to maintain a steady rain of rockets on Israeli communities around the Strip and to break the sense of armored and air invulnerability hitherto enjoyed by Israeli forces engaging with its fighters. Hamas would of course also try to inflict steady losses of 4 to 10 casualties per day on IDF's ground forces during the fighting. Looking to the 2006 model, the movement's planners believe that achieving these goals could be sufficient to break Israel's will.
To make this possible, Hamas is feverishly training as well as acquiring relevant weapons systems - of a type far superior in quality to those previously associated with the organization.
The weapons systems on which Hamas is thought to be currently training in the Gaza Strip include a wire-guided anti-tank missile, probably the AT-3 Sagger, and additional anti-tank guided missiles: the AT-4 Spigot, the tripod-fired AT-5 Spandrel and the shoulder-fired AT-14 Spriggan - all useful against armor. All these systems have ranges of several kilometers.
In addition, Hamas is thought to have brought into Gaza large numbers of RPG-29 Vampir handheld anti-tank grenade launchers with a range of 500 meters, which are capable of penetrating reactive armor and are considered far superior to the RPG 7 systems used by the movement in the past.
ZIP
Israel's first mistake was in not annexing all territory captured in 1967 and expelling the palestinians. Mistake number two was in letting an idiot like Olmert become PM and keeping him there despite his proving to be utterly unsuited for the job (an Israeli Obama?). Mistake number three is letting world opinion supercede national defense. These three big blunders will pave the way for a bloody mess that will accelerate Israel's decline. This is how a nation commits suicide.
Posted by: Poopyhead | July 03, 2008 at 10:13 AM