Analysis: Is Israel building up for an offensive against Gaza?

[Falcon29]

Analysis: Is Israel building up for an offensive against Gaza? | Maan News Agency

Abdulrahman Murad is a Gaza-based blogger and freelance journalist. His writings have appeared on Middle East Monitor, Mondoweiss, and Al-RAY Media. Follow him on Twitter and on his blog.

Gazans fear another Israeli military offensive is imminent, as Israel flexes its military muscle and Egypt joins the band, beating the drums of war.

A rush to exercise

In November 2013, the Israeli military for the first time ever hosted a multinational military exercise; Greece, the US and Italy arrived to carry out the Blue Flag 2013 drill in the Negev simulating a ground incursion into Gaza.

The move was described as the largest-ever aerial maneuver shared by international forces.

A similar drill was also jointly organized by Israel and the US in July 2013.

Mounting threats

I have received two inquiries from oversees friends during the past few days regarding the high-pitch Israeli threats against Gaza, and Hamas in particular. The last one was asking for a confirmation of Israeli TV channels warning foreigners in Gaza to immediately leave, in anticipation for military action.

The people here are accustomed to such intimidation; however, the explicit statements of Israeli officials, the latest of which is Netanyahu's threat to 'teach Hamas a lesson very soon,' drew their attention to the prospect of a war targeting the unarmed, before proceeding to the armed citizens of Gaza.

Both Israel's 2008-2009 and 2012 offensives were said to be aimed at removing the threat of the firing of crude rockets into Israeli territory. However, this goal was never achieved: on the contrary, the assaults only resulted in the majority of the casualties being civilians.

Up to 82% of the 1,400 and 103 out of the 156 Palestinian deaths killed during Operation Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense respectively were civilians.

Drones

The low-flying Israeli drones are a permanent source of fear to the Gaza population. Israel, as it did in Operation Cast Lead one year ago with the extrajudicial targeting of Hamas' armed wing leader Ahmed al-Jabari, may launch a new offensive with a drone-propelled attack.

Many here consider that a drone locally known as 'Zannana' (which means the buzzing [plane]) is more than just a spying machine, but an everyday teaser and TV watching 'spoiler' as satellite TV signals are jammed.

Nowadays, they are 'buzzing' in an increasingly abnormal fashion; reminders of previous Israeli wars, where drones relay the code sound over the smoky patches of the Gaza skies.

Iron Dome repositioning

Moreover, deploying the rocket-intercepting Iron Dome system brings the bunker mentality to mind, characterizing the state of Israel in any approach to aerial warfare.

A month ago, Israel redeployed three missile batteries near the southern cities of Beersheba, Sderot and Ashdod, part of the military's "preparation for a possible escalation," according to the Israeli defense minister.

However, Hamas, who governs the Gaza Strip, has recently asked Palestinian factions to maintain the Egypt brokered cease-fire agreement secured in November 2012 after Israel's eight-day offensive.

Palestinians carry the bodies of four siblings out of a hospital morgue during their funeral in Gaza City on Nov. 19, 2012. (Reuters/Mohammed Salem)

War campaign

Effectively, internationally campaigning for an upcoming war against the blockaded Gaza Strip, Israel is attempting to humiliate Hamas, by blaming certain Gaza factions for the escalating wave of violence.

This is notwithstanding its condoning of the killing of six Palestinians from Gaza since December 20 -- when Israeli troops shot a Palestinian who was near the northern Gaza border dead, allegedly in retaliation to Palestinians' launching of a mortar round that hit southern Israel -- which marked the start of the current unrest.

As usual in the meantime, Gaza's militancy is being inflated as being on a par with Israel's.

The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, recently complained to the Security Council and to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon over two Gaza rockets that haphazardly hit the Negev causing no physical injuries or damage.

The people of Gaza -- isolated

To Gazans, the year-long rule of Egypt’s deposed President Mohamed Morsi, constituted a kind-of breather in the midst of a suffocating seven-year-long blockade.

Restrictions were eased on the Rafah crossing, an undreamt-of move that Gazans enjoyed, albeit temporarily and not fully. I myself enjoyed traveling outside Gaza just 30 days before Morsi's ouster.

I was a member of a delegation of three professors and some 30 youths who were selected for a training course in teaching Arabic for non-Arabic speakers, part of the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) program in El-Arish city in northern Sinai.

Before we headed to Egypt, the coordinator of the course told us that as a Gaza delegation -- it was a miracle to get the approval to enter into and stay in Egypt for a week.

However, on the day of our departure, we had to wait five hours at the Egyptian passport administration for our passports to get stamped. We were eventually permitted to pass, but an IUG professor was turned away; ostensibly for security reasons.

Under Morsi's rule, some 50,000 Palestinians born to Egyptian mothers, mostly from the Gaza Strip, enjoyed being granted Egyptian citizenship, while 3500 others were on the list.

Those who did acquire such nationality were exceptionally ecstatic, after having felt underprivileged with thePalestinian passport, not a treasure to be in possession of, especially when it comes to traveling to Arab countries.

However, the joy was short-lived; with the rise of a new authority in Egypt, they were stripped of their Egyptian citizenship, and the feeling of rejection was redoubled.

Palestinians travel through the streets of Gaza City after a storm caused flooding in Dec. 2013. Emergency response was crippled by the lack of power, a result of the Israeli-imposed siege.

Stricken economy

After the ousting of Mubarak, the uninterrupted flow of smuggled goods and basic materials like fuels and building materials, allowed for a relative uptick in the economy and a sense of normalcy in the lives of the Gazans.

When the military seized the reins in July 2013, the tables turned again.

Seven months have passed now, many jobs have been lost and the unemployment rate is expected to rise further.

Gazans trapped in politics

Above all, the once cordial Hamas-Morsi relations didn't benefit the status quo in Gaza.

Aside from Hamas' outspoken statements denying interference in Egypt's affairs and the unrest in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt cannot help but point fingers at Hamas, only adding to the woes of the non-partisan people of the beleaguered enclave.

The Arab peoples' focus on their own political upheavals has added to the Gazans' fear of being trapped in a new Israeli military ..................

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@al-Hasani @Yzd Khalifa @Arabian Legend @JUBA @SALMAN AL-FARSI @Doritos11 @Developereo @TruthSeeker @Aeronaut @Aamna14 @Jessica_L @levina @ResurgentIran @Islam shall be the winner @KingMamba @Ulla @Zarvan

@SOHEIL @Ayush @Mahmoud_EGY @F117

 

[Falcon29]

@rmi5 @DESERT FIGHTER

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

What do you want us to say hazy? don't we all know the truth... from Kashmir to Palestine? not to forget the shit hitting the fan in our countries?

 

[Falcon29]

What do you want us to say hazy? don't we all know the truth... from Kashmir to Palestine? not to forget the shit hitting the fan in our countries?

I just want us to support each other and all around and discuss the developments in the whole Muslim world. An organization made up of intellectuals needs to be formed for us to seriously influence events in our nations and just like every other entity aim for compromise on internal issues and support our people in need.

Arabs especially need to discuss this here, since if this does occur God willing it doesn't than a serious Arabic response needs to occur. Arabic nations need to be diplomatically active. Problem is they are hand in hand with the USA and this is why I don't appreciate such governments whom are in power for the West.

The thing is the media has spinned things to make it appear as if conflict erupted rather than rightfully be honest and tell everyone this is a pre planned offensive with many intentions involved. This Israeli state is given a free pass on many issues. It's our duty as Muslims ordained by God that we right corruption and one way is to speak our voice and in modern sense we would need to form reliable media organizations.

 

[Falcon29]

@DESERT FIGHTER

Also consider, our internal struggles are unfortunate by a group of misguided people and other misguided governmental factors but the way I see it is as our nations are dogs of the West wrapped around leashes and whenever we as an entity or nation seek self determination we are told to stay put and worry about our problems and keep fighting ourselves and crippling our economy. There's always something else that will fill in this task had we gained stability. Apparently unilateral action or un-precedented cooperation between Muslims military, politically and economically is a catastrophe with the exception of few gulf nations which are the wings of the US anyways. I always suspect foreign involvement in many things but also we as a people corruption has had its toll but also corruption of our day to day people leads contributes.

Will we forget to thank God for better times and even if we managed to win out this struggle will we be thankful for it? Or will we abandon our ways in which we strived for during our struggle?

This is why the God describes the son of adam as a complete mess we really are....

 

[Doritos11]

@DESERT FIGHTER

Also consider, our internal struggles are unfortunate by a group of misguided people and other misguided governmental factors but the way I see it is as our nations are dogs of the West wrapped around leashes and whenever we as an entity or nation seek self determination we are told to stay put and worry about our problems and keep fighting ourselves and crippling our economy. There's always something else that will fill in this task had we gained stability. Apparently unilateral action or un-precedented cooperation between Muslims military, politically and economically is a catastrophe with the exception of few gulf nations which are the wings of the US anyways. I always suspect foreign involvement in many things but also we as a people corruption has had its toll but also corruption of our day to day people leads contributes.

Will we forget to thank God for better times and even if we managed to win out this struggle will we be thankful for it? Or will we abandon our ways in which we strived for during our struggle?

This is why the God describes the son of adam as a complete mess we really are....

Thank the US controlled gulf monarchies.
Supported the Libyan war and ruined the country, tribal fights now.
Now they’re busy ruining Syria

 

[Falcon29]

Gaza warned of looming water crisis | Environment | theguardian.com

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The Water Crisis in Gaza | Solidarity

Environmental degradation threatens to undermine the viability of any future Palestinian state and create conditions that will make life in many parts of the Palestinian Territories impossible. Many environmental problems are accelerated and exacerbated by occupation practices, which prevent effective environmental management. This problem is particularly acute in Gaza in relation to the water resources and the ongoing military conflict.

The roots of Gaza’s water problem lie in the over-population of the area, due to a high influx of refugees in 1948, when approximately 200,000 people fled to Gaza from the Jaffa and Beersheva areas of what is now Israel, following Israel’s War of Independence. The original population of the Gaza Strip at that time was 80,000 people, thus this represented an increase of some 250%. Today, over three quarters of the estimated Gazan population of 1.4 million are registered refugees.(1)

The Gaza Strip is a very small area of land with a total area of only 360 square kilometers (roughly 150 square miles — ed.). It is underlain by a shallow aquifer, which is contiguous with the Israeli Coastal Aquifer to the north. Gaza is the “downstream user” of the Coastal Aquifer system, and hence water abstraction in Gaza does not affect Israeli water supplies. The Gaza Aquifer has a natural recharge rate of approximately 65 million cubic meters (MCM) of water per year from rainfall and lateral inflow of water from Israel and Egypt.(2)This aquifer is essentially the only source of fresh water in the Gaza Strip.

By 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza, the sustainable yield of the aquifer was being fully utilized.(3) Since then, as the population has grown, so too has the demand for fresh water. No serious attempt was made at exercising any water management strategy in the Gaza Strip during the Israeli administration, with the number of registered wells increasing from 1200 in 1967 to 2100 in 1993.(4)

Abstraction from the aquifer was approximately 110 MCM per year by 1993, resulting in falling water levels and degrading water quality due to seawater infiltration, caused by the over-pumping that had been taking place. Likewise, there was little investment in maintaining or improving the deteriorating water infrastructures of Palestinian municipalities during this period, despite taxes being paid by Palestinians to the Israeli government.(5)

In 1994, the Gaza-Jericho agreement placed water resources in the Gaza Strip under the control of the newly formed Palestinian Authority (PA) and, in 1995, the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) was formed. It was given the mandate for managing water in the Palestinian Territories. At this time, it was widely recognized that there was a serious environmental problem with the Gaza Aquifer, with experts predicting that if nothing was done, the entire aquifer would become unusable by the year 2000.(6) In addition, the water infrastructure was in a very poor state, with 50% of water being lost through leaking pipes.(7)

Therefore the PWA, with the help of international donors (principally the United States Agency for International Development — USAID), set out to develop a management strategy for the Gaza Aquifer and engaged the engineering firm Metcalf & Eddy to carry out an environmental survey and draw up a management plan. The Integrated Coastal Aquifer Management Plan (CAMP) was drawn up in 2000, with an implementation period of 20 years.

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[al-Hasani]

Thank the US controlled gulf monarchies.
Supported the Libyan war and ruined the country, tribal fights now.
Now they’re busy ruining Syria

I guess that idiotic statements have no cure on this forum. What a incredibly stupid statement to make. You seem very obsessed about certain Sunni Arab country. What is the matter? Still sucking up to the Mullah's and their audience? Keep doing it since nothing will change.

This section is turning into a joke. Now you are going off-topic again.

Not interested in a discussion so save the reply.

PS: KSA is still not a so-called Gulf country (Khaleeji) but I guess that ignorant people will remain ignorant even when we are talking about their own ancestral region (MIddle East and Arab world). No wonder that there are so many problems. Thankfully the GCC is doing great and I am seriously thinking that we should not waste our time with the ME region but look outside of it as long as it is a mess. Life is too short for that.

 

[500]

Dont worry 7abibi, not soon.

 

[Falcon29]

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/01/27/Another-war-against-Gaza-.html

In November, Filippo Grandi, the commissioner-general of the U.N. refugee agency UNRWA, warned that “once more, Gaza is quickly becoming uninhabitable.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks set to ensure that things get a whole lot worse for the besieged Palestinian territory.

Israeli authorities said on Wednesday that three members of an al-Qaeda cell in East Jerusalem had been arrested for planning attacks across the country, including against the American embassy in Tel Aviv.

The announcement came just days after Netanyahu threatenedto teach Hamas, which rules Gaza, “a lesson… very soon.” How convenient, then, that the three suspects were allegedly recruited via Facebook by an al-Qaeda operative in Gaza. This could well be Netanyahu’s pretext for a new military onslaught, regardless of the implausibility of this whole affair.

Even Israel’s staunch ally the United States, one of the supposed targets of this cell, has downplayed the claim, saying it cannot confirm any of the details. “We can’t corroborate” it, said an American official. “We don’t have anything to prove it.” U.S. State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said: “I just don’t have independent verification.”

Both Hamas and Fatah, which rules the West Bank, are strongly opposed to al-Qaeda, which has never had a presence or support base in Palestinian society. It would be just as unlikely that the terrorist organization would be able to infiltrate the Palestinian territories, given how tightly the borders are controlled by Israel.

Spoiling for a fight
Of course, none of this will matter to Netanyahu, who seems to be spoiling for another fight. His threat against Hamas came shortly after it said it had deployed forces in Gaza to “preserve the truce” that was brokered in Nov. 2012, following an increase in rocket fire from other Palestinian factions since last month.

As always, the impoverished, besieged civilians of Gaza will pay the price. The only difference this time is that the boogie man is al-Qaeda

Sharif Nashashibi
Following his threat, Israel has so far carried out an air strike in Gaza, killing two Palestinians, and killed a Palestinian and wounded another in a cross-border shooting. Islamic Jihad spokesman Daoud Shihab said Israel was trying to "disavow" the ceasefire.
Palestinian factions are “not interested in escalation, but if Israel insists and continues with targeted assassinations, they have to bear the consequences,” he added. And so the stage is set for another round in violence.

Netanyahu is likely seeking to take advantage of the political situation in Egypt, which has bolstered its own blockade of Gaza with particular fervor since the ouster of Mohammad Mursi. Egypt’s new authorities are openly hostile to Hamas, a result of baseless conspiracy theories about collaboration between the former Egyptian president and the Palestinian movement.

If Israel wages war again, Cairo will not display the level of solidarity shown by Mursi towards Gazans during the last major onslaught in Nov. 2012, and will be hoping – at least in private – for a decisive defeat of Hamas and other Islamist Palestinian groups.

Unlikely
Importantly for the Israeli prime minister, it is highly unlikely that Egypt would relax border restrictions with Gaza in the event of military action, as Mursi did. This would deprive Gazans of much-needed humanitarian relief, and allow Israel to more effectively restrict media access and hence control news coverage.

Netanyahu may be hoping that international and regional eyes will remain focused on the many other crises facing the Middle East. Either way, he would not need to worry about the effect of large-scale military action on approval ratings at home.

He enjoys domestic support from an increasingly right-wing society, particularly with regard to talking and acting tough against the Palestinians, and to rebuffing governments worldwide – friend or foe – that disapprove of his policies.

“Perhaps strengthening the human security of the people of Gaza is a better avenue to ensuring regional stability than physical closures, political isolation and military action,” said Grandi. Netanyahu will treat these wise words with the same disdain that Israeli politicians have shown UNRWA since its establishment to help Palestinian refugees.

Due to the shameful blockade, Gaza has been unable to rebuild and recover from the devastation of Israel’s previous onslaughts. As such, one wonders what is left to destroy – not that that would deter Netanyahu. Military action, regardless of the lack of justification, will send a message that resonates at home.

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[Soumitra]

the reason I like Israel is that they like to call the spade a spade. When cross border terrorism occurs in India we condemn strongly, stop playing cricket and give dossiers. Israel values the life of its citizens and if Hamas harms one citizen Israel makes sure they pay 10 times.

If you want to prevent war from Israel the easiest and best thing is to stop the rockets and terrorist activities against Israel including going on nocturnal walks near the border.

"Draco Normian Nuncum Titilandis" Never tickle a sleeping dragon

 

[Falcon29]

Dont worry 7abibi, not soon.

So you think it's funny that you wage war on the impoverished strip every couple of years?

You seem to have inside information of the next brutal campaign while the victims in the West Bank have their rights violated day to day.

 

[500]

So you think it's funny that you wage war on the impoverished strip every couple of years?

You seem to have inside information of the next brutal campaign while the victims in the West Bank have their rights violated day to day.

actually recently we passed a big amount of building materials to Gaza.

Unless rocket attacks escalate to hundreds there will be no operation.

 

[Falcon29]

the reason I like Israel is that they like to call the spade a spade. When cross border terrorism occurs in India we condemn strongly, stop playing cricket and give dossiers. Israel values the life of its citizens and if Hamas harms one citizen Israel makes sure they pay 10 times.

If you want to prevent war from Israel the easiest and best thing is to stop the rockets and terrorist activities against Israel including going on nocturnal walks near the border.

"Draco Normian Nuncum Titilandis" Never tickle a sleeping dragon

You're suffering from the notion that this is 'cross border terrorism' while ignoring all the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and the history of this conflict. Only reason Palestinians suffer more is because they're weak in sense of military terms and live in a tiny strip of land which a world power attacks with disproportionate force.

Why don't you say the same to Israel and condemn their siege and daily attacks against the Gaza Strip? Or to the occupation in the West Bank? I just posted several articles of illegal Israeli activity according to international law in Palestinian territory. Why don't you condemn that?

You have Israeli Knesset government members and leaders telling their intentions to the world, that they want to dominate the Palestinians and usurp their land through a brutal military occupation and yet we see nothing about that from people like you, why?

actually recently we passed a big amount of building materials to Gaza.

Unless rocket attacks escalate to hundreds there will be no operation.

Let's hope Israel respects their responsibility of the cease fire agreement too. Or are they immune from it?

Unless Israel escalates it's attacks against the residents of Gaza there will be no rockets fired in retaliation.

Btw, building materials are paid for by international organizations or other sources and not by Israel. Israel however opens the crossing whenever they feel like it to allow materials into the a Strip.

 

[Developereo]

Israel is the victim here.
Anyone who says otherwise is an anti-Semite.