More and more news/analysis are coming from the Middle East, and it is all very interesting prophetically:
Anyone who believes that the current ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terrorists in Gaza will hold has to ignore modern Middle East history, Hamas, and the Palestinian and Hamas charters.
Ceasefire negotiations are taking place under the shadow of bitter experience of previous truces, most prominently Israel's unilateral ceasefire ending the three-week Operation Cast Lead campaign in January 2009.
The government of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that as of January 18, 2009, "First a ceasefire is declared. If Hamas stops firing rockets, then Israel pulls its forces out of the Gaza Strip. If rocket fire resumes then the IDF goes back in, this time with the international backing gained by having tried a truce."
Hamas spokesman Farzi Barhoum said at the time, "The occupier must halt his fire immediately and withdraw from our land and lift his blockade and open all crossings and we will not accept any one Zionist soldier on our land, regardless of the price that it costs."Barhoum was speaking the truth in 2009. Unfortunately, Westerners didn't grasp his meaning. He began with an assertion that Israel is an "occupier", but an occupier of what? Westerners thought that he meant an occupier of Gaza, but that can't be the case because Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.
The Hamas spokesman was referring to the existence of the State of Israel. Israel's presence in the Middle East is "occupation" in the minds of most Arabs, especially those in Hamas and the PA. Stated simply, Barhoum was saying that as long as Israel exists, there will be war.
It's apparent that President Obama and other Western leaders are pinning their hopes for a successful resolution of the current hostilities on Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, but will he come through for them? Publicly Morsi has taken sides with Hamas:
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi said Tuesday the Israeli operation in Gaza, launched seven days ago would end today. "The grotesque Israeli aggression will stop today, Tuesday, and efforts to reach a cease-fire between Palestinians and Israelis will have positive results in the coming hours," president Morsi was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency.
The "grotesque Israeli aggression" to which Morsi referred is not aggression at all, and he knows it. Operation Pillar of Defense was a direct response to months of unprovoked rocket and mortar attacks on innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists.
Given his past and present affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, I think that it's safe to say that in his heart of hearts Morsi thinks that Israel shouldn't exist. Any other conclusion flies in the face of logic and common sense. Relying on him to be an honest broker between Hamas and Israel is fraught with risk, and in the end, it may backfire or possibly even explode into a much broader Middle East conflict or worse. It may even be a prelude to World War III.
In a nutshell, this is the bottom line: as long as Hamas, the PA, and radical Islamists including but not limited to those in Iran call for Israel's destruction, there will be war in the Middle East. In that light, the current ceasefire can be seen as just another lull in the fighting. Nothing that Morsi, President Obama, or any other world leader says for public consumption will change that reality.
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, "The Gaza ceasefire is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning," but the end of the beginning of what? Another broader war in the Middle East, the resumption of current hostilities, or a global conflagration are the only possibilities that make any sense.
A Palestinian man was shot dead and 19 were wounded by IDFgunfire in Khan Younis on Friday, the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency reported, citing medical officials in Gaza.
Witnesses told Ma'an the incident occurred along Gaza's border fence with Israel shortly before Friday prayers.
The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that some 300 Palestinians approached the border fence in the south of the Strip on Friday morning and began rioting.
"IDF forces made efforts to disperse the rioters, and when they refused to leave warning shots were fired," the army said. "Several rioters damaged the fence and attempted to cross into Israel's territory."
Israel’s security services deployed troops across the Jerusalem area Friday to ward off possible violence by Palestinians, fearing they would hold a “Day of Rage” to protest Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the arrests of terror leaders in the West Bank, Israel Hayom reported.
Hundreds of Border Police soldiers were positioned in the Old City, East Jerusalem and the surrounding area. The police’s district commander ordered a bar on entrance to the Temple Mount for men under the age of 40, due to intelligence that indicated youths planned to hold demonstrations following the Friday prayer services.
The IDF is on alert in Judea, Samaria (Shomron) and Jerusalem on Friday over threats of further terrorist attacks. There has been increased violence in the region in recent days, beginning with the outbreak of the Pillar of Defense battle with Gaza terrorists.
Several terrorist attacks were carried out by PA residents in Judea and Samaria over the past week. The largest-scale attack was a bus bombing in Tel Aviv carried out by an Arab citizen of Israel guided by PA terrorists in the Binyamin region.
Another attack seriously wounded a 60-year-old woman as she and her daughterdrove south of Jerusalem.
On Thursday, the Jerusalem light rail train was attacked as it passed the Arab neighborhood of Beit Hanina. Earlier in the day masked attackers hurled stones at a bus as it drove near Jerusalem’s Old City.
While everyone welcomes a cease fire between Hamas in Gaza and the Israelis, no one should expect it to last very long or that relations between the two will change. In point of fact, the Israelis struck a bargain with terrorists, not a nation-state.
At best, the “Palestinian factions” who have the greatest interest in attacking Israel are not a party to the cease fire, nor is al Qaeda or Iran for whom Hamas is a proxy in Gaza as Hezbollah is one in Lebanon.
Israel has merely bought some time in which to determine what it will do next. Time is running out, not just in Gaza, but with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, deemed by observers to be mere months from being able to put a nuclear warhead on a missile and send it hurtling toward Israel to kill millions of its citizens and essentially destroying it as a viable nation.
So, yes, while it’s a good thing that the rockets are not flying, the “Iron Dome” proved successful, and the Israeli Air Force was able to kill some of the militant leadership and degrade its arsenal and ability to proceed to some degree, the current cease fire is a largely meaningless “understanding.”
What remains to be understood is the unremitting hostility to Israel that exists throughout the Middle East and globally where anti-Semitism has existed for centuries. The Israelis have merely bought some time until the next attacks.
The wild card remains Israel’s need to attack Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. Only by inflicting major damage will Israel have any chance of survival. Long a nuclear nation, Israel must stop Iran from becoming one.
Also see:
Russia will develop artillery, missile defense and nuclear, biological and chemical defense systems using a uniform tank platform, Ground Forces chief Col. Gen. Vladimir Chirkin said on Thursday.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin earlier said new fighting vehicles, including a new generation tank, will be based on the Armata “universal combat platform,” a next-generation heavy military tracked vehicle platform.
The Armata platform is intended to be the basis for a main battle tank, a heavy infantry fighting vehicle, a combat engineering vehicle, an armored recovery vehicle, a heavy armored personnel carrier, a tank support combat vehicle and several types of self-propelled fighting vehicles.
(And I can remember when some people used to scoff at the idea of the 'Mark of the Beast')
As you read this, a “total domination control grid” is being constructed all around us that is far beyond anything that George Orwell ever dreamed of. This system is advancing on hundreds of different fronts, and it is getting tighter and more restrictive with each passing day. We may think that we still have a certain degree of liberty, but if you start doing things that the system does not like, the system has a way of getting you back in line very quickly. In the end, it is all about control. There are many among the elite that actually believe that a tightly controlled society that is dominated by government institutions that they control is what is best for humanity. Many of them honestly believe that society would descend into chaos without a strong hand guiding it. Many of them truly are convinced that those that are “enlightened” are doing a noble thing by guiding humanity into the “bright future” that the elite are designing for them. But of course the freedoms and the liberties of the common people must be greatly limited in order to get us to that “bright future”. We are like cattle that need to be penned in for our own good. This is how the elite actually think. I spent many years being educated by them and rubbing shoulders with them. They should not be trusted. Once our liberties and freedoms are gone, they will be nearly impossible to get back. And once the elite have total control, we will be faced with a tyranny unlike anything humanity has ever seen before.
It is interesting that the article below would come along today as well:
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