Military Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, in a report to the Cabinet today, indicated that an attack in the north by Hezbollah might be coming soon.
Is anyone surprised?
According to Yadlin, they have many “outstanding issues” with Israel that could be used to justify an attack. These include Shaba Farms (sometimes referred to as Mount Dov), which I just wrote about; Imad Mughniyeh’s assassination, which has been blamed on Israel; Israeli air force sorties over Lebanese airspace; and the village of Ghajar, formerly a Syrian village that is today half in Lebanon and half on the Israeli controlled Golan Heights.
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Yadlin further said — not a surprise either — that the “ceasefire” with Hamas in Gaza is fragile. There are groups within Gaza looking to break the status quo who are planning a major attack.
What is more, Hamas itself has indicated that the fact that border crossings were not opened “according to Hamas’s expectations, constitutes a potential for eroding the cease-fire.” This is part of their ever-escalating set of demands, because Israel had clearly linked opening of crossings to real progress on Shalit negotiations.
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However, to qualify all of the above , Yadlin also said that our enemies were continuing to arm themselves and preferred not to attack us until that arming was complete to their satisfaction, and, possibly until the Bush administration was over. (This says a lot about what they are expecting to replace Bush.)
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Negotiations on Shalit are due to re-start this week as Ofer Dekel, our official negotiator, formerly with the Shin Bet, returns to Cairo after a hiatus of some weeks. We are being charged by Hamas with “stubbornness” and “intransigence” because we haven’t agreed to the specific prisoners and the number of prisoners that they are demanding. Abu Obaidah, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, which is holding Shalit, says that “Sooner or later Israel will have to accept our conditions” or “there will be no agreement.”
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Six Arabs — two Israeli Arabs living inside the Green Line and four with Jerusalem residency papers living in eastern Jerusalem — have been arrested by the Shin Bet for allegedly setting up an al-Qaida affiliated network with intentions of shooting down President Bush’s helicopter when he was here earlier this year.
One of the suspects, Muhammad Naghem , from Nazareth, was a student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From his dormitory on the Givat Ram campus, he had a clear view of a nearby helicopter landing pad.
In January, he allegedly videotaped the landing and takeoff of Bush’s helicopter and then contacted an Internet forum for global jihad elements to inquire about what would be involved in shooting down the president’s helicopter.
While the operation had not progressed past the planning stage, the six, under interrogation, admitted to forming the cell, which they say met at the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount.
This rings all sorts of bells.
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Talansky had his third day of cross-examination by Olmert’s lawyers today, and I do not intend to report on any of it. Let’s let the dust settle. What we’ve got now are a series of conflicting reports on what Talansky really said, in what way he backtracked on what he said before (apparently overtly contradicted himself), how the police “interpreted” what he said, when Olmert’s lawyers were bringing in inconsequential side issues, and all the rest.
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Please see Charles Krauthammer’s article , “The Audacity of Vanity,” regarding Obama’s vastly inflated sense of himself, at:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/obamas_egoaccomplishment_gap.html
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https://41k.82b.myftpupload.com/current-postings/2008/7/20/july-20-2008-tough-times.html
