_______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! * * * * * * * IF YOU DON'T GET MER, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT! To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] REGIONAL WAR NOW POSSIBLE MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/03: It's a game of political brinkmanship at the moment, everyone using threats in a desperate attempt to retain power for themselves and to gain position for the intense political struggles ahead. But, it's not all just posturing. The political situation, combined with emotions generated by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, combined with the military situation, are all creating a vortex that could spin madly out of control. The Arabs might think they have some chance of standing up to Israel in a way that could enhance their overall geo-political situation -- maybe a short intense war that would force international intervention, especially with the region's oil still vital. The Israelis are determined to show the Arabs that they have the power and cunning to defeat them all and if need be to change once again the whole regional situation as they have done before. The Palestinians may feel they have little to loose; so too Saddam Hussein. Everyone however may be very wrong in these calculations. A regional war with today's weaponry should be unthinkable...but is not. Such a war could result in a huge human death toll with tremendous damage never before inflicted on the countries of the Middle East in prior wars. If they consider themselves provoked, and if they can twist public opinion their way, at least in the short run, the Israelis could decide to unleash their tremendous military capability determined to demonstrate to everyone how powerful they are, how much damage they can inflict. If they are acting so savagely toward Palestinians throwing stones and shooting a few bullets, just imagine what they might decide to do if faced by a serious enemy inflicting real damage. Furthurmore, should things not go well for them and Israeli cities should be attacked in any significant way, the Israelis are very capable of using their weapons of mass destruction against both Arab armies and cities. The "Sampson complex"* need not actually come into play, just a determination to make it crystal clear any attempt to actually destroy Israeli might well trigger it. Should such a war begin to seriously develop, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will desperately try to stay out. But public pressures would be considerable, especially in this age of instant television and the Internet. Furthermore, Israeli apprehensions and fears about what might happen if they don't strike at some armies first might bring about miscalculations and preemptions that could result in a truly devastating regional conflict. * The Sampson Complex is the title of a book -- of course taken from the Biblical Sampson story -- written a decade ago by Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Seymour Hirsh, detailing Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities as well as Israel's peculiar post-Holocaust psychology that could in fact lead the Israelis to destroy the whole region if their own existence as a Jewish State were truly threatened. IRAQ SEEN ENTERING WAR IF ISRAEL COUNTERS HIZBULLAH ATTACKS By Steve Rodan, Middle East Newsline JERUSALEM — MiddleEast Newsline - 1 Dec: For the first time in a decade, Israel has raised the prospect of a regional war with the Arab world with the key participation of Iraq. Israeli sources said the most likely prospect is a Hizbullah attack on the northern Israeli border. Israel would then react by retaliating against Syrian military installations in Lebanon. This, in turn, would result in Iraqi and Iranian intervention. Such a prospect could take place imminently or be delayed for months, the sources said. They said this was the strongest threat of a regional war in more than a decade. The sources said Israel and the United States have relayed messages to Syria to stop Hizbullah attacks along the border. Syria has up to 30,000 troops in Lebanon and controls the Hizbullah. Syria, however, has so far rejected the warnings. Instead, President Bashar Assad has formed new links with Iraq that include military cooperation. The sources said the cooperation could include Iraqi intervention in case of Israeli attacks on Syria. A senior Israeli military source said Iraq is ready to launch missile attacks on the Jewish state to either help Syria or the Palestinians. These missiles, they said, could be tipped with nonconventional warheads. "The Iraqis would love to participate in either conflict," the senior source said. "Hafez Assad [Syria's late president] was not interested in cooperating with Iraq. Bashar is interested and wants to cooperate." An Israeli war with Syria, Lebanon and Iraq could drag such U.S. Arab allies as Egypt and Jordan, the source said. ISRAEL THREATENS SYRIANS WITH AIR BOMBARDMENT Armed forces warn that further Hizbollah attacks on Israeli soldiers or civilians will lead to retaliation against troops in Lebanon. By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem [The Independent - 2 December 2000] Israel is threatening Syria with air strikes against its military bases in south Lebanon if there are further border attacks on Israeli soldiers or civilians by Hizbollah guerrillas. Such warnings were common during Israel's occupation of south Lebanon but they have resumed following fresh Hizbollah assaults. They raise anew the alarming spectre of a wider Middle East conflict. The threat against Syria's 20,000 troops in Lebanon was outlined yesterday by a senior Israeli security source. He said Syria possessed the power to rein in Hizbollah, but instead Bashar al-Assad, its president, encouraged it. The Syrians did not understand the consequences of their "dangerous policies", said the source. Iranian-sponsored Hizbollah recently renewed attacks on Israel, capturing four soldiers in the last two months and killing one with a roadside bomb. It is acting on the pretext that Israel is still occupying the Shebaa Farms, a small pocket of what it claims was originally Lebanese land that was seized by Syria in the 1940s and – in 1967 – occupied by Israel as part of the Golan Heights. The United Nations has ruled it to be on the Israeli side of the "blue line" that marks out the Israeli-occupied Golan from Lebanon. Israel's annoyance with Syria's new young president has been heightened by disappointment that he has not proved any more likely to succumb to Israeli demands than his father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in June. The bizarre, but widely circulated notion that "Dr Bashar's" British training as an ophthalmologist and his interest in computers would soften his stance on Syrian interests – making him, in western eyes, a relative "moderate" – has predictably proved to be no more than diplomatic guff. The Israeli military is alarmed by Bashar al-Assad's eagerness to forge closer relations with Iraq in contrast to his father, whose hostility towards Saddam Hussein reached a peak in 1991 when he supported Operation Desert Storm. Last month Izzat Ibrahim, a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, was the most senior Iraqi official for two decades to visit Damascus. Reports abound that Iraq is piping oil to Syria in defiance of sanctions. Bashar al-Assad "was expected to be more moderate due to his western education," said the Israeli security source, who requested anonymity. "But he is behaving just the opposite way. He is very extreme. He has turned very hard in the direction of the Iraqis." If Israel gets embroiled in a conflict with Damascus, the source warned, then Iraq would be "delighted" to join in. This week, Israel bombarded a Lebanese town after a Hizbollah bomb killed one of its soldiers. But Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, has held back from retaliation over the captured men – three soldiers and a reserve colonel – because he did not want to open another front while battling the Palestinian intifada. Israeli troops shot dead two more Palestinians yesterday – one, a 12-year-old boy – after unrest erupted following the first Friday prayers of Ramadan. Although the Israel Defense Forces principally blame the Syrian president for their embarrassing setbacks at the hands of Hizbollah, it is also pointing a finger at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It claims that the guerrillas who seized the three soldiers were disguised as UN peacekeepers, using equipment acquired from an Indian battalion. A UN spokesman has called the report incorrect. The story does, however, smack of a larger Israeli publicity campaign – an effort to undermine Palestinian efforts to persuade the United Nations to send an observer force to the occupied territories. 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