By Stan Goodenough
Oct 17, 2006
A rash of reports in the Israeli press this week are alerting Israelis to the fact that, in the inevitable and rapidly-approaching next round against the Arabs, the IDF will have to battle Hiz?ballah-styled forces on three of the country?s borders: Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, and Gaza to the south.
Shortly after Israel?s failed fight against Hizb?allah in southern Lebanon last July, Syrian officials announced their intention to form their own version of the Iranian-sponsored group in order to prize Israel off the Golan Heights.
And on Sunday, Israeli intelligence chiefs told the cabinet that Syrian military instructors have entered the Gaza Strip in order to train Hamas forces in the tactics and weaponry so successfully employed by Hizb?allah against the IDF last July.
That Lebanese terrorist organization succeeded in humiliating the militarily-superior Israeli forces after kidnapping two IDF soldiers and then killing 118 Israeli troops when Israel tried in vain to find and free its men.
Dozens of Israeli casualties were caused by the efficient use of the Russian-made Kornet anti-tank rocket; a weapon that has since been smuggled in dangerous quantities into the Gaza Strip.
The more than 20 tons of explosives and arms brought illegally into Gaza since January has also included anti-aircraft missiles.
In what is proving to have been a major tactical blunder on Israel?s part, the Gaza Strip was unilaterally abandoned by the Jewish state a year ago and left in the hands of the Palestinian Arabs, who have wasted no time in turning it into a Mecca for terrorism on the south-eastern Mediterranean shore.
Ha?aretz military correspondent Amos Harel says Hamas is set on creating a ?balance of terror? between itself and the IDF in order to prevent a major Israeli ground incursion into the Strip.
Undeterred by what it has come to regard as largely empty Israeli threats, Hamas daily fires Kassam rockets against Jewish targets in the Negev and the coastal plain north of the Strip as far as Ashkelon.
While Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Monday angrily dismissed criticism of his government?s feeble response to these attacks, saying that the IDF had killed 20 Hamas terrorists in Gaza at the weekend, the rocket attacks have not been stopped.
Monday night saw a Kassam score a direct hit on a house in the Negev town of S?derot, wounding two people and sending a number of others into shock. And Hamas has announced that its preparations for a full-scale conflict with the IDF are now complete.
Israel National News reported Tuesday that despite statements by Defense Minister Amir Peretz that he is not yet ordering an Israeli incursion into Gaza, troop movements on the ground indicate that preparations for such a sortie are underway.