Australian arrested for anti-Israel activities: lawyer

ABC NEWS.COM

By Anne Barker for The World Today

Posted 2 hours 9 minutes ago
Updated 2 hours 1 minute ago

The lawyer for an Australian woman arrested in the West Bank says her detention is part of a campaign by the Israeli government to silence pro-Palestinian foreigners.

Israeli soldiers arrested Bridgette Chappell, 22, in a pre-dawn raid and she is being held in an immigration jail in Israel.

The Israeli government says Ms Chappell, who was studying Arabic and politics at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was arrested for overstaying her visa.

But she was also active in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) - a pro-Palestinian organisation committed to resisting Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Ms Chappell was sharing an ISM apartment with two other activists - a Spanish woman and an American man, Ryan Olander.

Mr Olander says about 12 soldiers broke down the door during the night and burst in with M16 rifles.

"At about three o'clock this morning we were woken by sounds of someone fumbling with the door," he said.

"It sounded pretty violent and about five minutes after that they had used a crowbar to break the lock.

"There was about 12 Israeli military soldiers armed with M16s, flashlights and a camera."

Ms Chappell's Israeli lawyer, Omer Shatz, says he has been denied access to speak to her and fears she may be deported before he can bring her case to court.

"Usually what they try to do is try to deport her within 24 hours, using techniques of intimidation and threatening - saying 'if you won't sign a paper that's saying she is willing to leave now, or within a few hours, you will be staying there for months'," he said.

"And they know that they don't want to be in jail for a long period of time."

'Illegal' riots

Israeli authorities say Ms Chappell and her Spanish housemate were known to be involved in illegal riots and to have interfered with Israeli military activity.

But Palestinian authorities say Israel has no jurisdiction over the West Bank city of Ramallah and therefore had no right to raid the apartment.

At the time of her arrest Ms Chappell was not in Israel and Mr Shatz says if she overstayed her visa it is only because Israeli forces captured her and took her to Israel to accuse her of breaching her visa.

"The minister of interior has no authority outside Israel, and if she was brought into Israel - for example by the army - she didn't commit any offence because they put her inside Israel," he said.

The ISM says the women's arrests are aimed at stifling protests against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and that it is common for Palestinian activists to face arrest or detention for their roles in anti-Israel activities.

But Mr Shatz says in recent months Israeli authorities have begun using new tactics against foreigners who become involved.

"Foreigners like Bridgette, they take part sometimes in non-violent demonstrations, and the worst crime is that they also report to their homeland - Australia, Europe, United States," he said.

Israel has confirmed the two women are in an immigration jail but refuses to say more.

Mr Shatz has lodged a petition in the Israeli Supreme Court against Ms Chappell's arrest on grounds it was illegal.

He is hoping judges will decide the case in a few days, if she is not deported first.

Note: Israel is accused of occupying their own land!! Amazing! That must be similar to someone taking me to court for living in the home I own, as an "occupier"! BeeSting

A Jewish and democratic one-state solution

JerusalemPost.com
By JOSHUA REBACK

It's difficult to write this without being framed as some sort of fanatic. Either I should fall on the Left that advocates a binational state, or on the Right that can only see things through the lens of "Greater Israel." Both of these labels are presumptuous and have precluded debate about this issue. However, there is a way to reconcile these "extremes" and provide a reason to trend away from the two-state plan.

The Obama administration is trying to torpedo renewed discussion of this idea with a strained attempt to force two-state negotiations, while continuing the Bush administration's policy of building the PA's security apparatus. But an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank in any capacity would contract the country's defensive posture and invite encroachment from Syria, with no guarantees the already extant terrorist groups in the area would not grow and infiltrate a Palestinian state's security forces.

At this point, annexing the West Bank (without the Gaza Strip) would not hinder Jews' clear majority in a unified state. That does not imply that absorbing the territory immediately would resolve a plethora of security, social and religious issues. But to give the vote to everyone in the West Bank would create both a Jewish and democratic state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, sans Gaza. The question then becomes how the Jewish population intends to preserve that majority.

BUT BEFORE that can be answered, we need to remember why we should be concerned about it in the first place. This is a question that is seldom addressed, and its answers are seldom clarified by commentators. It was cited ad nauseam in the lead-up to the disengagement five years ago, but I am not so sure observers really understood why this issue was so important to Israelis.

Jews would instinctively bring up domestic security concerns. Israelis are especially cognizant of the pogroms in Europe and especially the Arab riots in 1929, 1936-39 and the two intifadas. Annexation evokes fears of anti-Semitic sabotage and civil war or pogroms if the government ever fell into the hands of a hostile Arab majority. This is a concern that no one can simply alleviate. Jewish sovereignty and qualitative ability to defend the Jewish world from attack are among the dozens of conceptual underpinnings of the entire Zionist movement. It is what justified one of the first global, collective gestures of affirmative action in modern history - the creation of an ethnically based country, the Jewish State of Israel.

The moderate approach in Israeli politics regarding a one-state solution would be to both annex the West Bank and push off the idea of official "binationalism." Such a state would have to remain a Jewish state, with a Jewish symbol on its flag - like an Islamic crescent adorns the Turkish or Pakistani banners - and maintain a Jewish majority (not plurality) in its territory.

This brings the whole debate back to the "big blue elephant" in the room - the need to increase Jewish immigration and the natural birth rate of Israeli Jews. These are not policies that Western democracies are expected to implement. But Western states do not exist for the sake of ethnic preservation against global instances of oppression, whether it be in Europe or the Arab world.

These policies are not radical to Israelis, and they are not radical to certain other ethnic states. And given the willingness to discuss population exchange and mass eviction during peace negotiations, they are not all too awkward to the likes of the Western powers, either.

Few Israeli politicians suggest this, because it assumes too many developments. Recently, Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely alluded to it when she fielded the idea of giving citizenship to Palestinians. There seems to be no guarantee that a renewed push for aliya and reversal of yerida would bear fruit, or that Jewish families would decide to have more children.

BUT GLOBAL Jewish leadership has fought against such pessimism. Tens of millions of dollars are already spent every year on all forms of Jewish outreach - religious, cultural and political. Activists the world over urge the end of assimilation and absorption of mixed families into the greater Jewish community. The push is for far bigger and far more Jewish families by leaders and organizations everywhere. The State of Israel, the strongest Jewish organization in the world, should coordinate all of these efforts, stress the importance of the Land of Israel to all streams of Judaism and emphasize the centrality of the state to the modern Jewish world.

It is possible to enhance Israel's Jewish, democratic and defensive characteristics simultaneously. Israel's Jewish character and the preservation of minorities' rights and needs are reconcilable. It is a mixture of idealism and practicality, yet an objective approach, politically satiable and the optimal one to take.

The writer is a graduate of Rutgers University with a BA in Middle Eastern studies. He is currently a student at Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat.

Wanted - Wisdom - Judea and Samaria

Where the destiny of Judea and Samaria is concerned, it will be Israel's tragedy if bloody-mindedness forces a schism where tolerance could have prevented it.
Construction site in the Elon...

Construction site in the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus.
Photo: AP

The warnings before Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip were apocalyptic.

The settlers of Gush Katif, it was widely predicted, being forced from their homes after decades in which the government had encouraged them to risk their lives by living in Gaza, would not go quietly. They believed that the unilateral pullout was a historic mistake; a capitulation that would lead to an escalation of Palestinian violence and terror; an act of betrayal by a prime minister, Ariel Sharon, for whom many of them had voted, and an unGodly, unJewish action - voluntarily relinquishing a portion of Jewish land.

Many soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, it was further argued, would prove incapable of carrying out the evacuation/eviction. Recent decades had seen a dramatic shift in the composition of key army units; where the young men of the secular kibbutz movement had once dominated, now the youths of modern Orthodoxy prevailed, and their loyalty to their military commanders would be superseded by their fealty to their rabbis, and to those rabbis' interpretation of Halacha. At the moment of truth, of Jew being asked to remove Jew from a home in the holy land, kippa-wearing soldiers would refuse their orders, and the army's capacity to fulfill its democratic obligation to the lawful government ofIsrael would be found wanting.

In the physical and emotional turmoil, ran the ominous predictions, Jew would turn violently upon Jew, much Jewish blood would be spilled, and Israeli Jewish society would be torn as never before in the history of the modern state.

The doom-mongers were mistaken.

Many of the Jewish civilian residents of Gaza certainly did not go quietly. Many did believe "disengagement" was a historic mistake, would encourage Palestinian terror, represented a betrayal by Sharon and ran counter to divine will. But their resistance largely constituted a dogged, tenacious noncooperation with the forces that had been sent to remove them from their homes and was almost entirely nonviolent.

Similarly, many of the modern Orthodox soldiers of the IDF were indeed torn. Many of their spiritual leaders fiercely opposed the pullout, regarding it as halachicly untenable. Some of those rabbinical leaders made overt their opposition to "their" soldiers participating in any aspect of the withdrawal - not just the direct removal of settlers from their homes and the dismantling of the settlements, but also the indirect protection and support of other soldiers and security personnel involved in the operation. Yet incidents of soldiers directly refusing to carry out their orders were, relatively, few and far between - a reported few dozen cases. Overall, the IDF proved thoroughly capable of implementing the decisions of its political masters.

Broadly speaking, Jew did not turn violently upon Jew. Israeli Jewish society was not ripped irrevocably apart.

But Gaza was easy.

The settlements of the Gaza Strip were the furthest from the Israeli mainstream, in several senses. Geographically, even in our tiny country, Gaza is relatively distant fromIsrael 's main population centers, and it was the rare Israeli who had made more than the most occasional visit to the settlements there. The biblical and historic connection to Gaza pales by comparison to the centrality of Judea and Samaria. And numerically, the Gaza settlements had never flourished by comparison to some of theJewish towns and cities of the West Bank.

Gaza, moreover, was home to well over a million Palestinians, from whom Israel had always wanted to separate. Menachem Begin would have been delighted for Anwar Sadat to take Gaza off Israel's hands almost 30 years earlier. If Sharon had concluded that demographics required Israel to relinquish responsibility for at least some of the Palestinians in order to maintain a Jewish, democratic Israel, then Gaza was clearly the place to start.

But for at least some in that Israeli mainstream, while they were acquiescent to the notion of leaving Gaza, it was also the place to finish. Any substantial withdrawal from Judea and Samaria is another story altogether - the story that is playing out now.

THE LESSON drawn from disengagement by some settler leaders, ideologues and activists was that their resistance had been too soft, that they had capitulated too gently. The four years sinceIsrael withdrew every last Jew from Gaza have vindicated their opposition, they believe. The pullout, in their view, was indeed a disastrous miscalculation - the misguided removal of a flourishing community. Violence followed across the border. Hamas took over the Strip.Israel was forced to reinvade, enjoyed no international understanding despite the fact of its earlier unilateral departure, and will yet have to tackle a better-armed Hamas again. In that context, for them, any sense of relief thatIsrael had severed itself from Gaza, and has since managed to avoid being drawn permanently back into the quagmire of the Strip, is unjustified or outweighed.

So next time, or on the route to next time, some have concluded, opposition will have to be more robust.

In contrast to Gaza, furthermore, at least parts of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria are close to the hearts of many in the Israeli mainstream, ideologically and physically. As with Gaza, most Israelis simply don't go to most of the West Bank settlements, ever. But unlike Gaza, most Israelis do sometimes visit some of the larger ones, notably those that are nearer to the pre-'67 lines. Almost all Israelis have friends and relatives who live in Judea and Samaria. Indeed, a sizable proportion of Israelis - again, in stark contrast to Gaza - live there themselves, often motivated far less by ideology than by the simple relative affordability of housing.

And Judea and Samaria, in contrast to Gaza, of course, are central to the historical narrative of Jewish Israelis - territory overflowing with biblical resonance.

West Bank compromise, in short, is a challenge of a whole different order than was posed by Gaza.
Construction site in the Elon...

Construction site in the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus.
Photo: AP

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, weighing what he has called the "mix of national interests" and compromising his own support for settlement expansion, evidently saw no alternative last month but to order the suspension of new home building throughout Judea and Samaria. Despite Netanyahu's protestations to the contrary, many anticipate that after the freeze will come pressure for withdrawal. The memories of the pullout from Gaza and parts of northern Samaria are still fresh, and Netanyahu is backing a Palestinian state and facing daily reminders that the international community has no sympathy for an expanded sovereign Israel.

To date, the formal settlement leadership and its supporters have responded with the relatively mild obstruction of building inspectors dispatched to assess potential infractions and a peaceful major demonstration outside the Prime Minister's Residence.

But amid reports of heightened security around the prime minister himself, and with a disturbing rash of incidents of extremist violence - including the torching of a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, and attacks on police personnel - battle lines are being drawn. And because the stakes are so much higher where Judea and Samaria are concerned than they were with Gaza four years ago, concerns about intra-Jewish violence are still more acute.

THE BITTER dispute between Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, head of the Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, goes to the essence of the divide. At the time of the Gaza pullout, Melamed was as intractable as he is today in his interpretation of Halacha as forbidding the dismantling of settlements - an interpretation, it should be stressed, that has both learned supporters and learned opponents. But his opposition, and that of those who shared his views, was finessed - to the ultimate benefit of all.

Innumerable earnest public and mainly private contacts facilitated a circumstance in which even some of the rabbis who were most strongly opposed to the Gaza pullout restrained their public statements, and in which the IDF hierarchy managed to shelter those soldiers most acutely conflicted from direct and even indirect involvement in the withdrawal.

Similar, if not greater wisdom is required today.

The Jerusalem Post's religious affairs correspondent, Matthew Wagner, wrote in an astute analysis on Tuesday that "as defense minister and a veteran IDF commander, Barak had to show zero toleration for insubordination. No one knows better than Barak the dangers of a breakdown in military discipline. Distinctions cannot be made between orders. Whether it is an order to charge an enemy or to dismantle a settlement, a soldier must obey."

Barak is right, of course, the IDF would collapse if it tolerated insubordination, and Israel would not last a minute without the IDF.

Wagner went on: "Melamed could not back down either. He was standing up for Halacha. As he wrote in a statement that appeared on the Arutz 7 Internet site, 'It is the obligation of a rabbi to speak his mind on Torah matters freely. In that way he represents the sacred tradition of his people.'"

Indeed, it is impossible to conceive that Melamed could betray his understanding of Halacha, his interpretation of the very code that guides his life and the lives of those who accept his rabbinical authority.

So how, then, to reconcile these profoundly conflicted positions?

Elsewhere in the same article, Wagner asserted that "Halacha might, in principle, supersede an IDF order, yet it is not necessary to ever come to a situation in which the two values directly clash."

Here, we may be on shakier ground. Modern Orthodoxy and the institutions of our democratic state have found essential common ground in building and sustaining Israel these past six decades. The issues that unite these hierarchies far, far outweigh the practical matters that divide them. Somehow, almost miraculously, we have managed to reconcile the demands of a modern, secular state with the values of the faith that both sustained our people in exile and are so central to so many in the revivedJewish homeland today.

But questions relating to the destiny of Judea and Samaria - historic Jewish land beyond the borders of sovereign Israel - test that partnership more acutely than most any other of the dilemmas inherent in the curious, wonderful, unique relationship between the secular state and the religious leadership.

And Wagner may be unjustly optimistic in claiming that we need never reach a situation in which the IDF orders directly clash with Halacha. Orders are orders, after all. And a rabbi cannot compromise his understanding of God's will.

Yet orders can be weighed and sensitively assigned, and halachic interpretation can be questioned and reexamined in the gloriousJewish tradition. Our tragedy will be if stubborn bloody-mindedness forces a cataclysmic schism where good sense and tolerance could have prevented it.

The ancient history of Jewish sovereignty in this region is a bitter saga of internal intolerance dividing and then destroying the capacity of our people to govern themselves. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Gaza pullout, the modern lesson of disengagement is that a responsible awareness of the greater good can reconcile even forces and viewpoints that may seem to be utterly conflicted. Where the destiny of Judea and Samaria is concerned, and for the sake of Israel, these are lessons that simply must be internalized.

What's Really Going on in Palestinian Politics: Springtime for Abbas.

by Barry Rubin


There’s a new trend worth noting in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority (PA): a sense of satisfaction. While the Western media generally reflect the rather false-front public relations’ campaign waged by the PA—bitter, frustrated, victimized, and eager for peace—that’s not what’s really going on right now.

Mahmoud Abbas’s government has to weather some difficult politicking along the following lines:

--He has extended his own term in office indefinitely and cancelled January 2010 elections without receiving much criticism from within the PA. After all, Hamas won’t let any balloting happen in the Gaza Strip and who knows which side might win a fair vote?

--The PA has been rounding up Hamas activists and keeping security on the West Bank while—with a lot of help and some pressure from Israel—preventing cross-border attacks.

--The economy is doing well with relative prosperity on the West Bank, though this could collapse in hours if the PA let’s violence reappear.

--Abbas has contained intensive criticism from his colleagues about his being too “soft” in his dealings with President Barack Obama.

--He has worked out a way to refuse negotiations while blaming it on Israel.

--No matter what the PA does international media coverage, support from Europe, and a lack of criticism from the U.S. government seems assured.

There are plenty of things to be pleased about even though the peace process is dead, there’s no realistic prospect of a state, and Hamas looks set to govern the Gaza Strip forever.

The media angle is especially amusing. Abbas can reject Obama’s demand that negotiations resume without a single adjective of criticism while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is regularly said to be “defying” Obama because he only invoked a total freeze on non-Jerusalem construction. You can’t buy publicity like this.

But never overstate the importance of image. What’s really true—though often misunderstood in the West—is that a no war, no peace option suits the PA just fine right now. There is a question of whether hot-heads among Abbas’s colleagues, Hamas sabotage, or some accidental event will set off a new confrontation. Yet that doesn’t seem too likely in the short- to medium-run.

Finally, while Fatah and the PA can’t wean themselves—indeed, they aren’t even trying—from a basic strategy whose main goal is destroying Israel some day, that doesn’t mean they can’t get along with Israel on a current basis. Behind the scenes, things aren’t so bad.

Indeed, when Abbas speaks privately, he is likely to spend much of his time attacking Hamas and urging higher sanctions on Iran. He knows who his real enemies are, even if most Western observers take him at his (public and propagandistic) word.


Barry Rubin
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Point of View (West Bank i.e. Yehuda and Shomron)

by Marc Prowisor

Many have asked that I give an update and my view of the Security situation in Yehuda and Shomron today. Not an easy task, due to the many mitigating factors that change every time a Government official - either here in Israel, an Arab or American - sneezes.

The simplest way to put it is that we are here in our communities in our heartland and there are many Arabs that want us out, (not all of the Arabs wish to see the Jews leave this area). It is important to remember, that they want and desire to be "Jew Free", doesn't apply just to Yehuda and Shomron, but all of Israel, this view is not held by all Arabs, but certainly most.

It is impossible to discuss the Security situation in Yehuda and Shomron without first reminding everybody that this conflict did not start yesterday. Whereas this is not the place to get into a history lesson, it is the place to remind everybody that ignorance regarding the conflict is the wrong foot to stand on. To quote a friend, "the Jewish –Arab conflict started when Jews decided to fight back".

I will discuss the situation today. Since Oslo, we have witnessed the birth of a new Arab army in the Middle East, that of the "Palestinian Authority", however this is not the only Arab Military body in this region. There are many branches to this tree, with each branch spreading out to even more factions. Fatah itself is divided into many factions based on regions and philosophies, i.e. Nablus, Ramallah and so on. The same principal applies to Hamas, of course from there we can add on the Jihad Islami, PFLP, Al Qaeda, the list goes on. Each of these "Units" claims their own agenda and "work load", but they do work also in accordance to the strategical and political whims of the two (Fatah and Hamas) leaderships.

The Operational and Tactical strength of all of these units has greatly increased and over the recent months and years and continues to rise to the point where they can be and are considered a "tangible" threat today - not just to our communities, but to the IDF as well. This due to the enormous funding, instruction and training they have and continue to receive from the rest of the Western world. It is no secret how the US, England and Canada have been involved with the upgrading of this new Arab army to it's current status. Lt General Keith Dayton, (The US man in charge of this venture) indeed has what to be proud of.

Besides all of the "regulars", there still exist numerous "independents" in the field, who are ready to attack at any minute they deem necessary and this presents an entirely separate threat level that must be not be ignored. Often downplayed in the mainstream media and International Threat Assessments, these "individual" cells have taken many lives and caused no fewer casualties than their bigger and better organized brothers. Adding to this is the fact that arms continue to flow in from various sources and continue to spread throughout the region due to the opening of the roadblocks (as a sign of good faith to the US). This all leads to an extremely volatile situation in Yehuda and Shomron. The IDF is still operating in order to capture terrorists, but these operations have been slashed due to an increasingly confused political situation on the ground. The uniforms have also changed, so not every terrorist is a "terrorist" anymore, He/She might now be a member of a new army or political wing making arrest more complicated.

Over the past year we have be seeing a significant increase in terrorist activity, although it is measured and restrained, never less it is present and enables us to gauge some of the risk and threat factors that we are and will be up against. The IDF and Israeli Security Services, Thank Gd, have been very successful in thwarting most of these attacks. Many of these incidents are probes, being used to measure our response. Where they may seem "trivial" enough, such as a stoning or Molotov cocktail, they supply the Arabs with much needed information regarding our security apparatus. Probes and attacks into the Communities have increased with a few ending in murderous rampages. Most thankfully are thwarted before any severe harm occurs, whether it is by the IDF or the communities' own First Response Teams.

We are witnessing serious efforts by the Arabs in the gathering of Intelligence about the communities, and their increased efforts and success at sabotaging many industrial and agricultural ventures. While we are enjoying a relative lull in terror compared to the earlier days of the Intifada, most Security Analysts have discussed and stated that this is simply the "quiet before the storm". Indeed the infighting going on between Hamas and Fatah serves us well but is also fueling the future flames that we will inevitably be pointed towards us in the not to distant future. Every day there are incidents, most that go unreported, but they do occur and people do get hurt. The efforts that the Jewish communities of Yehuda and Shomron have been showing beyond doubt has had a very positive affect on keeping terrorism down, not just in Yehuda and Shomron, but all of Israel. Though this is not politically correct to report, it is however a very big part of the picture in Israel.

This being a very short and minimal summary of the Arab build up, we can now move on to the Jewish side of the coin. Bear in mind that there are subjects that I will intentionally leave out due to security sensitivity regarding the IDF and our own Tactical Response, and the simple fact that I live in one of the communities and do not wish to divulge certain weakness that would place anyone in danger.

Much has been learned in the field of Community Security and First Response, simply by experience being our teacher, and we have had countless "professors". It is this experience and excellence that has made Israel and specifically these communities in Yehuda and Shomron the vanguard in the Homeland Security Field. Today in many of the communities there are teams who are well trained and well equipped, however there are still many who are not as fortunate. Equipment must be constantly maintained as it ages and over time must be replaced and/or upgraded. This also applies to members of First Response Teams. The weak link that is common to all of the regions and communities is the financial backbone holding up these teams. The IDF supplied the basic needs - that of weapons and simple bulletproof vests, some basic training, but that is all. It must be stated, these are official Response Teams and not private militias. They work in coordination with the IDF. Whereas it used to be that the IDF was solely responsible to secure our communities, they are now the backup in the event of a terror situation thanks to these brave civilians. The IDF realized that time of response in a terrorist infiltration is paramount. Every extra minute waiting for the army could cost lives. So, the creation of first response teams has significantly decreased the delay in responding to such incidents. These first response teams and Security Chiefs are usually the first to arrive at the scene of a terror attack.

The motivation in the community's remains very high, as it is essentially their own lives and those of their family at stake. Training by the IDF is minimal and most teams will train on their own, being either sponsored by their regional council or private donors. If there is a weakness to these teams, it is due to the continuous budgetary cuts by the Defense Ministry to the overall community defense structure. These cuts are across the board and are increasing the Risk and Threat Levels these communities are facing.

Politics of course is a factor that we all must deal with, however the main difference in Israel, is that any sign of weakness provides motivation to our enemies. This combined with the increasing supply and funding of the various Arab Terror organizations by Western Governments in Yehuda and Shomron, makes for one deadly cocktail.

The IDF is currently removing many soldiers that guard communities and their security is, in turn falling mostly upon their own shoulders. This cut is also affecting the budgets that were supplied to the communities and regions in the Communication, Tactical and Perimeter fields. The lacking that these cuts have created is being filled by the continued support, effort and work of the local population and supportive Jewish Communities and Individuals abroad.

In summation, what is happening is such. The lines are being drawn and redrawn daily for a future conflict once again in the region. The North is seeing a total and increased rearming by Hizbullah, soon to be the recipient of new US arms and drones that will be sent to the Lebanese Army and funneled south, The South is witnessing a rearmed Hamas, whose reign of Terror will reach Tel Aviv, and last but certainly not least, the Heartland of our people, Yehuda and Shomron, will bear the brunt of the latest Arab Army in the Middle East whose arms will reach out in an attempt to strangle the center of the country, it is only a matter of time before the Arabs of the Galil create unrest as well.

I know that we are a strong people and can bear anything they can throw at us, and we can and will defeat any enemy. My main concern is the cost – in lives lost.

I am not using Fear or Guilt tactics here to get a point across. I have tried to supply a simple yet accurate analysis of the current security situation that is based on the region, the peoples, and the history, as well as the ever increasing component of extreme Islam in the Western world and "Homegrown" Islamic Terrorists.

Of course if the entire Arab and Muslim world change their collective mind regarding Israel's existence as a Jewish State, then I readily admit to being wrong.

Marc Prowisor

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.