LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
December 11/2011

Bible Quotation for today/Hope
Isaiah 40/27-31: " Israel, why then do you complain that the Lord doesn't know your troubles or care if you suffer injustice? Don't you know? Haven't you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God; he created all the world. He never grows tired or weary. No one understands his thoughts. He strengthens those who are weak and tired.  Even those who are young grow weak; young people can fall exhausted. But those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary; they will walk and not grow weak.

Latest analysis, editorials, studies, reports, letters & Releases from miscellaneous sources
Israeli air traffic to Eilat menaced by Hamas-Bedouin missiles from Sinai/DEBKAfile/November 10/11
The president said/By: Hazem al-Amin/Now Lebanon/November 10/11

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for November 10/11
Lebanon's Arabic press digest - Dec. 10, 2011
Ban Strongly Condemns 'Deeply Disturbing' Attack on UNIFIL
France mulls UNIFIL role after blast
Canada's Statement on Situation in Syria
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird condemns the assault on the UNIFIL
Analysts suspect UNIFIL attack linked to pressure on Syria
Juppe Condemns 'Vile' Attack on French Peacekeepers
Hariri: Attack on UNIFIL was a Message from Assad
Geagea Lashes Out at those Seeking to Undermine Lebanon’s Democracy
Hizbullah Condemns UNIFIL Attack as Opposition Blames It and Syria
U.S. Embassy served as venue to recruit CIA spies: Hezbollah
Berri Says Attack on UNIFIL Aims at Destabilizing Southern Lebanon
Palestinian officials steer camps away from Syria’s unrest
Lebanon, Armenia sign new bilateral agreements
Activists see little progress on human rights in Lebanon
EU moves ahead with deeper integration, U.K. isolated
Hezbollah chose Mikati’s wage pitch on technical grounds: source
Jumblat Urges Syria Druze to Shun Repression: We Don't Need Iran Lectures
Paris: We Haven't Yet Linked between UNIFIL Attack, Syria Crisis
U.N. Chief Hits Back at Assad over Crackdown Death Toll
Syria 'Still Mulling' Arab League Response to Its Conditions
World leaders caution Syria massacre will not be tolerated
Syria security forces kill 36 anti-government protesters
UN Rights Chief Dismisses Syria's Assad Claims on Credibility
Syria Wants Int'l Help for 'Honorable' Exit from Crisis
European nations seek Security Council Syria meeting
Switzerland Adds 18 Syrian Officials to Travel Ban List
Syrian Forces Kill At Least 24 as Protesters Take to Streets
Turkey Tells Assad to Punish 'Murderers' of Opposition Protestors
Italy Tax Chief Wounded in Letter Bomb Blast
IDF strikes Gaza target following barrage of rockets into Israel
EU leaders call for more sanctions on Iran
Report: Terrain altered near Iran nuclear site


Lebanon's Arabic press digest - Dec. 10, 2011
December 10, 2011/The Daily Star
Following are summaries of some of the main stories in a selection of Lebanese newspapers Saturday. The Daily Star cannot vouch for the accuracy of these reports.
As-Safir
An attack targeted UNIFIL in south of Litani ... and France will not withdraw
The resistance exposes CIA network [by revealing] names and places
National security, in particular security in the south, was shaken yesterday with the aggression that targeted a French patrol belonging to UNIFIL in south Lebanon in an apparent attack against the international observers. These aggressions did not even exclude the U.N. Blue Berets or Lebanese civilians.
The attack left five wounded, all who are in good health now, according to French Ambassador Denise Pietton, who Friday said France would not give in to the attack and would remain part of the UNIFIL to protect the security and stability of south Lebanon.
The incident was met with a wave of condemnation in Lebanon, particularly from the Cabinet that was chaired by Prime Minister Najib Mikati. He said that the attack would not affect France's participation in UNIFIL.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah took the initiative, through Al-Manar television stations, to strike at the Americans by broadcasting a detailed report about the structure of the CIA in Lebanon with names, dates and methods used by the agency during its operations.
Ad-Diyar
Why did France not hold Syria accountable for the attack against its forces?
The French Foreign Ministry statement came before the investigators arrived
The resistance tells the CIA story
The explosion that targeted the French peacekeeping force in UNIFIL Friday drew international attention. The French, who are backing those trying to topple the Syrian regime, took an interesting position following the attack on their forces in Tyre.
France's position, which was announced by Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, did not accuse Syria of being behind the incident. Paris said it would wait for the results of the investigation before making any judgments. However, President Nicolas Sarkozy said six weeks ago that any attack on French troops in UNIFIL would prompt the withdrawal of his troops.
European sources considered France's stances as contradictory, attributing the change in policy to the chaos that is taking place within French diplomacy. France seemed to have backed down from its aggressive stances which it had taken regarding events in Syria and this means that France is now evaluating its position.
Meanwhile, the Islamic resistance revealed the whole story about the CIA's work in Lebanon and noted that the headquarters of U.S. intelligence in the country is in one of the buildings of the U.S. Embassy in Awkar, north of Beirut.
Al-Mustaqbal
Paris will not yield to terrorism ... and continues to be with UNIFIL
Meddling with strategic security in the south resumed Friday when UNIFIL forces, in particular the French contingent, was targeted once again. This prompted speculation as well as a wave of condemnation over the incident. However, Paris gave assurances that such "despicable operations" would not intimidate it, according to a statement released by Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppe.
The recent attack, which targeted a French patrol driving through Al-Bourj Al-Shemali in Tyre, left five soldiers wounded. Two Lebanese citizens were also wounded as they were passing through the area at the time of the blast.
Former Minister Mohammad Baydoun told Al-Mustaqbal that senior security officials, on behalf of President Bashar Assad, had told the French that if Paris took a position against Damascus, he [Assad] would respond by attacking UNIFIL in the south. And that is what is happening and what has happened.
An-Nahar
Paris: Our commitment will continue
U.N. Security Council statement condemns ‘terrorist attack’
Cabinet supports steps to control Lebanon-Syria borders and is working in “productive environment”
Threats against the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, particularly the French contingent, are nothing new as shown by the June 26, 2011, attack near Tyre. Friday’s attack, which led to the wounding of five members of the French contingent of UNIFIL, demonstrates the validity of these threats. These threats indicate, according to diplomatic sources, that the Lebanese train will pass through difficult stations in the next few weeks. One of these stages includes a visit by a team from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon to Beirut and then the announcement of new indictments. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will also visit the country on Jan. 11 and 12 of next year.
Friday’s attack on French peacekeepers was met with strong interest both at the local and regional levels in light of a previous warning by Paris that France’s continuing role in UNIFIL was contingent on any future security developments after the June attack.
During a Cabinet session at the Grand Serail, Prime Minister Najib Mikati briefed ministers about the attack on UNIFIL in the south. The government also looked into the steps that are expected to be taken in order to improve border controls between Lebanon and Syria. The government voiced its support for the measures.
Ministers also played down the positions that followed the Cabinet session that dealt with raising workers’ salaries.
In Paris, Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppe denounced the blast and said: “France is adamant to carry out its commitment in UNIFIL and will not be intimidated by acts like this explosion,” that targeted the French contingent.
In New York, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed “great concern” over the attack on UNIFIL near the city of Tyre and called for a probe into the incident and that those involved be brought to justice.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird Condemns the assault on the UNIFIL
(No. 368 - December 9, 2011 - 3:55 p.m. ET)
“Canada condemns in the strongest terms this latest attack against a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon [UNIFIL] patrol in Southern Lebanon.
“Attacks on international peace operations, wherever they occur, are completely unacceptable. The UNIFIL mission aims to protect the southern border against those who would undermine stability in the region. This task is important for regional security and must not be obstructed.
“We offer our sympathy to the French peacekeepers and Lebanese civilians who were injured and wish them a quick recovery.”

Message bodyTo view this document on the department website, please click on the following link:
http://www.international.gc.ca/media/aff/news-communiques/2011/370.aspx

Canada's Statement on Situation in Syria
(No. 370 - December 9, 2011/Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today issued the following statement:
“Canada is deeply concerned by reports indicating that Syrian security forces are encircling the city of Homs. Such actions are unacceptable and must stop immediately.
“We strongly condemn the continuing violence against civilians, and urge the Syrian authorities to stop their campaign of terror on the innocent, who are merely exercising their fundamental rights.
“The world is watching and the international community will judge the Assad regime accordingly. Those implicated in acts of aggression will be held accountable by the international community.
“Canada urges its citizens currently in Syria to leave now, while commercial means are still available.”

UN Rights Chief Dismisses Syria's Assad Claims on Credibility
December 09, 2011/VOA
Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during a news conference in Mexico City, Mexico, July 2011. (file photo) .United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay has dismissed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s recent claims that the U.N. is not a credible organization and that her commission of inquiry failed to contact his government during an investigation of human rights violations in his country.
Earlier this week, U.S. television network ABC aired an interview with President Assad in which he said he had not received documents or evidence to support recent findings by a U.N. commission of inquiry that crimes against humanity have been committed during the on-going crackdown on dissenters. He also questioned the United Nations’ credibility.
Pillay, who is in New York for U.N. observances of Human Rights Day on Saturday, told reporters that her office has been in contact with Assad’s ambassador in Geneva throughout the process. She added that neither the fact-finding commission her office set up in August nor the international team of investigators who wrote the recent report was allowed into Syria by Assad.
“I think it is very important he does [allow U.N. teams into Syria], though, especially if he is under the impression that the U.N. and the information it provides is not credible," said Pillay. "It is very important we go there, then, and check his side of the story.”
The international panel’s report found that members of the Syrian army and security forces have committed crimes against humanity in their repression of a largely civilian population in the context of a peaceful protest movement. The crimes detailed include murder, torture, rape and arbitrary detention.
The panel also found that more than 300 children were among the more than 4,000 people killed since the protests began in mid-March.
Assad has taken the position that his government is fighting armed terrorists and infiltrators who want to topple his regime, and that many of the dead are members of his own security forces who are protecting the population.
Pillay said she acknowledges Syrian forces have been killed, but repeated her warning that the country could be slipping into civil war.
“I acknowledge that almost 1,000 of President Assad’s security forces have also been killed in this conflict," she said. "And this is why I am alerting the world that as you have more and more defectors from the security forces, this may well develop into a fully-fledged civil war.”
There has been, by some accounts, heated discussion among Security Council diplomats as to whether the human rights chief should brief the 15-member council on the situation in Syria. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the council’s president during December, said after consultations, the council has invited Pillay to speak at a closed meeting on Monday.
Churkin said reports that Russia and China objected to such a briefing were “patently not true.” He added that Pillay also will be asked to brief the council on the current situation concerning Palestinian human rights.
Pillay said she would brief the council if invited. However, she expressed distress that the last time she met the members in August, the death toll stood at 2,000. Now it is more than 4,000. She said lives could have been changed if action had been taken sooner.

Analysts suspect UNIFIL attack linked to pressure on Syria
December 10, 2011/ By Hussein Dakroub/ The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Friday’s bomb attack that targeted a UNIFIL patrol in south Lebanon, wounding five French peacekeepers, is intended to send “a political message” to Western countries, mainly France, which are stepping up pressure on Syria to halt its violent crackdown on protesters demanding the ouster of President Bashar Assad, political analysts said Friday. Lebanon’s top leaders and political parties, including Hezbollah, have condemned the bombing, the third this year targeting patrols of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon. President Michel Sleiman called on French peacekeeping forces to stay in Lebanon and vowed to find those responsible for the attack. “This terrorist attack is aimed at pressuring these [French] troops to withdraw and pave the way for the return of terrorist activities,” Sleiman told a joint news conference with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkseyan in the Armenian capital Yerevan.
Retired Lebanese Army Gen. Elias Hanna said the attack on UNIFIL was “directly linked” to the Western – and mainly French – position on the unrest in Syria. “Definitely, the attack is a political message linked to the situation in Syria. The attack is enough to send a political message but not enough to change the rules of engagement with UNIFIL in the south,” Hanna, a strategic analyst, told The Daily Star.
Carol Maalouf, a political analyst, also linked the attack to the European Union’s sanctions on Syria.
“What happened today was not an accident. It was a premeditated attack against the international community through UNIFIL. The attack is a clear message to the governments of these [European] countries, mainly France, because of its heavy involvement in the Lebanese and Syrian affairs,” Maalouf, a lecturer in political science and political history of Lebanon at Notre Dame University, told The Daily Star. “It is also a response to the European Union’s imposition of economic and political sanctions on Syria,” she added.
Five French soldiers and a Lebanese civilian were wounded when a bomb struck a U.N. peacekeeping vehicle near the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre.
The attack took place amid heightened tension over the nine-month popular revolt against Assad’s 11-year rule, with politicians and diplomats warning the unrest could spill over into Lebanon.
The bombing came against the backdrop of Arab, U.S. and EU economic sanctions imposed on Syria to force it to halt its military campaign against protesters which, according to the United Nations, has left more than 4,000 people dead since the uprising began in mid-March.
Asked who could be behind the “political message,” Hanna, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut and Notre Dame University, said it could be anyone starting from Israel, Syria to Hezbollah. He said Salafist organizations, which have a totally different agenda, could also be involved in the attack.
Hanna said the three attacks that targeted UNIFIL this year had not become a pattern. He added that so far the presence of UNIFL was essential for Syria, Hezbollah and Israel.
“But if such attacks recurred, causing heavy losses among UNIFIL troops, this would mean that there is a policy to drive UNIFIL out of the country. It would mean that such attacks are not carried out by organizations, but by states,” Hanna said. He warned that a UNIFIL pullout from the south would lead to a vacuum which would eventually lead to a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.
Maalouf said it was significant that the U.N. peacekeepers being targeted were not from Malaysia or Indonesia, but from European countries from Italy and France.
“The attack happened in an area where Syria’s allies have control,” Maalouf said, referring to Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. “It is highly unlikely that security breaches will take place in south Lebanon without the knowledge of the two main parties that control the area – Hezbollah and Amal,” she said.
“The other possibility is that the security breaches take place without the knowledge of Hezbollah and Amal, signaling that the two parties have no control over the area. This would be very bad for the two parties,” Maalouf added.
Maalouf said that as the Syrian revolution forges ahead, “we might witness more of such incidents in the future.”
Talal Atrissi, an expert on Iran and Middle East affairs, said although the attack on UNIFIL could be linked to the Western sanctions on Syria, “there is a strong possibility that Al-Qaeda could be behind it.”
“Al-Qaeda has more than once issued threats against UNIFIL troops, considering them as occupation forces. Still, I don’t rule out the second possibility that the attack is linked to the Western and EU pressure on Syria,” Atrissi, a lecturer at the Lebanese University, told The Daily Star.
But Atrissi said the attack would not lead to the destabilization of Lebanon or a UNIFIL pullout. “It’s a limited incident ... a political message,” he added.
UNIFIL patrols have been the targets of a string of unclaimed roadside bomb attacks in recent years, including two this year.

U.S. Embassy served as venue to recruit CIA spies: Hezbollah
December 10, 2011/By Hussein Dakroub/The Daily Star
BEIRUT: The Central Intelligence Agency has used the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy complex in Awkar, north of Beirut, as a venue to recruit Lebanese informants to spy on Hezbollah, the resistance group said in a report released Friday. According to the report on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television Friday night, the CIA had a team of 10 officers, including women, who were assigned to recruit Lebanese spies tasked with gathering information on Hezbollah’s officials and fighters along with the addresses of their homes and the group’s arms depots. The spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Amanda Johnson, refused to comment. “I don’t comment on such alleged matters,” Johnson told The Daily Star.
According to Hezbollah’s report, the current chief of the CIA station in Lebanon is Daniel Patrick Mcfeely. Mcfeely, born in 1966, replaced Louis Kahi who quit his job as the CIA chief in Lebanon in 2009. The 10 officers, registered as diplomats at the U.S. Embassy, served as CIA agents for three years in Lebanon.
“The CIA officers were active in recruiting agents from various segments of the Lebanese society: government employees, security and military personnel, religious, banking and academic figures,” the report said. It added that while recruitment of agents took place inside the embassy building, meetings with them were held in fast-food restaurants, MacDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Starbucks.
The Hezbollah report said that among the targets set by the CIA officers was to gather information on Hezbollah, the resistance’s arms depots, its fighters and officials, as well as the addresses of their residences. “The CIA worked during the [2006] July war to monitor the resistance’s activity and provide the Israeli intelligence with all field information,” Hezbollah said in its report. It added that the CIA had linked the spies it was directing to the Israeli Mossad agency.
The report accused the CIA officers of corruption while recruiting Lebanese agents. “The CIA officers seized part of the money allocated for agents and requested them to sign receipts of amounts bigger than what these agents received,” the report said. Commenting on the party’s revelations, Hezbollah MP Hasan Fadlallah said the resistance was secretly waging “a security war” against the American and Israeli intelligence agencies and was achieving “resounding results.”
“The priorities of the American and Israeli intelligence in Lebanon are to target and strike the resistance,” Fadlallah said in an interview with Al-Manar television. He said that Nasrallah was “a permanent target” of the American and Israeli intelligence services. He said that any information gathered by the CIA agents would be sent to the Israelis. Fadlallah called for implementing the law on punishing spies working for Israel and foreign countries. U.S. officials said last month a group of CIA informants in Lebanon had been captured earlier this year by Hezbollah, damaging agency operations against the organization labeled a terrorist group by Washington, and raising concerns that spies who had spent months or years on the CIA’s payroll could be tortured or killed.

France mulls UNIFIL role after blast
December 10, 2011 /By Mohammed Zaatari The Daily Star
BURJ AL-SHEMALI, Lebanon: France hinted Friday at a possible change in its position within UNIFIL, just hours after a roadside bomb struck a French peacekeeping patrol near the southern city of Tyre, wounding five peacekeepers and a Lebanese civilian. “Once we have the results and recommendations” of the strategic review of UNIFIL, which is ongoing, “probably early next year, we will draw the necessary conclusions ... with regards to the French system, its scope, its organization, its role” within the force, said Bernard Valero, spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry, during a news briefing at the Foreign Ministry.
Asked whether there was a potential connection between the attack and France’s policy toward unrest in Syria, Valero said: “No, we have not made that link yet.”
At around 9:30 a.m., a roadside bomb ripped through a French UNIFIL patrol in Burj al-Shemali, near Tyre, wounding five peacekeepers and one Lebanese civilian.
“On Dec. 9, a UNIFIL vehicle traveling on a road at the southern outskirts of the city of Tyre was targeted by an explosion,” said UNIFIL force commander Major General Alberto Asarta Cuevas in a statement. “We condemn this attack in the strongest terms ... in the aftermath of this attack, UNIFIL’s determination and commitment to the mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 is even stronger,” he added. For his part, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement that France would not be intimidated by such an attack.
“I condemn in the strongest terms the cowardly attack that was carried out against UNIFIL this morning, wounding five French peacekeepers and a civilian.” France is “determined to continue its involvement with UNIFIL [and] will not be intimidated by such vile acts,” Juppe said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said in New York that Ban “strongly condemns” the attack, describing it as “deeply disturbing.”
“The secretary-general expects that the perpetrators will be swiftly identified and brought to justice,” he said.
Security sources said a Lebanese man, traveling along the street on his motorcycle, was also wounded in the attack, which targeted a four-wheel drive vehicle belonging to the French UNIFIL contingent.
Security sources said the bomb had been placed under a garbage container on the side of a road leading to the Nabbaha neighborhood.
UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said a U.N. forensic team and investigators were currently working with their counterparts in the Lebanese Army to determine the circumstances of the incident, for which no one has yet claimed responsibility.
The wounded French peacekeepers were taken to Hammoud Hospital in Sidon where Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn visited them later Friday. One of the French peacekeepers was said to be in critical condition. The Lebanese man was identified as 19-year-old Ali Mohammad Safi.
The attack drew swift condemnation from President Michel Sleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati, as well as from Hezbollah.
Sleiman said the attack had been intended to force UNIFIL to withdraw from Lebanon and obstruct its work as a peacekeeping force in the south.
“France, which has made big sacrifices for the sake of Lebanon, will not succumb to terrorist operations,” Sleiman said during a news conference in Armenia, where he was on an official visit. For his part, Berri said the attack was aimed at “transforming Lebanon, and particularly the south, into an area of concern and instability,” and said such acts ultimately served Israel’s interests. “We call on the army and security institutions to increase awareness and intensify measures aimed at uncovering those responsible for these organized terrorist crimes.”
Mikati condemned the attacks which he said targeted the security of Lebanese, especially southerners, during a security meeting he chaired at the Grand Serail.
“Such attacks will not impact the work of UNIFIL in the south especially the French contingent, nor will it affect volunteer countries’ commitment to implementing Resolution 1701,” he was quoted as saying.
Later in the day, the Cabinet, which held a session under Mikati at the Grand Serail, “strongly condemned” the explosion and asked relevant judicial and security authorities to work swiftly to reveal the details of the attack and determine responsibility.
Hezbollah, which holds strong sway in the south, blasted the attack, saying that it was aimed “at Lebanon’s security and the stability of the south specifically.” The party called on Lebanese security services to work diligently to put an end to such attacks. Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and head of the Future parliamentary bloc, urged “the Lebanese and people of south Lebanon to raise their voices, oppose and condemn such a criminal act.” This is the third roadside bomb targeting a UNIFIL convoy this year. Six Italian peacekeepers were wounded in May and five French soldiers were wounded in a blast in July. Both occurred in Sidon, and no group has claimed responsibility for either attack. Italy said after the May attack that it would reduce its contingent, leaving France with the largest contingent in the peacekeeping force. French Ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton voiced hope that the perpetrators would be brought to justice, while emphasizing France’s commitment to UNIFIL. “What we hope for is that those behind this attack are found and brought to justice,” he told a news conference at the French Embassy. – With Reuters, additional reporting by Dana Khraiche

Ban Strongly Condemns 'Deeply Disturbing' Attack on UNIFIL
Naharnet /U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon condemned Friday’s attack against a French UNIFIL patrol in southern Lebanon, hoping “the perpetrators will be swiftly identified and brought to justice” and describing the incident as “deeply disturbing.”“The Secretary-General strongly condemns this morning's attack against a UNIFIL vehicle near the (southern Lebanese) town of Tyre, inside UNIFIL's area of operations,” Ban’s spokesman said. “UNIFIL and Lebanese authorities are cooperating closely in the ongoing investigation, which aims to ascertain the facts. The Secretary-General expects that the perpetrators will be swiftly identified and brought to justice,” the spokesman added.
“This attack on UNIFIL, the third since May 2011, is deeply disturbing. The security and safety of all United Nations personnel in Lebanon is of paramount importance,” he quoted Ban as saying.
A bomb struck a French U.N. peacekeeping patrol in southern Lebanon on Friday, wounding five soldiers in an attack President Michel Suleiman said was aimed at driving French troops out of the country.
The incident marks the third such attack this year against the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and comes at a sensitive time when Lebanon is bracing for a possible fallout from the nine-month uprising in neighboring Syria. A security official told Agence France Presse that the 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) blast was caused by a roadside bomb that targeted a French UNIFIL patrol as it drove on the southern outskirts of the coastal city of Tyre. An AFP correspondent in Tyre saw three peacekeepers -- a woman and two men -- standing by their badly damaged white vehicle with bandages on their heads. One of them had a bloodied face.
Officials said five peacekeepers as well as two civilian passersby were hurt. The Lebanese army said in a statement that one of the peacekeepers was severely wounded in the face.
None of those wounded had life-threatening injuries, officials said.
UNIFIL Force Commander Major-General Alberto Asarta Cuevas denounced the attack but vowed it would not deter his troops from fulfilling their mandate. "This vile and despicable act not only aims to cause harm to the peacekeepers but also to undermine the stability and peace that have been prevailing in the south," he said in a statement. "We will not be diverted from our tasks and we remain focused in our efforts to fulfill our mandate together with the Lebanese Armed Forces," he added. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe condemned the attack and vowed his country would not be intimidated. "I condemn in the strongest terms the cowardly attack that was carried out against UNIFIL this morning," Juppe said in a statement. France is "determined to continue its involvement with UNIFIL (and) will not be intimidated by such vile acts," he added. UNIFIL patrols have been the target of a string of unclaimed roadside bomb attacks in recent years, including two in 2011. Friday's blast took place amid heightened tension over the revolt in Syria, with politicians and diplomats warning the unrest could spill over into Lebanon. There have been constant fears that the UNIFIL force stationed in the south of the country would be an easy target should the unrest spread to Lebanon. Spain currently commands the 12,100-strong UNIFIL force, which was founded in 1978 and expanded after a devastating 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah. France has one of the largest contingents with 1,300 soldiers. In July, six French UNIFIL troops were wounded, one of them seriously, in a similar attack as Friday's in the southern coastal town of Sidon. And in May, six Italian peacekeepers were wounded in Sidon, also in a roadside bombing. In the worst attack, three Spanish and three Colombian peacekeepers were killed in June 2007 when a booby-trapped car exploded as their patrol vehicle drove by.

Geagea Lashes Out at those Seeking to Undermine Lebanon’s Democracy
Naharnet /Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Saturday slammed some parties in the government for seeking to undermine the democratic principles that the Lebanese system is based on.
“They are trying to put the Lebanese in the opposite direction that the region’s people are heading to,” Geagea told a conference on professions organized by the LF at Maarab.
The LF leader accused them of using “sticks on the rest of the Lebanese and even some constitutional institutions and state agencies.”
Furthermore, he accused them of keeping Lebanon in an unstable situation, a move that is reflecting negatively on the living conditions of Lebanese.
He said the Lebanese should either have allegiance to the state “or there won’t be any freedom and democracy in Lebanon.”
Geagea urged the Lebanese to engage in the battle against injustice and fight dictatorships in the region.

Hariri: Attack on UNIFIL was a Message from Assad
Naharnet /Former Premier Saad Hariri said Friday’s attack on a UNIFIL patrol in the southern city of Tyre was “another Syrian message from (President) Bashar” Assad.
Five French peacekeepers were injured when a roadside bomb targeted their vehicle. The incident was seen as a message to Western countries, mainly France, over the pressure exerted on Assad.
“Being human is not a crime, you should try it once in a while, killing is not a solution it’s the problem,” Hariri said on twitter after he was asked about his support for the Syrian protestors seeking to topple Assad’s regime. “Not because I speak about Syria means I am not following what’s happening in Lebanon, but I am allowed to have an opinion,” he said.
Hariri reiterated that the regime will collapse “sooner or later.” “How can anyone stand with this regime in Syria?” he wondered. “History won't be kind to those who stood by this killing machine.”
On the efforts exerted by the March 8 forces to open the file of the so-called false witnesses in ex-PM Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination, he said: “Let them open anything they want and if they want to take me to court I will go but will they?”The Special Tribunal for Lebanon has indicted four Hizbullah members. But Lebanese authorities have so far failed to arrest them.
Hariri’s tweet came after one follower asked him about the demands of Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to put the issue of false witnesses on the agenda of the cabinet and later refer it to the Higher Judicial Council.False witnesses have reportedly misled investigators probing Rafik Hariri’s murder

Paris: We Haven't Yet Linked between UNIFIL Attack, Syria Crisis
Naharnet /The French foreign ministry said Friday Paris did not have enough information that allows it to link between the attack on its troops in southern Lebanon and the active role France is playing concerning the situations in Syria. “We have not yet linked” between the attack and the Syrian crisis, foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters. A bomb struck a French U.N. peacekeeping patrol on the outskirts of the southern city of Tyre on Friday, wounding five soldiers in an attack President Michel Suleiman said was aimed at driving French troops out of the country. The incident marks the third such attack this year against the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and comes at a sensitive time when Lebanon is bracing for a possible fallout from the nine-month uprising in neighboring Syria. Valero urged a “serious probe … that unveils the circumstances of what happened,” adding that “until now we don’t have any elements that allow us to blame a certain party.” Asked about the impact of the attack on the mission of the French UNIFIL unit, Valero said “when we get the results and recommendations” of the ongoing strategic assessment of UNIFIL’s mission “expected in early 2012, we will draw the relevant conclusions concerning the French force and its mandate, structure and role.”
Source Agence France Presse

Hizbullah Condemns UNIFIL Attack as Opposition Blames It and Syria
Naharnet /Hizbullah on Friday condemned the bomb attack earlier in the day on a French UNIFIL patrol in southern Lebanon, as the opposition March 14 camp claimed the incident was a message from Syria and that Hizbullah was "the messenger." Opposition MP Marwan Hamadeh immediately blamed Damascus for the attack, saying it was orchestrated with the help of its Lebanese ally Hizbullah.
"It is clear that Syria was behind what happened today and the messenger was Hizbullah," he told Agence France Presse.  "Nothing happens in that region without Hizbullah's approval," he said.
"The Syrians have accused France of being at the forefront of what they believe is a foreign plot to destabilize their country and everyone felt that something was bound to happen," Hamadeh added.
Hizbullah in a statement denounced the attack saying it targeted Lebanon's security and sought to destabilize the southern part of the country. "We urge the Lebanese security agencies to exert utmost efforts to put an end to such attacks," the party said. Meanwhile, the opposition Lebanese Forces warned against the presence of "armed organizations which the state has allowed to operate outside its authority under the slogan ‘the army, the people and the Resistance’." "The presence of these illegitimate armed forces outside state control is what provides the necessary elements for such security incidents -- from the security cover, weapons and explosives to the trained members and their freedom of movement and financing, " the LF said.
The Democratic Renewal Movement noted that "amid these circumstances,” the attack “can only be interpreted as an attempt to influence the French stance on the current events in Syria.”
A bomb struck a French U.N. peacekeeping patrol near the coastal city of Tyre on Friday, wounding five soldiers in an attack President Michel Suleiman said was aimed at driving French troops out the country. The incident marks the third such attack this year against the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and comes at a sensitive time when Lebanon is bracing for a possible fallout from the nine-month uprising in neighboring Syria. A security official told Agence France Presse that the 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) blast was caused by a roadside bomb that targeted a French UNIFIL patrol as it drove on the southern outskirts of the coastal city of Tyre. Officials said five peacekeepers as well as two civilian passersby were hurt. The Lebanese army said in a statement that one of the peacekeepers was severely wounded in the face.

Juppe Condemns 'Vile' Attack on French Peacekeepers
Naharnet /Foreign Minister Alain Juppe condemned Friday's bomb attack on a U.N. peacekeeping patrol in Lebanon in which five French troops were wounded, saying France would not be intimidated by such "vile acts.”"I condemn in the strongest terms the cowardly attack that was carried out against UNIFIL this morning," Juppe added in a statement. France is "determined to continue its involvement with UNIFIL (and) will not be intimidated by such vile acts," Juppe said. UNIFIL patrols have been the target of a string of unclaimed roadside bomb attacks in recent years, including two previously in 2011.
Friday's blast came amid heightened tension over the bloody uprising in Syria, with some warning the unrest could spill over into Lebanon. There have been constant fears that the UNIFIL force stationed in the south of the country would be an easy target should the unrest reach Lebanon. The 12,000-strong UNIFIL force was first deployed in 1978 and was expanded after a devastating 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah. **Source Agence France Presse

Berri Says Attack on UNIFIL Aims at Destabilizing Southern Lebanon
Naharnet /Speaker Nabih Berri condemned on Friday the attack on UNIFIL and the national security, saying it aims at destabilizing the South. “The terrorist attack that targeted the UNIFIL forces aims at destabilizing Lebanon and the South,” a statement issued by Berri’s office said. Earlier Friday, five French soldiers and two civilians were wounded by a powerful roadside bomb that targeted the peacekeepers’ patrol on a road that leads to Burj al-Shamali. The speaker noted that the “bombing (only) serves the Israeli” intentions aimed at committing “genocides” and violations in southern Lebanon.
He called on the army and the security institutions to intensify their measures “to unveil those responsible behind the organized terrorist crimes.”

Jumblat Urges Syria Druze to Shun Repression: We Don't Need Iran Lectures
Naharnet /Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat on Friday called on the Druze of Syria not to engage in the repression of anti-regime protests, stressing that engaging the Druze in the “acts of killing” is a “historic mistake.”In an interview with the London-based, pan-Arab weekly The Majalla, Jumblat said: “In addition to the (predominantly Druze) region of Jabal al-Arab, there is another bleeding region in Syria, the region of Daraa, and the Druze should not engage in a Syrian axis that is against the (Sunni) majority.”“The Syrian regime is using some military recruits from the residents of Jabal al-Arab in acts of killing and repression against the protesters in Homs, Hama and Daraa,” the Druze leader added. Separately, he stressed that the Lebanese “are in agreement and they support the Resistance and they do not need lectures from Iran.” “We stress that we do not want to be an axis of conflict, neither in Lebanon nor in Syria, and if the Iranians insist on the principle of resisting Israel in their style, they must know that the Syrian people, the Lebanese people and the Arab peoples are genuine resistant fighters, and we don’t need lectures from anyone,” said Jumblat.
“The Arab peoples insist that the Palestinians have the right to have their independent state,” he added. As Jumblat stressed that “the central mission of Hizbullah’s arms is confronting Israel,” he called on the party “not to totally align itself with the Syrian regime.” The Druze leader also said he did not agree with Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s viewpoint on the Syrian crisis, saying “there is no conspiracy against Syria, but rather a grave mistake the regime had committed against the citizens in Daraa, and it remained unaddressed and those who committed crimes against the people of Daraa have not been held accountable.”“Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah must advise Bashar al-Assad on the need to carry out reforms for the sake of pluralistic, democratic Syria that is open to all political currents,” Jumblat went on to say.Addressing Lebanon’s relation with Saudi Arabia, Jumblat said the kingdom “has always played a well-known, positive role in Lebanon.”

Syrian Forces Kill At Least 24 as Protesters Take to Streets
Naharnet /Syrians took to the streets of Homs where at least 10 people were killed on Friday, activists said, as the opposition warned of the danger of a "massacre" by regime forces ringing the protest hub.
Four children were among 24 people killed when security forces and pro-regime militias opened fire in several cities across the country after the main weekly Muslim prayers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Pro-democracy activists had called on citizens to take to the streets in support of a "dignity strike ... which will lead to the sudden death of this tyrant regime."
Ahead of the demonstrations, the opposition Syrian National Council warned of a bloody final assault on Homs using the pretext of what the regime had called a "terrorist" attack on an oil pipeline.
"The regime (is) paving the way to commit a massacre in order to extinguish the revolution in Homs," said the SNC, a principle umbrella group drawing together Assad's opponents.
Homs, an important central junction city of 1.6 million residents mainly divided along confessional lines, is a tinderbox of sectarian tensions that the SNC said the regime was trying to exploit.
"The regime has tried hard to ignite the sectarian conflict using many dirty methods, which have included bombing and burning mosques, torturing and killing young men, and kidnapping women and children," said the SNC. "The regime also took a significant step ... in burning oil pipelines in the neighborhood of Baba Amr to blame what the regime calls 'armed gangs'; in an attempt to crush the peaceful uprising on the pretext of a war on terrorism." Witnesses on the ground in Homs, already besieged for months, have reported a buildup of troops and pro-regime "Shabiha" militiamen in armored vehicles who have set up more than 60 checkpoints, said the opposition group.
"These are all signs of a security crackdown operation that may reach the level of a total invasion of the city. "We warn of the consequences of committing such a crime that could result in a massive number of casualties," said the SNC, calling for international organizations to take action. The Assad regime's crackdown on dissent since mid-March has hit Homs particularly hard and activists say a great number of defecting soldiers have set up camp there to protect the protest movement. An explosion on Thursday tore apart a pipeline taking crude to an oil refinery in Homs from eastern Syria, in an attack the regime blamed on "armed terrorist gangs." But the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), which organizes the protests, accused Assad's government of deliberately destroying the pipeline which serves a region seen as staunchly opposed to his rule. The Syrian Observatory said at least 10 civilians were killed on Friday in and around Homs, two in Daraa, cradle of anti-regime protests, one civilian in Hama and another in Douma near Damascus.
The regime's crackdown on dissent has killed a total of more than 4,000 people in Syria since mid-March, according to U.N. figures.
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay was due to address the Syria crisis on Friday and expected to brief the U.N. Security Council next week at the request of France, Britain and German, diplomats said.
The Arab League, meanwhile, is pushing for Syria to allow in observers or face more sanctions, but the regime has taken a defiant stance this week, with Assad himself denying responsibility for violence by his forces. Turkey urged Assad on Friday to punish the "murderers" of anti-regime protesters and accept observers. On top of international sanctions already in place against Damascus over its crackdown on dissent, Switzerland added 18 senior Syrian military and interior ministry officials to a travel ban list on Friday.Source Agence France Presse

Syria 'Still Mulling' Arab League Response to Its Conditions
Naharnet /The Syrian foreign ministry said Friday that Damascus was still mulling a response it had received from the Arab League to its request for lifting the Arab sanctions as a precondition for allowing foreign observers to enter the country to assess the situation on the ground. “The foreign ministry has received the response of the secretary general (Nabil al-Arabi) and it is still under scrutiny,” ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdesi said in a statement. The Arab League sought Iraq's help on Thursday in persuading Syria to allow observers on its soil as part of efforts to end the unrest.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a joint news conference in Baghdad with Arab League chief Arabi that Iraq would try to convince Syria to accept an Arab peace deal and the deployment of monitors."We will exert efforts and discuss with the Syrian government how to remove all the obstacles facing this initiative," said Zebari. Arabi added: "The ball is in the Syrian court."
Iraq has close trade ties with Syria and has refused to enforce the sweeping sanctions against Damascus approved by the Arab League on November 27 over the Syrian government's deadly crackdown on protests. The Arab League wants Syria to allow a group of observers in the country to monitor the situation on the ground. Burhan Ghalioun, who heads the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), said Assad's conditional acceptance of observers does not amount to meaningful progress, in an interview published Thursday in Brazil's Estado de Sao Paulo daily.
"The president (Assad) is viewed as a murderer by the majority of the Syrian people and any negotiation for a democratic transition requires Assad relinquishing power," Ghalioun said.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the monitors would be allowed to enter the country under certain conditions, according to the text of a letter to Arabi published by Syrian newspapers.
If Syria allows observers into the country all the Arab bloc's sanctions would become "null and void", the letter said. An Arab League ministerial team is due to meet on Saturday in Qatar to discuss the next move, according to an Arab diplomat. Source Agence France Presse

Switzerland Adds 18 Syrian Officials to Travel Ban List
Naharnet /Switzerland added 18 senior Syrian military and interior ministry officials to a travel ban list Friday, as activists said security forces killed at least 14 anti-regime protesters. The Swiss list now has 74 names on it, a statement said, while adding Syria's Commercial Bank to a separate list, now 19 long, of sanctioned firms. In September, Switzerland tightened its sanctions against Syria, halting new investments in the oil sector and stopping the delivery of new coins and notes to its central bank. It has also placed an embargo on exports to Syria of military equipment the government may use in suppressing its citizens. Syrian assets frozen in Switzerland are worth about 45 million francs (36 million euros, $49 million). Activists said at least 24 people, four of them children, were killed as Syrian security forces opened fire in several cities on Friday -- most of them in the restive region of Homs. A crackdown on protests in Syria by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has killed more than 4,000 people since mid-March, according to U.N. figures.Source Agence France Presse

Syria Wants Int'l Help for 'Honorable' Exit from Crisis
Naharnet /Syria on Friday appealed to the international community as well as Arab countries to help it find an "honorable exit" to the crisis it is facing, notably by stopping the flow of weapons into the country.
"We are appealing to the outside world and our brothers in the Arab world to help Syria (prevent the) channeling (of) weapons" into the country, foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi told a news conference in Damascus, speaking in English. "We want the others, all the others, to support the Syrian evolution, not the armed confrontation in Syria," he said. "If we all work together we can find an honorable exit to the crisis."Maqdisi convened the news conference to denounce U.S. news network ABC, which this week broadcast an interview with President Bashar al-Assad.
"The network distorted what the president said," Maqdisi said. "It deliberately deformed the president's words ... by airing videos (of violence) to incite" action against Syria, the spokesman said.
"That was a deliberate mistake." Maqdisi said ABC had edited the interview Assad gave to veteran journalist Barbara Walters and broadcast only what it wanted the world to hear, leaving out long extracts of what the president said. "The important thing (was) to show Syria is evil," Maqdisi said. "The battle is political and we know that," he added.
Maqdisi stressed that Assad is "appalled and saddened" by the deadly violence that has shaken Syria for nearly nine months.
"The president has promised accountability," he added. Maqdisi also stressed that Assad's regime gave "no clear instructions to use live ammunition" against pro-democracy protesters who have held almost daily protests since mid-March. Assad denied in the interview with ABC that he ordered the killing of protesters in Syria and said "only a crazy person" would target his own people.
"We don't kill our people," Assad said. "No government in the world kills its people, unless it's led by a crazy person." Maqdisi said the network played up this quote as part of a concerted effort in the West to give a negative image of Assad. The foreign ministry spokesman played part of the interview that was aired by ABC as well as another segment of the original tape to show that some of what Assad said had been edited out. Assad in the interview also disputed U.N. claims that more than 4,000 people have been killed in Syria in a security force crackdown on dissent since mid-March.
*Source Agence France Presse

Turkey Tells Assad to Punish 'Murderers' of Opposition Protestors
Naharnet /Turkey urged Syrian President Bashar Assad on Friday to punish the "murderers" of anti-regime protesters and accept observers proposed by the Arab League. "If he (Assad) is now sincere, he will immediately punish the murderers and accept Arab League observers. He still has such an opportunity," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters. His comments were in response to a question about a rare interview with Assad in which the Syrian leader said he was not responsible for the months-long bloodshed, drawing a distinction between himself and the military. Davutoglu said Assad's remarks were a kind of "confession.” "He now accepts that security forces might have made a mistake," said Davutoglu. "I wish he had said this in April." Assad told veteran ABC News interviewer Barbara Walters this week that security forces belonged to "the government" and not him personally. "We don't kill our people," Assad said. "No government in the world kills its people, unless it's led by a crazy person." Source Agence France Presse

Italy Tax Chief Wounded in Letter Bomb Blast
Naharnet /The head of Italy's tax collection agency Equitalia was wounded Friday when a letter bomb sent to his office in Rome detonated, prompting prosecutors to launch an inquiry for terrorism.
Equitalia's director general Marco Cuccagna has been taken to hospital and fire brigade and police were investigating at the scene of the blast. "A letter bomb exploded. The director is injured to the hand" after he opened the letter, a spokesman for Equitalia said. A police spokesman said Cuccagna was also injured in the eye when he opened the letter, which arrived in the post.
Prime Minister Mario Monti issued a statement expressing "solidarity," adding: "Equitalia has always carried out and is continuing to carry out its duty in full respect of the law."
"It is essential for the functioning of the state, without which it would be impossible to provide services to citizens," he said. Prosecutors have launched an inquiry for terrorism, ANSA news agency reported.
An Italian far-left group on Thursday claimed responsibility for a letter bomb sent to the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann. State police said the group had referred to "three explosions against banks, bankers, ticks and bloodsuckers."Source Agence France Presse

Israeli air traffic to Eilat menaced by Hamas-Bedouin missiles from Sinai
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 10, 2011/Israel was merely going through the motions of fighting terror with its targeted killing of Ismail Batash, commander of the "Army of Believers" (a Hamas terrorist front group), Thursday Dec. 8 - an attack which triggered a hail of Palestinian missiles against Israel. debkafile's military and counter-terror sources report that Israel's military hands are firmly tied against effective counter-terror action by the Netanyahu government and Washington, who are afraid of upending the Egyptian military caste's wobbly boat in Cairo.
The little the IDF is allowed to do is meanwhile doing more harm than good: It has hastened the transfer of the Palestinian Hamas' terrorist operational and logistical infrastructure from the vulnerable Gaza Strip to northern Sinai, out of reach of Israeli punishment. It has also strengthened Hamas' evolving alliance with Bedouin militias newly converted to radical Salafism.
The two allies are quickly overrunning the northern Sinai areas evacuated by Egyptian forces, so aggravating the terrorist peril besetting southern Israel including the Red Sea port of Eilat.
This dangerous development, which the Israeli government and security establishment has kept hidden from the general public, has been going forward since Aug. 18, when eight Israelis were killed in a terrorist attack mounted from Sinai on the Eilat highway.
Israel's powers-that-be have stuck to a policy of denial about that event to conceal the breakdown of the security arrangements Israel made with Egypt's interim rulers for the reinforcement of military strength over and above the numbers permitted in their 1979 peace treaty.
The public was told only that the attack was the work of the Gaza-based radical Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees operatives who entered Sinai from Gaza. Their leaders were later killed at their Rafah headquarters by an Israeli air raid, supposedly in reprisal.
However, according to our intelligence sources, the Eilat highway attack was not the work of Palestinian terrorists but of a dozen Bedouin of the Sawarkah tribe, which rules the northern Sinai triangle enclosed by the Egyptian-Gaza border, the Mediterranean Sea and the northern fringes of Sinai's only town, El Arish.
Four of the 12 attackers were suicide bombers. This was the first known instance of Sinai Bedouin, who are traditionally casual about religion, going to this extreme. Three of the bombers struck two Israeli buses on the Eilat highway - one packed with soldiers and one empty as well as a private car. The fourth blew himself up near a group of Egyptian troops and killed five.
Cairo blamed Israeli troops for those deaths. Under the threat of jeopardizing its already fading peace relations between Israel, Cairo backed by Washington forced Israel to take responsibility. This too was unprecedented: Never before in the war on terror has a Middle East government assumed guilt for deaths caused by terrorists.
But this step was part of the smokescreen laid around the situation in Sinai. It left unexplained the comment from Israel's chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz Aug. 26 that the Israel-Egyptian frontier was long longer a border of peace.
Since then, the IDF has doubled its combat strength along that border from two to four fighting battalions.
But also since then, matters across the former "peace border" have gone from bad to worse.
1. With an eye on the spreading Salafism spirit in Bedouin community and the fear of action in Cairo, Jerusalem and Washington, the radical Hamas has moved in on new pastures: It used its iron fist to compel the 100,000 Palestinians of northern Sinai to host a new Hamas-Bedouin terrorist infrastructure, one holding sway up to and including the strategic Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts. Hamas command centers, terrorist manpower, training facilities and metal foundries for rockets are now being transferred to the new sites beyond Israel's reach.
2. The six Egyptian combat battalions which Israel permitted Cairo to deploy in northern Sinai to reinforce security there and the Egyptian tank units deployed along their common border for the first time have rushed for the exits. They gave ground to the increasingly belligerent Salafi Bedouin and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami advancing from the Gaza Strip.
3. Most Egyptian troops have also abandoned the 300 border positions and watch towers they manned along the 240-kilometer border. A small number remains, but 100 positions were handed over to inmates from Egyptian jails who were given army uniforms but no weapons and who quickly formed ties with the Bedouin and Hamas; Bedouin, some Salafist, seized another 100 positions. They are armed to the teeth with an assortment of high-precision anti-air rockets Strela-3-SA-14, Igla-1 SA-16, Gimlet SA-16 and Grouse SA-18 – with a killing range of 6 kilometers.
The Israeli Air Force has consequently suspended flights over the Israel-Egyptian border and civilian road traffic has been sharply restricted. In the absence of an air force presence over this part of southern Israel, civilian flights - especially those bound for Eilat - are in danger.
So the extremist Palestinian Hamas and the Iran-backed Jihad Islami have managed to open a second front against Israel in addition to the Gaza Strip. From there, they can strike Israel without fear of pursuit into Egyptian Sinai. The IDF's strikes against Palestinian terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip scarcely scratch the new terrorist infrastructure in Sinai and may even accelerate its development.
The defensive wall Israel is in the middle of building along its border with Egypt needs another year for completion. While a useful barrier for curtailing the flood of refugees infiltrating the country through Sinai for some years, it is unlikely to solve southern Israel's acute security problems.

European nations seek Security Council Syria meeting
December 9, 2011
SANA reports "an armed terrorist group targeted in a sabotage operation the pipeline of Tal al-Shor, west of Homs." (AFP/SANA)
France, Britain and Germany have called for UN human rights chief Navi Pillay to brief the UN Security Council on the Syria crisis in a bid to put the deadly crackdown back in the diplomatic spotlight.
Diplomats from the three countries said they are ready to force a vote on the move at the 15-member council if a briefing was not agreed by consensus.
Russia and China vetoed a resolution on Syria at the Security Council in October and along with countries such as India, South Africa and Brazil have resisted moves to renew discussion of the crackdown, which the UN says has left 4,000 dead.
A final decision on Pillay's briefing will be made on Friday and the UN Human Rights commissioner could appear before the council next Tuesday, diplomats said. She is to hold a press conference in New York on Friday.
"It will be useful because it will allow the Security Council to examine its own responsibilities" in the crisis, said a UN diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity.
Diplomats said they notice signs of a shift in attitude by opponents of UN action against President Bashar al-Assad.
But the western nations are waiting to see what impact Arab League sanctions have on Syria.
Brazil, which has called for dialogue between the Syrian opposition and Assad, is "misinformed" about events in the country, the head of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said in an interview published Thursday by the Brazilian daily Estado de Sao Paulo.
"The situation is deteriorating and we are going to reach out to Brazil to explain what is happening and show the crimes committed by Assad," Burhan Ghalioun said in the interview in Geneva where he conferred with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Ghalioun said the Brazilians were out of touch. "Today no country is asking for a dialogue between the opposition and Assad," he told Estado.
Meanwhile, the Arab League sought Iraq's help on Thursday in persuading Syria to allow observers on its soil as part of efforts to end unrest, as activists called for a civil disobedience campaign against the regime.
A defiant President Bashar al-Assad vowed that Syria would "not change its positions" in the face of any pressure, a day after drawing a stinging US rebuke for denying he had ordered a deadly crackdown on protesters. On the ground, activists said security forces killed 12 people Thursday as they pushed their months-long crackdown against regime opponents in the protest hubs of Homs and Edleb.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a joint news conference in Baghdad with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi that Iraq would try to convince Syria to accept an Arab peace deal and the deployment of monitors."We will exert efforts and discuss with the Syrian government how to remove all the obstacles facing this initiative," said Zebari.
Arabi added: "The ball is in the Syrian court."Iraq has close trade ties with Syria and has refused to enforce the sweeping sanctions against Damascus approved by the Arab League on November 27.
The Arab League wants Syria to allow a group of observers in the country to monitor the situation on the ground.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the monitors would be allowed to enter the country under certain conditions, according to the text of a letter to Arabi published by Syrian newspapers.
If Syria observers into the country all the Arab bloc's sanctions would become "null and void,” the letter said.
Assad said he would not be swayed by pressure, the official SANA news agency reported on Thursday."Syria is strong, thanks to its people and the support of friends," he told a delegation of Lebanese Druze clerics in Damascus. An Arab League ministerial team is due to meet on Saturday in Qatar to discuss the next move, according to an Arab diplomat.
In Thursday's violence, Syrian forces killed 10 civilians in the central city of Homs and two others in the northwestern province of Edleb, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
A woman was among those killed in Homs, a main hub for dissent that has been besieged for more than two months, with security forces using sniper fire and "arbitrary" shelling, said the Britain-based group. The Local Coordination Committees activist network appealed for citizens to mobilize for a "dignity strike" to begin Sunday "which will lead to the sudden death of this tyrant regime.”
It urged citizens to start with sit-ins at work and the closure of shops and universities, before the shutdown of transportation networks and a general public sector strike.
SANA, meanwhile, said that "an armed terrorist group targeted in a sabotage operation the pipeline of Tal al-Shor, west of Homs."
The Observatory also reported the explosion of "an oil pipeline in Homs which transports crude to the city's refinery from eastern Syria" but gave no cause for the blast.
-AFP/NOW Lebanon

The president said
Hazem al-Amin, /Now Lebanon
December 9, 2011
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claimed in an interview that he is not responsible for his army’s killing of civilians. (AFP photo/ABC news)
Those who ponder what Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meant by saying during an interview with American network ABC that he did not order his army and security forces to shoot civilians reach only one simple and unintelligent answer: Assad is claiming his innocence regarding the daily bloodshed in Syria.
Is there a conclusion that is more self-evident and obtuse than that? Still, since the person saying those words is a head of state, coming to a conclusion is necessary. But what a wretched business this is, because we are forcing our intelligence to stoop to insulting lows.
The Syrian president said that the pictures of his forces slaughtering dissidents that are shown on TV are not true, that he does not believe in the United Nations and the Security Council, and much more.
Still, the most self-evident statement he made was when he said that he did not order the army to kill civilians. Does this indicate some kind of transformation in the official Syrian claims regarding the uprising?
According to Arab diplomats, the regime apparatus is starting to display some deficiency. These diplomats have picked up several signs, leading them to believe that the performance of the “system” in Damascus is flailing. This is noticeable in the failure to make proper economic decisions in light of international and Arab sanctions, and in the mistake made by Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem in his latest press conference in which he showed pictures taken in Lebanon of villagers lynching a man, claiming that they showed Syrian dissidents killing a security forces officer. Then came President Assad, saying what he did to ABC.
The only scenario Arab diplomats have regarding the Syrian crisis is that the regime’s predicament will grow worse and that something will happen, probably starting from within the halls of power.
These are people who have examined the information coming out of Damascus carefully. In their opinion, the successive deadlines granted by the Arab League to the Syrian regime to stop the violence and let in Arab observers are justified by saying that “every deadline hides some instability, the signs of which are noticeable through the regime’s response.”
One of the paradoxes noted by diplomats is that the Syrian regime sets the number of those killed every day according to the messages the president wants to get out. Conditional approval of the Arab initiative thus calls for one number, its postponement calls for another, and the foreign minister’s press conference calls for mitigating this number. The discrepancy noted by the diplomats is that when the number of those killed rises prior to a press conference by the foreign minister or his spokesperson, this means that someone is not in favor of holding the press conference in question.
These are messages written in blood, and those shedding it mistakenly believe that it is blood easily shed.
**This article is a translation of the original, which appeared on Friday December 9, 2011

Report: Terrain altered near Iran nuclear site
Satellite images show no evidence of explosion at Isfahan plant, but indicate 'significant transformation,' US group says
Reuters 12.09.11/Ynetnews
Satellite images show buildings have been razed and bulldozers were at work at an underground structure near a site where Iran processes uranium, a US-based think tank said on Friday, without offering an explanation. The Institute for Science and International Security said it had studied satellite photographs of a nuclear site near the Iranian city of Isfahan, after reports two weeks ago that an explosion could be heard in the city. It found no evidence of damage from an explosion at the nuclear site, but signs of construction work at a site 400 meters away that showed a "significant transformation".
Western countries pay close attention to Iran's uranium processing because they believe it could be used to produce material for an atomic bomb.
The Isfahan site produces uranium gas which can be fed into centrifuges elsewhere to produce the purified uranium needed to run a power plant or make a bomb. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Attention has been focused on the Isfahan site since November 28, when Iranian media reported an explosion could be heard in the nearby city.
In conflicting reports, the head of the provincial judiciary was quoted as saying a blast could be heard, but the deputy governor denied there had been a big explosion.
'No visible evidence of explosion'
ISIS said it had acquired satellite imagery of the Isfahan nuclear site taken in early December.
"There does not appear to be any visible evidence of an explosion, such as building damage or debris, on the grounds of the known nuclear facilities or at the tunnel facility directly north of the Uranium Conversion Facility," it said.
It said, however, it had identified a facility about 400 meters from the perimeter of the nuclear site that "underwent a significant transformation recently."
An August 27 satellite image showed that it consisted of a ramp leading underground with several buildings along the surface. But in a December 5 image the buildings were gone, heavy equipment could be seen around the site and there was evidence of bulldozing activity, ISIS said.
"It is unclear how and why the buildings are no longer present at the site," it added.
ISIS said the underground facility was originally a salt mine dating back to at least the 1980s. It was lately used for storage, although it was unclear what was kept there, ISIS said.
The November 28 report of the sound of a blast in Isfahan came less than three weeks after a massive explosion at a military base near Tehran that killed more than a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guard including the head of its missile forces.
Iran said that explosion, which could be heard as far away as the capital, was caused by an accident while weapons were being moved.

JOINT STATEMENT ON UN HUMAN RIGHTS DAY
Seizing a historic opportunity to end torture in the Middle East and North Africa
Ten steps against torture
Geneva, 10 December 2011.
On the occasion of the UN Human Rights Day, the World Organisation against Torture (OMCT) and fourteen partner organisations from eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa (see below) jointly call on all governments of the region to make the absolute prohibition of torture and ill-treatment a reality. To this end, OMCT and its partner organisations have set forth a “10 Steps” agenda outlined below.
The year 2011 has been marked by the call for freedom and justice in the Middle East and North Africa. The wave of popular and peaceful protests sought to overcome repressive regimes in the region characterized by a widespread practice of torture and ill-treatment committed with impunity and deeply entrenched in a system of emergency and special laws.
“This is an important juncture in time with a historic opportunity to bring endemic and systemic practices of torture and ill-treatment in the region finally to an end”, said the OMCT and its fourteen partner organisations. “It is thus vital to ensure that the fight against torture and impunity becomes centre stage in the reform agenda of countries engaging into genuine transition. Equally, we must not spare any effort to end the use of torture and seek accountability for those responsible for the violent repression of dissent and opposition movements.”
While countries such as Tunisia have embarked in a transition process incidents of torture continue calling for lasting reforms that ensure accountability and prevent torture in the future. Other governments of the region have responded to the nascent protests by initiating certain reforms, such as in Morocco. However, concerns over continuous practices of torture and ill-treatment, the lack of steps to fight impunity remain acute as highlighted last week by the UN Committee Against Torture.
In others, such as Algeria, reforms have been proposed that would increase restrictions on fundamental freedoms if they were adopted. The lifting of the state of emergency had no positive consequences as emergency provisions had already been incorporated into common law and new legislation fails to provide vital legal safeguards in detention, and even allows for detention in secret places. Human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances, continue to be committed by security forces with full impunity. Furthermore, the implementing decrees of the Charter on Peace and National Reconciliation remain in force providing blanket amnesties for State agents responsible for the crimes committed during the conflict in the 90’s.
While Tunisia and Egypt were the first countries of the region to hold free elections (Constituent Assembly and parliamentary respectively) and new opportunities are on the horizon the legacy of human rights violations is a daunting challenge. Especially in Egypt there has been little evidence of meaningful reforms to end the widespread practices of torture as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) continues to rely on emergency laws and to use military courts to try civilians, to violently repress peaceful protests and to target persons who are perceived to be critical to the authority in place. The changes in Libya have raised enormous expectations and hopes about an end to gross human rights violations known under the Ghaddafi regime. However, the revelations about torture and ill-treatment and arbitrary detention, including by the forces of the transitional authority, indicate the need for sustained efforts to prevent torture and to ensure accountability, and the full cooperation with the International Criminal Court.
In other countries the situation remains dire, such as Yemen and Bahrain. In particular in Syria security forces continue to respond to protests with force and the use of torture. In its report published on 28 November 2011, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria expressed its grave concern that crimes against humanity have been committed by Syrian military and security forces since the repression against protests started in March 2011. Against the background of a defiant response by Syria so far, a stronger and unanimous response by the UN, including the Security Council, must now include a transfer to the International Criminal Court.
The protests in the Middle East and North Africa may herald the beginning of a new era in the region; there is, however, still a long way to go before attaining freedom, justice and democracy. The experiences in Lebanon following the “spring revolution” in 2005 illustrate the need for lasting reforms against torture. Despite progress on individual freedoms, the country is far from having eradicated torture in custody which remains widely practiced by the security forces.
On the occasion of the universal day for human rights and to seize the momentum created by the Arab Spring, OMCT and its fourteen partner organisations in the region have set forth a “10 Steps” agenda against torture and accordingly urge the governments of the region and other relevant actors to fully endorse them.
Signatories:
- Forum dignité pour les droits humains – Morocco
- Observatoire marocain des prisons (OMP) – Morocco
- Association marocaine des droits humains (AMDH) - Morocco
- Organisation marocaine des Droits de l'Homme (OMDH) - Morocco
- Collectif des Familles de Disparus en Algérie (CFDA) – Algeria
- Conseil National pour la Liberté en Tunisie (CNLT) – Tunisia
- Organisation Contre la Torture en Tunisie (OCTT) – Tunisia
- Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (LTDH) – Tunisia
- Human Rights Solidarity Libya – Libya
- Land Center for Human Rights (LCHR) – Egypt
- Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) – Egypt
- Lebanese center for human rights (LCHR) – Lebanon
- Syrian Human Rights Organization Sawassyah – Syria
- Bahrain Center for Human Rights – Bahrain
Ten steps against torture
1)Committing to an end to torture and ill-treatment
As the region is undergoing transformation governments should express publicly their unequivocal commitment to end any practice of torture and ill-treatment, to commit to fundamental reforms strengthening accountability for acts of torture and preventing them in the future. A clear message needs to be sent to all law enforcement agencies that acts of torture and ill-treatment will no longer be tolerated. In light of the continuation of systematic and widespread use of torture in some countries of the region, such as Syria, governments, including those in the region, should use their influence within the international community to ensure that those responsible are held accountable (cf. point 10).
2) Investigating torture, bringing perpetrators to justice
Torture is a crime under international law which imposes clear and unambiguous obligations on states to conduct independent investigations and to bring those responsible to justice. However, despite recent reforms in some countries there has been limited evidence of real accountability as of yet. We recall that the obligation to investigate acts of torture is an immediate one that needs to be conducted ex officio. This should include also investigations of past abuses to ensure that the victims of torture are provided with remedies and reparation and to ensure that the right to truth is fully respected.
3) Ensuring the right of victims to remedy and reparation
The policies of torture have created victims which need to be recognized as such. While there is a slowly emerging acknowledgement of past practices of torture in certain countries, there remains insufficient recognition of the need to ensure effective remedies and reparation to victims of torture. Any credible reform process, must be built on the recognition of torture survivors as victims of a serious human rights violation, with full entitlement to effective remedies and reparation, including compensation and access to legal, social and medical rehabilitation.
4)Dismantling the apparatus of repression
Dismantling the apparatus of repression and ensuring that law enforcement agencies operate within and not outside the rule of law needs to be a key priority. A plethora of national security services has been operating under in-transparent mandates, ambiguous legal basis and lines of command and within a framework that has assured de jure or de facto impunity for acts of torture. A clear and transparent legal framework, the separation between intelligence and law enforcement functions with arrest and detention powers being the provenance of law enforcement, and effective civilian and judicial oversight are thus core demands.
5)Demilitarizing the justice system and building a protection system
Long-standing emergency and other extraordinary laws have created repressive justice system with military, special or state security courts, often with jurisdiction over civilians and validating information obtained under torture. These special systems of justice need to be replaced by the jurisdiction of the ordinary civilian justice system. Moreover, any credible and viable reform process in the region should lead to the strengthening of judicial independence, the establishment of effective remedies, and in countries undergoing constitutional reforms, such as in Tunisia, may also consider the establishment of constitutional human rights remedies such as constitutional courts.
6)Preventing torture and ending incommunicado detention
Torture and ill-treatment are still a reality today in police custody in the countries of the region, including in ‘ordinary’ criminal cases. Strengthening effective safeguards, such as immediate access to lawyers from the moment of arrest and without need for special permission, as well as access to independent medical expertise and other safeguards against torture must be made a reality. Effective judicial oversight is equally required to ensure compliance with existing standards. These standards are equally vital in national security and counter-terrorism cases to avoid abuse.
7)Establishing independent monitoring, control and oversight
Transparency is the key for protecting human rights in custody. The ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture should be an important first step and be followed-up by the establishment of independent national visiting mechanisms, that are properly resourced and have access to any place of custody. Moreover, independent civil society access and monitoring of places of detention is an important element of democratization that should be embedded in reforms demilitarizing the penitentiary system to ensure compliance with international standards and principles of democratic accountability.
8)Providing an enabling framework for human rights defenders and civil society
A shift away from a control to an enabling system for human rights organisations, civil society actors that allow critical human rights reporting needs to be part of any reform process in the region. This should ensure that laws on association and assembly are brought fully in compliance with international standards. Authorities should also ensure that any form of threat or harassment of human rights defenders is brought to an end and that those responsible are held to account.
9)Making international law against torture key benchmark
The lesson learnt from transition processes elsewhere is that international human rights standards should be made a direct part of domestic law and should be one of the benchmarks for the success of the transition process. This requires the integration of international standards into domestic law, ways to ensure compliance of domestic law with such standards, and may include the legal reception of decisions by universal or regional complaint mechanism. Where not yet done so states should accede to the UN Convention Against Torture, its Optional Protocol and accept the jurisdiction of the Committee Against Torture and the Human Rights Committee to receive individual complaints.
10)Strengthening the resolve of the international community
In light of the continuous practices of torture in parts of the region it is vital that there is a clear response by the international community to address torture and impunity and to ensure legal accountability. It is particularly important to ensure that in cases such as the one in Syria jurisdiction is transferred to the ICC. We also call for the countries of the region to become actors for change that speak up for the protection of human rights and initiate and improve the universal human rights system and its mechanisms.

Obama Set to Attack Iran's Nuclear Sites by the Fall of 2012
Straight after the United States was disencumbered of NATO's eight-month Libyan campaign on Oct. 31, President Barack Obama went on line to America's senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 - unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs.
The news switched on six fast-moving processes:
1. A race against time. Will Iran be able to complete the transfer of all its nuclear installations and ballistic missiles to underground facilities in the remaining months? Or will the West and Israel get in first while the program is still vulnerable?
If it is not attacked by the onset of winter 20012, Western intelligence experts bet on Iran beating the rap; the chances of its programs sustaining serious damage would declines by 60 percent.
2. Having polished off the Qaddafi regime, Obama is perceived by the Sunni Muslim kings and emirs of the Persian Gulf, Middle East and North Africa, as setting his sights on Shiite Iran with dire knock-on consequences for Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah.
By demolishing the Islamic regime's mainstay, the Revolutionary Guards and its terrorist-intelligence branch, the Al Quds Brigades, a US-led attack would have a good chance, they believe, of encompassing the downfall of the regimes in Tehran and Damascus and knocking the stuffing out of Hassan Nasrallah, head of Iran's Lebanese surrogate Hizballah.
However, the same Sunni rulers are also certain that Iran, Syria and Hizballah will not go down without a fight and will stand up to the Western offensive to their last breath. So the year 2012 promises to see Arab Spring domestic struggles transmuted into regional wars.
NATO members dust off contingency plans, hold joint maneuvers with Israel
3. In the opposite camp, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report that Obama's announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead. They have begun joint military exercises to improve cooperation among their military and intelligence systems.
Although air, sea and missile forces will bear the brunt of a projected US-led assault on Iran, the partners are preparing Special Forces for landing small units at nuclear installations and other strategic sites.
Their combined training exercises have five purposes:
- Obama's announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years. Those governments must now check to see if the plans are still pertinent, update them if not, and ascertain that their military forces are armed with the right munitions and systems.
Last April and May, when the Libyan war was in full spate, NATO jets ran out of precision bombs and missiles and British and French warships out of ordnance.
- NATO and Israeli army chiefs need another two-to-three months to study the lessons of the Libyan campaign which, in the course of overthrowing the Qaddafi regime, used the embattled country as a testing ground for tactics and equipment in readiness for the Iran offensive.
NATO members gained valuable experience there in air and sea combat as well as in the use of small Special Operations units on the ground.
Arab leaders hope the US is ready for a fresh start in the region
- DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources in the Gulf report that NATO and Persian Gulf leaders are treating the prospect of a US strike against Iran with the utmost seriousness in view of the imminent exit of American troops from Iraq next month.
They hope that by turning its back on the Iraq venture, Washington is paving the way for a fresh start in the region.
The word from Washington that after Iraq, America plans to rebuild its Gulf presence, is seen as marking the end of the eight-year Iraq war era, in which Tehran was allowed to grow stronger and expand its regional grip, and the beginning of a new US focus on cutting Iran down to size.
The stakes are high: Obama administration's failure to measure up would cost the US all of its positions in the Middle East.
- Israel stands out from the rest as unsure that Obama's decision on Iran is indeed final and definite. This is why IDF preparations and joint maneuvers with Italy and other NATO members in the last two weeks are accompanied by doom-laden comments by Israeli leaders about the possible need to attack Iran unaided.
(See the next article in this issue.)
- Tehran, Damascus, Hizballah in Beirut and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza have no such doubts. For them, the danger of facing attack in 2012 is very real. Like NATO members and Israel, they have set in train preparations for fighting back.
Our military and intelligence sources report that Hassan Nasrallah, for example, has spent the last ten days inspecting Hizballah units and bases. He is taking commanders from the ranks of lieutenant through general aside and explaining that the Lebanese Shiite militia might find itself fighting singlehanded against NATO and Israeli forces, separately or combined, with no hope of support from Iran or Syria.
The bellicose Hizballah chief does not intend waiting for the enemy to fire the first shot. He proposes starting the war on his own account by loosing 10,000 rockets in a surprise attack on Israel.

What Makes Israelis Sure a War with Iran Is impending?
Debka A hysterical sense that the Israeli government is seriously considering attacking Iran's nuclear installations has swept the country. It was first cued by media reports two weeks ago and has been fed by vague hints from Israeli leaders suggesting something momentous was in the wind and a flurry of military activity, mostly involving Israel.
Much of this activity was packed in a single day. Wednesday, Nov. 2, saw an avalanche of military events, starting with Israel's successful test-launch of Jericho 3, an upgraded intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead across a distance of 7,000 kilometers.
The IDF then released footage of Israeli Air Force squadron leaders on Italian air base runways reporting to the media on joint exercises in long-range maneuvers. They were carried out with the Italian air force "and other NATO nations" in Sardinia, to familiarize the IAF with NATO military tactics.
After that, the IDF's Home Command announced a large-scale exercise Thursday morning, Nov. 3, to prepare central Israel for missile attack
Finally, Defense Minister Ehud Barak left on an unscheduled trip to London shortly after a secret visit to Israel by the British chief of staff Gen. Sir David Richards earlier this week as guest of Israel's top soldier Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.
Suspense is building up ahead of the publication next Tuesday, Nov. 8 of the International Atomic Agency's report which is expected to put Iran in the international dock. The foreboding over Tehran's response to its findings and to more sanctions ties in with the threats from Damascus as the Assad regime nears its moment of truth.
Barak: Israel may have to fight alone
Before leaving for London, Barak delivered an ominous warning to the opening of the Knesset winter session Tuesday. Israel must brace itself, he said, for the need to defend its security interests over long distances - alone and without regional or other foreign support.
He did not mention Iran. Neither did he say outright that the United States would not be there to provide military aid or even diplomatic support. He simply let those shocking inferences stand.
In all the seven wars and two military confrontations with the Palestinians (intifada) which Israel has fought in its 62 years, America was always there, with air and sea corridors for needed arms and spare parts and friendly diplomacy for negotiating ceasefires or armistices. Now, Barak, who is a regular visitor to Washington every few weeks, was telling Israelis that next time they would be on their own.
"We live in uncertain times," he went on to say. "The outcome of the Arab Spring is hard to predict. The threats are multiplying with Hizballah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Iran in the background," Barak said. And if Israel reduces its defense spending to meet social protesters' demands, the United States may likewise cut down on military aid to Israel.
He then called on his government colleagues to augment the state budget by an extra NIS 8 billion ($2.2 billion) to cover "imminent unforeseen security requirements" and social protesters' demands.
The 2011 state budget stands at a peak NIS 348,185,234 (app. $99.5 billion) of which NIS 53.2 billion ($13.5 billion) is earmarked for defense, i.e. 6.3% of expected gross domestic product and 15.1% of the total budget outlay.
Fear of a combined Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah-Hama offensive
Finance minister Yuval Steinitz and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman upbraided Barak for his outspokenness on matters best left to backroom discussions. Lieberman denounced media reporting as "99 percent untrue."
But the damage was done.
The juxtaposition of "alone" and "imminent unforeseen security requirements" was enough to convince the Israeli street that an operation against Iran was around the corner with Tehran's Iran's allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami joining the fray against Israel.
Monday, Oct. 31, ultra-Orthodox Shas Minister Eli Yishai, another senior member of the prime minister's exclusive "Forum of Eight," was recorded making an agonized confession to a closed session of party activists. He said he was not sleeping nights because of the hard decisions to make in a region so fraught with peril and complexity that they could result in 100,000 rockets descending on Israel.
No more words were needed to feed the hysteria. Every Israeli knows the math: Only Syria, Hizballah and Hamas command that many missiles between them. Therefore, Yishai could only have been talking about a potential Israeli-Iranian war.
The sense of doom further deepened when opposition leader Tzipi Livni of Kadima turned to Binyamin Netanyahu during her Knesset address and said with great pathos: "Mr. Prime Minister, don't attack Iran. Listen to your security chiefs."
An Israeli decision to strike Iran now is flatly denied
This was the first time any senior politician had openly mentioned the unmentionable. That comment and the rest of it were drawn from unverified Israeli media speculation which claimed that Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo and the Shin Bet chief Yaacov Cohen had lined up solidly against an Israeli military action against Iran because, it was said, they believed it would place Israel's very existence in question.
None of this was directly confirmed.
This may be why those assumptions drew no initial reactions from Washington, Moscow, any European capital or even Tehran. They were also ignored by the world media although not so long ago, this story would have been the stuff of thick headlines. Certainly, the West is too deeply concerned with its sinking economy to take an interest in yet another Middle East crisis - even on the scale of a major clash with Iran – after getting its fill of the Arab Spring.
Interest did perk up somewhat Wednesday in the unusual spate of military activity revolving around Israel and NATO only three days after the Western alliance packed up and departed Libya.
So is it true that Netanyahu and Barak decided without consulting anyone else to go to war on Iran before year's end? The answer given by all DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources is a resounding no.
And indeed, this week, Defense Minister Barak finally and flatly denied any such decision when asked by an Army Radio interviewer.
But if attacked Israel may hit back at Iran
Our military and intelligence sources are certain a more nuanced question would have drawn a less categorical negative. For instance, had Barak been asked whether Israel would take advantage of a Middle Eastern war to strike Iran's nuclear program, he might have replied: That depends on how the war goes. Instead of a definite "no," he would most probably have said, "possibly yes" for at least six reasons:
1. Israel's government, military and intelligence heads are convinced that while Syrian President Bashar Assad has dampened, though not extinguished, the flames of revolt against him, in the end he will buckle under the combined foreign military pressure to oust him.
It is coming directly or indirectly from US, NATO allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on behalf of the Persian Gulf rulers. Although NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen denied the organization's present or future military involvement in Syria - "My answer is very short. NATO has no intention (to intervene) whatsoever. I can completely rule that out" - the alliance is very much there, largely through one of its members, Turkey, and Qatar, senior Arab partner in the NATO military operation against Libya's Muammar Qaddafi.
Ankara is arming the rebels with weapons and training in special camps on its soil where too rebel leaders have established commands centers. Qatar, a primary arms and funding supplier, has along with Saudi Arabia officers training Syrian rebels in Turkey and Lebanon.
Israel expects Bashar Assad to go down fighting to the last bullet
2. Knowing he was in line for the sort of NATO treatment that eventually brought Qaddafi to a violent death, the Syrian president granted his first interview in the nine-month uprising against his regime to a Western media outlet on Sunday, Oct. 30. Using Sunday Telegraph as his platform, he issued a harsh threat to "burn the Middle East" and "another Afghanistan" if the West intervened in Syria.
Syria is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, he insisted. It "is the fault line, and if you play with the ground, you will cause an earthquake."
Israel is convinced that sooner or later the outside pressure building up against him will drive Assad to lash out against the Jewish state to ignite a major regional conflagration and so "burn the Middle East."
Less than a month ago, he warned Turkish Foreign Minister Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who visited Damascus on Oct. 4: "If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than six hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv."
Israel's analysis of Assad's psychology supports the belief that Assad means what he says.
He is not like the deposed Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who tried to stay in step with Washington up to and including his exit from power, or the Libyan ruler Qaddafi who lived in fear of a Western attack – not only in 2011 but in 2003, when he dismantled his nuclear program against an American promise of immunity. The Syrian ruler is expected by Israeli intelligence watchers to fight to the bitter end, up to the last Syrian, last ally and last bullet.
This reading of the Syrian ruler's nature and the presumption of Iranian participation in an anti-Israel offensive were reflected in Yishai's anxious "100,000 missiles" comment.
US aid for Israel under attack is not taken for granted
3. Israel and most Arab and Persian Gulf capitals take it for granted, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report, that if Iran does attack Israel, the Obama administration cannot stand afford to aside but will have to intervene militarily.
In that case, one scenario postulates a three-way division of labor: The US and certain NATO allies would attack the sites developing Iran's nuclear weapons and housing the bases of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Islamic Republic's military and financial prop; Israel would concentrate its military resources on repelling attacks from Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad on itself and allied interests, while Turkey and Qatar would deal with Syria's domestic strife.
For Israel, this would be the optimal scenario. But what if the Obama administration opts out of the campaign for fear of jeopardizing its gains from the Arab revolt? If the worst came to the worst, Israeli's contingency plan for striking Iran's nuclear program singlehanded and without American aid would have to come into play.
This is what Defense Minister Barak meant when he said Israel might have to fight alone across long distances.
The Gaza missile offensive – a dress rehearsal
4. Many Israeli military officials regard the multi-missile offensive from the Gaza Strip this week as a dress rehearsal staged by Tehran and Damascus for a full-scale showdown against the Jewish state.
Jihad Islami's sudden four-day barrage against southern Israel from Saturday, Oct. 29, followed by its rejection of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, was seen at first as the Assad regime's comeback for US and Egyptian efforts to move the Hamas headquarters and political bureau out of Damascus and over to Cairo and Amman.
(On Tuesday, Nov. 1, the new Jordanian Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh said banishing Hamas political secretary Khaled Mashaal and his staff 12 years ago was "a legal mistake." He thus paved the way for their return to Jordan.)
However, as masses of arms from Libya continued to pour into Gaza for the Jihad Islami, Iran's Palestinian protégé, a different picture emerged: Iran and Damascus appeared to be setting the scene for the opening of a more comprehensive military venture, possibly kicking off the earthquake Assad threatened last Sunday.
Syria and Iran seem to be pursuing a stop-go strategy, raising and lowering the military tension in time with Western steps while keeping it simmering.
The next IAEA report- a game-changer for Iran
5. Next week, harsh international sanctions await Iran as well as Syria following publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report in Vienna which, according to early reports, will disclose new details about the Iranian nuclear military program that prove Tehran's denials are false.
"This will be a game-changer in the Iranian nuclear dossier," a western official predicted. "It is going to be hard for even Moscow or Beijing to downplay its significance."
These disclosers and the events of the Syrian revolt are potential accelerants for military flare-ups across the region.
6. Lastly, the heated public debate in Israel over whether or not to strike Iran's nuclear program before it is too late conceals another argument: Should Israel abandon its policy of never confirming or denying its own nuclear capability in the event of Iran owning up to developing a nuclear weapon or conducting a secret nuclear test?
A decision is needed in the short term following the disclosure Thursday that Iran has acquired a simulation program for designing and testing a potential weapon in secret.

Canada in midst of largest-ever crackdown on illegal citizens: Kenney
MONTREAL - The Harper Conservatives have laid out plans to revoke 26 times more Canadian citizenships than all previous governments — combined.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Friday his department is looking to pry citizenship away from more than 2,100 people he believes cheated the system. That total has climbed from 1,800 when the initiative was announced last July.
By comparison, Kenney said only around 80 individuals have been stripped of their citizenship between 1947 — when the Citizenship Act came into effect — and this year.
Canadian citizenship did not exist before the Act, meaning citizens of Canada, by both birth and naturalization, were British subjects.
Kenney described the sweep as the biggest citizenship-fraud crackdown in Canadian history.
"This is by far — by many orders of magnitude — the largest enforcement action ever taken in the history of Canadian citizenship," said Kenney, who spoke from a podium adorned with a sign that read: "Citizenship Not For Sale."
The federal government is monitoring 4,400 permanent residents believed to be involved in residence fraud, in case they try to obtain citizenship.
Kenney said nearly 1,400 of these individuals, most of whom are outside the country, have since withdrawn or abandoned their residency application because of the heightened scrutiny.
In total, the government is investigating 6,500 people from more than 100 countries for their allegedly fraudulent attempts to become Canadian citizens or maintain permanent resident status.
To become a citizen, a permanent resident is supposed to have lived in Canada for three years in a four-year period. Permanent residents must be physically present in Canada for two years out of five to retain their status.
Kenney warned of "crooked" immigration consultants who are helping others take advantage of the system while reaping payoffs that can reach $25,000 from a family of five.
These advisers allegedly offer to help foreigners meet residency requirements and acquire Canadian citizenship without ever having to live in Canada.
"If you are a consultant involved in selling Canadian citizenship fraudulently to people and creating fake proof of residency — we are on to you, it's just a matter of time," Kenney said.
He said people pay these consultants to help them assemble false proof of residency, such as renting them an apartment that may, or may not, exist.
In one case, Kenney said investigators opened the door of one phoney address to find a brick wall.
"Our intention is not to make it too difficult for law-abiding people to become citizens," said Kenney, adding that Canada has the highest rate of immigrants in the developed world who go on to become citizens.
"We have a very fair and relatively easy process, but the whole point here is for those people who legally obtain it we must protect its value."
Kenney said his department has been working with the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and foreign Canadian offices. When asked, he could not put a price tag on the project.
The Tory government's blitz is still in its early stages and no citizenships have been revoked yet, a department spokeswoman said. Since April, around 200 warning notices have been issued to the suspected citizenship fraudsters.
An individual who receives a notice, which outlines allegations against them, has 30 days to request the matter be referred to Federal Court.
The department also said a child who receives citizenship based on fraudulent actions of their parents will also lose their status, unless the youth was born in Canada.
When this plan was first announced in July, Kenney said the government intended to cancel the citizenship of at least 1,800 people who allegedly used fraudulent means to become Canadians.
NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere didn't have objections Friday to the crackdown, but was surprised Kenney re-announced a strategy he unveiled last summer.
"It's a bit mind-boggling," she said in Ottawa. "Maybe they want to repeat that they are tough on crime."
Liberal interim leader Bob Rae also deemed it a re-announcement, saying the Tories are just "pouring on the rhetoric" for their "Reformist base."

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