In the last four days, Israel and Palestinian militant organizations in Gaza exchanged rounds of attacks in an unusual flare up of violence that amounted to a mini air war that killed at least 25 Palestinians by the Israeli air strikes. The attacks started when Israel launched an air strike that killed a senior leader of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees leader, Zuhair al-Qisis, which provoked al-Jihad movement to retaliate with its own rocket attacks against Israel. Israeli officials claim that they killed al-Qissi because he was planning an attack against Israel.
The reality, however, is much more complicated than this. al-Qissi might have been chosen to be killed not because of his activities, but because of his affiliation with the Al Jihad military group. The Al Jihad organization is known to have much closer ties with Iran and is reported to have grown its arsenal of rockets in terms of quantity and quality especially the BM-21 Grad rockets that has the range of 25 miles.
The Israeli air strikes were most likely intended to draw the Palestinian groups into military confrontation in order to test its newly installed Iron Dom antirocket missile defense system and measure the Palestinian military response. What makes this scenario more plausible is that Hamas has declared last week that it will not intervene in the event of war between Iran and Israel.
Al-Jihad is known to be much closer to Iran than Hamas and is more committed ideologically to fight Israel and defend its pay masters in Teheran. Hamas on the other hand behaves more like a ruling governing party than a national liberation movement.
During his recent visit to Washington, Israeli prime minster is reported to have Obama commit the United States to attack Iran nuclear program to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons if everything else failed, wrote Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast easy on Monday.
Despite Obama's reported pledge, however, it is not certain that Netanyahu is willing to give Obama the time needed for the sanctions to work against Iran. It is not also certain that he will also allow him to run his 2012 presidential election campaign without Iran's nuclear program dominates the foreign policy issues of the election year.
I argued in a previous column that if Obama failed to rein in Netanyahu, Israel will attack Iran as early as this June and that this war, if it took place will destabilize the region and would ruin the already fragile US economy and with it Obama's hopes of a second term.
To have its war against Iran, Israel, therefore, needs test fire its Iron Dom antirocket missile defense system in a real time battle with the Palestinians in Gaza. Former George Bush aide David Frum said in a CNN opinion piece on Monday that Israel's Iron Dom had a 90% success rate against the Palestinian rockets.
Israel is also reading the instability in Syria and in the region in its favor as the Arab World's eyes are focused on the crimes of the Syrian regime in Homs and elsewhere in Syria. This is evident when the events in Gaza garnered little media attention from the main Arabic TV channels of Al Arabia and Al Jazeera.
In both cases the Gaza story was relegated to the bottom of the coverage after Homs and its related sub stories. Palestinian doctor, Khaled al-Salaymeh remarked on his Facebook page that he will never watch Al Jazeera news channel again after what he described as its biased coverage and its lack of interest in the events in Gaza.
Al Salaymaeh who is a well-known heart doctor in Amman also said that he has switched to watching to BBC's Arabic service in order to get more balanced and accurate news about the Arab World. BBC placed the Gaza coverage on top of its Arab and English websites.
Al Salaymeh's acute observation illustrates the region's political and media dynamics through which Israel intends to operate in its next military action in the region. Israeli leaders are also taking advantage of the fact that Obama has virtually dropped the Palestinian issue from his agendas and is bent on mending his fences with Israeli leaders so he can wage a successful reelection bid. As a result Israel will not only exploit the American president weakness to possibly attack Iran, but also dismantle the entire peace efforts with the Palestinians, by building more settlements on occupied Palestinian territories, while no one is paying attention.
(Ali Younes is a writer and Journalist based in Washington D.C. He can be reached at aliyounes98@gmail.com )
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