Interesting Prediction of Mid-2007 War on Israel’s Northern Border!
April 11, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
I do not expect another war on the northern border
to break out until some point in time between 2008 and 2012. I have given my reasons for selecting such a time frame in numerous previous Blogs. I indicated the year 2012 as the outer limit in Prophecy Update Number 7 in February of 2001, by stating: “I feel confident the attack will not occur before 2003, but I do believe it will occur before 2012.”
However, there have been a rash of predictions from a variety of many sources that are predicting a war for this year in mid-summer, and such a scenario is possible, but I don’t believe the Islamic forces will be ready that early.
The following articles are among those predicting a war this summer on Israel’s northern border.
Begin Haaretz Report
Report: Hezbollah says rearming, prepared for summer war with Israel
Haaretz News Service
April 11, 2007
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Kassem told the British newspaper the Guardian that the group is rearming in the wake of the Second Lebanon War and is prepared for another war this summer.
“We are prepared for the possibility of another adventure or the demand of American policy that might push the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] in that direction,” said Kassem in an interview published Wednesday.
The United States, France and Great Britain are pushing for a special United Nations expert committee to examine ongoing weapons smuggling to Hezbollah across the Lebanon-Syria border.
The push apparently came in the wake of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to the region, after which he briefed the UN Security Council on the smuggling.
Ban said that he “received information from Israel and other countries” that included evidence of arms smuggling from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah, calling it a “blatant violation” of Security Council resolutions – including the resolution that led to a cease-fire in the Second Lebanon War.
That resolution calls for all Lebanese groups do disarm, with the exception of the Lebanese army.
Begin Jane’s Defense Weekly Article
Hizbullah prepares for war
Jane’s Defence Weekly
By Nicholas Blanford
April 6, 2007
Lebanon’s Hizbullah organisation is mobilising its military wing, the Islamic Resistance (IR), in preparation for an expected new confrontation with Israel in mid-2007.
New recruits are being pushed through an intensified training programme at the Iranian-backed group’s training camps in the Bekaa Valley and a steady flow of arms, including surface-to-surface rockets, is coming into Lebanon from Syria, sources within Hizbullah, Lebanese military intelligence and other Lebanese close to the Shia Muslim party told Jane’s.
The preparations have been detected by Israel, which reportedly delivered a message through US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the Syrian leadership in Damascus on 4 April assuring that no war against Lebanon or Syria is being planned.
Hizbullah’s build-up began immediately following the 14 August 2006 ceasefire, which ended the 34-day conflict between the Lebanese militants and the Israel Defence Force (IDF). The war yielded inconclusive results for both sides. Hizbullah was able to withstand the IDF’s month-long onslaught, killing 119 IDF soldiers and launching an uninterrupted flow of rockets into Israel.
However, Hizbullah lost its military autonomy along the Blue Line, the UN name for the Lebanon-Israel border, abandoning its elaborate network of fortified underground bunkers and firing positions to a reinforced 13,000-strong UN Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL 2) and to some 20,000 Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) troops.
Israel failed to achieve its pre-war goals of securing the release of two IDF soldiers captured on 12 July 2006, which triggered the war, and of crushing the IR. The repercussions of the conflict have weakened the Israeli government and eroded the IDF’s image of deterrence.
Begin Haaretz Article
The IDF’s lost honor
Haaratz
April 8, 2007
By Uzi Benziman
On the eve of Pesach, MK Effi Eitam told the nation that he now sleeps a lot better.
This occured after he heard Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi tell the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about how he will make sure that at the end of the next war there will be no doubt over who won.
Until then Eitam was worried about the spirit pervading the IDF command, but the briefing by the new chief of staff filled him with optimism: Ashkenazi’s language was lucid, he posed clear objectives and he gave his listeners a sense of confidence that he knows what he’s doing.
Fighting moods are a bad thing when they come from the chief of staff.
During the 1950s, chief of staff Moshe Dayan told prime minister David Ben-Gurion that he preferred commanders who were noble stallions, ones that needed to be restrained when they exhibited excessive enthusiasm to encounter the enemy. Battalion, brigade and division comm
anders and their subordinates are indeed expected to be soaked in fighting spirit and ready to carry out the missions assigned to them. The members of the general staff, on the other hand, must be much more level-headed in the way they approach the political-security situati
on.
The Second Lebanon War has left the IDF damaged. The army feels it failed to meet expectations and has since been obsessed with a wish to make amends.
A short while after the cease-fire, circles in the IDF began airing assessments that by the following summer (which is closing in) there will be a second round of fighting. The general staff concluded in a series of meetings last November that it was necessary to prepare for an offensive by Syria and Hezbollah in the summer of 2007.
In December 2006, a dispute emerged between the Mossad and military intelligence over Syria’s intentions. In February, Brigadier General Yossi Beiditch, head of research at military intelligence, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Syrian leader is indeed serious about peace with Israel, on his terms, but is preparing for a confrontation because he does not want to be surprised.
Last week, the chief of military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, told the cabinet that Syria, Iran and Hezbollah are preparing for an American assault against Iran in the summer, and that Syria is taking into account that Israel is actively involved, and so Damascus is preparing for all eventualities.
All this talk is dangerous. Israel emerged from the Second Lebanon War bruised, and with an eroded deterrent. It recognizes this and its enemies believe it. The mere image of a country whose wings have been clipped entices Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinians to challenge it. At the same time, the feeling of stained honor has aroused in the IDF a desire to once more raise the flag of victory and teach the hostile neighbors a lesson they will remember for a long time. There is also a feeling of plain vengeance, and a basic desire to res
tore to Israel its deterrent. This constellation of considerations and motives feeds a dialogue inside the general staff, which echoes beyond the conference rooms and gives Israel’s enemies the impression that it is preparing for war in the coming months – whether this takes place in the Gaza Strip or at the northern border. This situation is sufficient to escalate the tension and begin the motion toward a boiling point.
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