While Olmert Slept

On his consistently interesting radio show, Hugh Hewitt interviewed author Daniel Silva this week.  It is a lengthy interview, covering his development as a writer, his conversion to Judaism, some interesting observations on the research behind some of his novels -- and this portion about the Iranian threat:

DS: . . . I’ve had many conversations with Israeli officials about this, and I come away with two impressions. Once I was told by a senior Mossad official, do you really think that we are going to sit around and do nothing while they develop a nuclear bomb? Do you really think that?

But then the second thing that strikes me every time I have this conversation, is that when they talk about using the military option to deal with it, it usually is preceded by the words God forbid, because they know that if they have to do it, it is going to turn the Middle East into a cauldron.

Also, the Iranians have very cleverly created two proxy armies on Israel’s border, one in the north called Hezbollah, and one in the south called Hamas. It is now estimated that Hezbollah has about 42,000 short-range missiles in rockets. Remember a couple of years ago when Israel went to war briefly with Hezbollah. Maybe the estimate then was about 15,000. They have re-armed, they are armed to the teeth, and Israel knows that if it strikes at Iran’s nuclear facilities, that Hezbollah is going to be able to launch an extraordinarily violent retaliatory strike that will probably depopulate the north of Israel. So regardless of who does it under these scenarios, whether it’s the United States or Israel, Israel is going to be the one that’s going to pay the short term price.

HH: And there’s also an article on the day we taped this in the Gloria Center’s publication on Fortress Gaza, and how the same thing has now happened on the southern border, and including an armament escalation to rival that of Hezbollah’s on the northern border.

DS: I got some really interesting intelligence on that recently during a briefing, that the Iranians are putting the kinds of weapons into Gaza that…they are not just the little Qassam rockets there anymore. They are putting much more serious stuff in there. 

The reference to “Fortress Gaza” is to Dr. Jonathan Spyer’s July 4 article, which included this:

The evidence suggests that Hamas is using its uncontested control in Gaza to effect a qualitative change in its abilities and ambitions.

Hamas's strategy derives at the highest level from the group's muqawama (resistance) doctrine. According to this view, Israel's Achilles' heel is its inability to absorb large numbers of military and civilian casualties. Hamas believes Israel's will can be broken through attrition and a steady toll of unexpectedly high numbers of both military and civilian casualties.

In the event of a major IDF incursion into Gaza, Hamas would seek to maintain a steady rain of rockets on Israeli communities around the Strip and to break the sense of armored and air invulnerability hitherto enjoyed by Israeli forces engaging with its fighters. Hamas would of course also try to inflict steady losses of 4 to 10 casualties per day on IDF's ground forces during the fighting. Looking to the 2006 model, the movement's planners believe that achieving these goals could be sufficient to break Israel's will.

To make this possible, Hamas is feverishly training as well as acquiring relevant weapons systems -- of a type far superior in quality to those previously associated with the organization.

The weapons systems on which Hamas is thought to be currently training in the Gaza Strip include a wire-guided anti-tank missile, probably the AT-3 Sagger, and additional anti-tank guided missiles: the AT-4 Spigot, the tripod-fired AT-5 Spandrel and the shoulder-fired AT-14 Spriggan -- all useful against armor. All these systems have ranges of several kilometers.

In addition, Hamas is thought to have brought into Gaza large numbers of RPG-29 Vampir handheld anti-tank grenade launchers with a range of 500 meters, which are capable of penetrating reactive armor and are considered far superior to the RPG 7 systems used by the movement in the past.

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Hamas claims to have around 20,000 men under arms, though some sources suggest that the number may be higher. Again, both Iran and Syria are thought to be playing a role in providing advanced training to cadres from both of these organizations: around 1,000 Hamas men are thought to have trained in one of these countries in the last months. . . .

The Hamas rulers believe that Israelis want only peace and quiet, which makes them both vulnerable and deterrable. Thus, Hamas is seeking to create a solid shield around its Gaza fiefdom that can be turned into a weapon of attack at a time and situation of its choosing.

Perhaps Hamas got the idea that Israeli wanted only peace and quiet when Ehud Olmert announced the rationale for the Gaza disengagement in his infamous “tired” address.