Israel warns Iron Dome still at experimental stage

The Guardian, amongst many others (including BBC News, three days ago), has the story - with a video:

The initial success of Israel's Iron Dome missile-defence system has been hailed as an example of "Jewish genius" – but the army insists it is still at an experimental stage. Since 7 April the system has shot down nine rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, although it was unable to stop at least 11 others.

Boaz Ganor, the director of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism said: "It's a technical revolution that shows us what may be possible in the future. The success has been limited by the fact that we only have two batteries, but it has proven itself accurate and efficient."

The Iron Dome consists of three units: a missile-tracking radar, a control centre and a missile-firing unit. The moment a rocket is launched its trajectory is relayed to the control centre, which decides whether it will land in an open or built-up area. If the rocket threatens a densely populated area a missile is fired at it.

The world first became aware of the possibilities of missile defence during the Gulf war in 1991. US Patriot missile batteries in Israel and Saudi Arabia appeared to be successful at eliminating scud missiles fired by Iraq. In fact, the system was far less effective than it appeared and subsequent analysis estimated it had a success rate of about only 10%.

During the Iraq war in 2003 the improved Patriots proved more successful against allied aircraft than long-range rockets. Iraq did not fire any long-range rockets and the Patriots downed one British jet and one American jet, killing both crews.

Israel has long been the target of short-range rockets such as the Russian-designed Katyusha, supplied to Palestinian groups in Jordan and Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s. More recently, Hezbollah fired some 4,000 rockets at Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war, killing 44 people.

Israel has developed the Arrow long-range missile-defence system but, after its experience in 2006, the government decided to invest in the Iron Dome system instead. The cost of its development and deployment is estimated at more than £1bn, some of which will be subsidised by the US.

Critics point out that each Iron Dome missile costs about £25,000, while the rockets they eliminate are worth less than a few hundred, which could allow militants to wage economic warfare against Israel. Others suggest it would be easy to fool missile-defence systems with decoys.

"We know that terrorists are elusive and on a learning curve. There is no doubt that this success will challenge them to rethink and fine tune their tactics," said Ganor, "The whole idea of launching rockets at Israel was a response to the failure of other tactics. If Iron Dome proves to be successful, Hamas and Hezbollah will certainly try to think of new methods of attack."

BBC News: Hamas attacks school bus, declares ceasefire with Israel

BBC News has the story of the latest flare up in and around the Gaza Strip, with Hamas militants making a terrorist attack on an Israeli school bus:

Islamist group Hamas says it has brokered a deal for Gaza's militant groups to stop firing on Israel, amid the most serious fighting since 2009. The move comes after militants hit an Israeli school bus with an anti-tank shell on Thursday, injuring two people.

Israeli strikes later that day had killed five people and injured more than 30, Palestinian doctors said. And on Friday, two Hamas men had been killed by an air strike shortly after dawn, the group said in a statement. Another four Palestinians were injured overnight in separate Israeli attacks at Rafah airport, according to Palestinian sources. Israel says it is responding to Palestinian attacks. Earlier, Israel said it had used a new short-range missile defence system for the first time to destroy rockets fired from Gaza. ....

The past month has seen the most serious violence in and around Gaza since Israel's major offensive here more than two years ago, our correspondent adds.

On Thursday an Israeli teenager was critically injured near the Nahal Oz kibbutz when a school bus was targeted by a missile fired by Hamas militants. The 16-year-old boy suffered a serious head wound and was taken to hospital for surgery.

CFR Crisis Guide: Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Council for Foreign Relations has yet another Crisis Guide published on its website, allowing an interactive multimedia exploration of issues within and surrounding the ongoing Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Extremely useful as a means of gaining perspective on this fraught conflict that provides so many examples for our study of Conflict, War and Terrorism in Unit 4.

Michael Totten: The Israeli Way of War

Independent journalist Michael Totten has an interesting piece describing his typical on-the-ground research into 'the Israeli Way of War'.

http://pajamasmedia.com/michaeltotten/2011/01/09/the-israeli-way-of-war-2/

Includes a number of interviews and a selection of photographs revealing Israeli preparations for the 'the next war'. Prominent are the threats that Hezbollah currently mounts along the Lebanese border and the pains the IDF are apparently taking to avoid collateral damage when they eventually feel they have to deal with them. Another point of interest is the artificial city that the IDF have built in the desert to train their soldiers in urban warfare - adapting to the changing needs of modern warfare.

Commentary Magazine: The Palestinian Proletariat

Michael Bernstam in this month's Comnmentary magazine has a thought-provoking article regarding the use (and abuse) of what he terms "the Palestinian proletariat", currently 'imprisoned' within refugee camps and exploited by a variety of governments and agencies for their own ends... Nothing that hasn't been said before—particularly with regard to UNWRA—but rarely has it been articulated so succinctly:

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently called Gaza a “prison camp.” Former President Jimmy Carter has called it a “cage.” At first glance, these characterizations of the Hamas-ruled province seem like rhetorical excesses designed to cast Israel in the role of the unjust jailer blockading the strip. But Cameron and Carter have got it right, in a way. Gaza is a totalitarian paramilitary camp at war with its neighbors and other Palestinians. It is a paramilitary camp because it is a unique type of refugee camp. The narrow confines of the 139 square miles of the Gaza district—surrounded by Israel to the north and east, Egypt to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west—feature eight separate Palestinian refugee camps, plus dozens of surrounding ghettos. Altogether, they combine the features of a refugee camp and a military camp and, cut off from the world, look to some extent like the cages Carter mentioned.

These camps were established in 1949 and have been financed ever since by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Yet far from seeking to help residents build a new and better life either in Gaza or elsewhere, UNRWA is paying millions of refugees to perpetuate their refugee status, generation after generation, as they await their forcible return to the land inside the State of Israel.

Though pundits and foreign-policy experts focus on the question of settlements or the current temperature of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, UNRWA’s institutionalization of refugee-cum-military camps is, in my view, the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The chances of achieving peace and security in the Middle East will continue to be remote as long as UNRWA is, in effect, underwriting a self-destructive Palestinian cycle of violence, internecine warfare, and a perpetual war against Israel.

The core issue is a phenomenon we can call “refugeeism.” For 60 years, UNRWA has been paying four generations of Palestinians to remain refugees, reproduce refugees, and live in refugee camps. It is UNRWA that put them in refugee cages and watched the number of inhabitants grow. The Palestinian refugee population in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza has exploded from 726,000 in 1950 to 4.8 million in 2010. About 95 percent live under UNRWA care. The unprecedented nature of this guardianship is rooted in the unusual nature of this institution. UNRWA is a supranational welfare state that pays its residents not to build their own nation-state, for, were they to do so, they would forfeit their refugee status and its entitlements of cash, housing, health care, education, credit, and other largesse.

It is these perverse incentives above all that have undermined efforts to improve the lot of the Palestinian people, such as those measures aimed at fostering economic development in the West Bank undertaken by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the Israeli government. If the international community truly wishes to serve the needs of the Palestinians and improve their lot, its first task would be the abolition of UNRWA.

 Just the introduction, of course - do read the whole article to get "the other side of the (usual) story" and see what you think....