ليس المخطط الصهيوني الأمريكي لتأكيد يهودية الدولة الصهيونية ونقل
غير اليهود إلى أراضي دول عربية مجاورة سرا، فهي كانت لسنوات موضوعا لدراسات
باحثين صهاينة أمريكيين نافذين بمراكز الأبحاث الاستراتيجية الأمريكية التي تشكل
أسس الاستراتيجيات الأمريكية والإسرائيلية للمنطقة.
Obama’s pledge of US troops to Sinai next week won Israel’s nod
for ceasefire
DEBKAfile
Exclusive Report November
23, 2012, 3:11 PM (GMT+02:00) http://debka.com/search/tag/Egypt/
Tags:
Obama on the phone to Netanyahu with key pledge
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire
for halting the eight-day Israeli Gaza operation Wednesday night, Nov. 21,
after President Barack Obama personally pledged to start deploying US troops in
Egyptian Sinai next week, DEBKAfile
reports. The conversation, which finally tipped the scales for a ceasefire,
took place on a secure line Wednesday morning, just hours before it was
announced in Cairo. The US and Israeli leaders spoke at around the time that a
terrorist was blowing up a Tel Aviv bus, injuring 27 people.
Obama’s pledge addressed Israel’s most pressing demand in every
negotiating forum on Gaza: Operation Pillar of Cloud’s main goal was a total
stoppage of the flow of Iranian arms and missiles to the Gaza Strip. They
were smuggled in from Sudan and Libya through southern Egypt and
Sinai. Hostilities would continue, said the prime minister, until this object
was achieved.
Earlier, US officials tried unsuccessfully to persuade Israel to
accept Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s personal guarantee to start launching
effective operations against the smugglers before the end of the month. The
trio running Israel’s Gaza campaign, Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, were willing to take Morsi at his word,
except that Israeli security and intelligence chiefs assured them that Egypt
has nothing near the security and intelligence capabilities necessary for
conducting such operations.
When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Jerusalem
from Bangkok Tuesday, she tried assuring Netanyahu that President Obama had
decided to accelerate the construction of an elaborate US system of electronic
security fences along the Suez Canal and northern Sinai. It would also cork up
the Philadelphi route through which arms are smuggled into the Gaza Strip. (The
US Sinai fence project was first disclosed exclusively by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 564 on Nov. 9).
US security and civilian units will need to be deployed in
Egyptian Sinai to man the fence system and operate it as an active
counter-measure for obstructing the smuggling of Iranian weapons supplies.
The prime minister said he welcomed the president’s proposal to
expedite the fence project, but it would take months to obtain Egyptian
clearance. Meanwhile, the Palestinians would have plenty of time to replenish
their weapons stocks after Israel’s Gaza campaign. It was therefore too soon to
stop the campaign at this point or hold back a ground incursion.
Clinton was sympathetic to this argument. Soon after, President
Obama was on the phone to Netanyahu with an assurance that US troops would be
in place in Sinai next week, after he had obtained President Morsi’s consent
for them to go into immediate action against Iranian smuggling networks.
Netanyahu responded by agreeing to a ceasefire being announced
in Cairo that night by Clinton and the Egyptian foreign minister, and to
holding back the thousands of Israeli reservists on standby on the Gaza border.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the first air transports carrying
US Special Forces are due to land at Sharm el Sheikh military airfield in
southern Sinai in the next 48 hours and go into action against the arms
smugglers without delay.
This development is strategically significant for three reasons:
1.
Once the missile and arms consignments depart Iranian ports or
Libyan arms bazaars, Tehran has no direct control of their transit from point
to point through Egypt until they reach Sinai and their Gaza destination. All
the same, a US Special Forces operation against the Sinai segment of the
Iranian smuggling route would count as the first overt American military strike
against an Iranian military interest.
Netanyahu,
Barak and Lieberman are impressed by the change the Obama administration has
undergone since the president’s reelection. Until then, he refused to hear of
any military action against Iran and insisted that Tehran could only be
confronted on the diplomatic plane.
2.
President Morsi, by opening the
Sinai door to an American troop deployment for Israel’s defense, recognizes
that the US force also insures Israel against Cairo revoking or failing to
honor the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.
3. In
the face of this US-Israel-Egyptian understanding, Hamas cannot credibly claim
to have won its latest passage of arms with Israel or that it obtained
guarantees to force Israel to end the Gaza blockade.
Indeed, Gaza’s Hamas rulers will be forced to watch as US troops
in Sinai, just across its border, break up the smuggling rings filling their
arsenals and most likely laying hands on the reserve stocks they maintain under
the smugglers’ guard in northern Sinai, out of reach of the Israel army. This
means that the blockade on Gaza has been extended and the focus of combat has
switched from Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula.
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