ISRAELI military forces are preparing for the possibility of a flare-up with fighters from Palestinian resistance groups based in the Gaza Strip following repeated incursions by the regime’s troops and Israeli settlers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of Jerusalem.
Channel 12 news reported on Saturday that if the Tel Aviv regime’s decision to close its pedestrian crossing with the besieged coastal enclave does not curb rocket attacks, the Israeli military would resume strikes or even begin a wider operation against the Strip.
The unsourced report said the military is preparing for the possibility that the situation could escalate into several days of combat between Israel and Gaza-based resistance fighters.
Tel Aviv launched a brutal bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip on May 10 last year, following Palestinian retaliation against violent raids on worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque and the regime’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes at the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 260 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive, including 66 children and 40 women. At least 1,948 others were wounded.
In response, Palestinian resistance movements, chief among them Hamas, launched Operation al-Quds Sword and fired more than 4,000 rockets and missiles into the occupied territories, killing 12 Israelis.
Apparently caught off guard by the unprecedented barrage of rockets from Gaza, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance movements accepted with Egyptian mediation.
Meanwhile, the Middle East Monitor media research institution reported that Israeli police and military experts are very concerned that the regime suffers completely from a lack of strategic depth, despite its obvious weaknesses and escalating security threats.
It wrote that the military weaknesses could manifest themselves against rocket fire by fighters from the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, as well as the popular Ansarullah resistance movement in Yemen.
At the same time, Israel suffers from strategic and tactical dangers and is the only regime that does not have a strategic backbone. This has actually been proven on the border of the Gaza Strip, which lacks any airbases, but has posed a great challenge and threat to Israel.
A senior Hamas official says Palestinian resistance fighters are fully prepared to repeat Operation al-Quds Sword to protect the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
‘Israelis worry about the dangers and shortcomings that their regime suffers from, despite their alleged achievements in the 1967 war, and in targeting the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors by the Israeli air force.
‘The Israeli air force has been described as one of the best in the world, if not the best.
‘However, it suffers from a state of stammering in some military confrontations and causes disappointment to many who believe that it should be able to provide the state with the strategic depth it is lacking,’ Middle East Monitor said.
It further noted that Israeli forces do not hesitate to express their inability to face the various security threats, especially at the Palestinian home front, with the increase in retaliatory attacks and the continuous protests at the al-Aqsa Mosque.
This has prompted Israeli forces to demand the elimination of the resistance in terms of their military and operational means.
However, they ignore the real and core problems threatening the Tel Aviv regime’s security, and preparation for the inevitable confrontation.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad resistance movement has warned that the blood of Palestinians recently killed by Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank will spark off a full-scale confrontation with Israel.
The Middle East Monitor highlighted that Israeli calls to deal with the Palestinian resistance ‘with an iron fist’ are mainly an attempt to respond to the state of panic by the Israelis.
This is expressed by the hysterical discourse on television channels, which does not focus on the roots of the resistance, or learning lessons from the extended confrontations with the Palestinians throughout the last century, it pointed out.
- Iran has warned Israel that it is in possession of intelligence on the locations of all its nuclear weapons sites, and that the country’s Armed Forces will strike these sensitive targets in the occupied territories in the event of any aggression against the Islamic Republic, a report claims.
‘Tehran has sent to Israel, through a European country, photos and maps of the Israeli nuclear weapons sites,’ Qatar’s Al Jazeera television news network quoted an unnamed Iranian source as saying last Thursday.
‘Most of the pictures are terrestrial and not satellite,’ the report said, suggesting that other forms of intelligence gathering rather than surveillance drones had been involved.
The source said Tehran has confirmed that it will target the regime’s stores and facilities if Israel decides to ignite a war with Iran.
Israel has previously changed the locations of its strategic warehouses, but the file sent by Tehran includes the locations of the new stores, it added.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has issued a stern warning to Israel following a retaliatory missile strike on the ‘strategic centre of Zionist conspiracy and evil’ in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan city of Erbil.
‘Tehran has red flagged all Israel’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons stores and facilities, and they will be the first targets if Israel decides to start a war with Iran,’ the source added.
The IRGC caught the Israeli regime by surprise in March with a barrage of ballistic missile strikes on secret bases of the Mossad spy agency operating in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
That operation was conducted in response to an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus, which claimed the lives of two IRGC members.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi says Iran’s armed forces are monitoring Israel, warning that they will target the regime’s ‘centre’ if it makes the slightest move against the Iranian nation.
‘You should know that your slightest move is not hidden from the eyes of our Armed Forces and our intelligence and security forces,’ Raisi said.