Events are taking the inevitable turn to
war in the Mideast predicted by Discerning the Times Digest since
June of last year. The Arab League Summit on March 27-28 has shown the
Arab nations to be deeply divided as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon's Hizbollah, and
the Palestinians form an alliance to drive Israel into the sea while Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Egypt insist on taking a more moderate road.
Israel, under the direction of the hawkish prime minister Sharon,
acknowledges that war is inevitable, and with Washington's approval has
launched what it says is a planned series of attacks on Yasser Arafat's
Palestine Authority to preempt coordination efforts between the
Palestinians and the rest of the Arab alliance.
Arab nations split
The Arab League summit ended in disarray
and division on March 28, but not before President Assad of Syria called
Israelis "Nazis" and Saddam Hussein called for the Arab nations
to liberate the Palestine territories. “It is the Israeli public and not
just the leaders who are like the Nazis themselves,” Assad said in an
improvised speech at the summit. Assad was trying to make a comparison to
today's alleged repression of Israel of the Palestinians to Hitler's
holocaust during World War II. The extremely inflammatory words could have
been spoken by Assad's father 20 years ago according to the London
Times on March 28. At the same time, Saddam told Arab leaders to
build "an army of men as concerned to sacrifice themselves as the
Zionists are concerned for their lives. We do not agree to any deals on
Palestine, all of Palestine from the Jordan (river) to the Mediterranean,
including Jerusalem, its crown."
The drumbeat for war by Assad and Saddam
signify a sharp division between Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait
and Egypt. Jordan does not want war, but is caught in the middle. Before
the meeting ended, however, According to the March
30 DEBKAfile, Arafat quietly met with the Iraqi vice president
Izzat Ibrahim and deputy prime minister Tariq Azziz, and the Syrian
president Bashar Assad to apply the finishing touches to plans for a joint
offensive against Israel. The Hizbollah has a role too, while Iran pledged
financial and logistic backing. The new Palestinian axis with Iraq and
Syria also includes increased cooperation with Iran, the March
29 World Tribune sources said. In turn, WorldNetDaily
reported on March 29 that Iran has just completed a $7 billion arms
deal with Russia in spite of Washington's threat to cut off aid to Russia
if they went through with the agreement. For the first time since the
Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, Arafat has given the
Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad a free hand to strike Israeli targets.
War begins
Such a coordination effort was apparent in
the near attack on Israel by Iraq on February
22, when Saddam came within minutes of launching missiles at Israel
and moving six divisions of his elite Republican Guard across Syria, with
Syria's permission, to drive Israel into the sea. Upon learning of the
side-room planning between Arafat, Assad and the Iraqi representative at
the Arab summit, Israel launched a planned massive helicopter strike
against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 bodyguard units
on March 28 in Ramallah and the Gaza Strip according to NewsMax
on March 29. By April 1 heavy fighting broke out in the Bethlehem area
that continued all week. The intense Bethlehem confrontation is the
closest to a full-scale battle of any clash in the current conflict
according to the April 4 DEBKAfile.
On
April 4 the Palestinians launched a mortar attack from the Gaza strip
into bordering Israeli villages. The same day Israeli helicopter gunships
and naval gunboats attacking targets in the Gaza Strip. The April
4 DEBKAfile reported Israel deployed for the first time
infantry units who fired long-range anti-tank missiles against against
Force 17 and Palestinian General Intelligence commands and bases in Gaza.
And so, it appears, the war begins.
The Israeli internal security minister, Uzi
Landau, said Israel should hit Palestinian targets "every day, hour
after hour". He described the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, as a
war criminal. He told Israel radio: "The price we will exact from the
Palestinian Authority will become intolerable." Following attacks on
April 5, the April
6 London Independent reported Raanan Gissin, a top aide to
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as saying "Israel will retaliate
'relentlessly' from now on and Palestinian security installations will be
considered targets as long as security forces fail to prevent attacks on
Israelis."
Amid the growing violence, Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak fired a stern warning to Arafat not to form an
alliance with Iraq and Syria according to the March
29 World Tribune. The Tribune sources said Mubarak's
messages warn Arafat that such an alliance would cost the Palestinians
both political and financial (about $900 million) support and lead the
region into war. Since August, cooperation between Arafat and Mubarak has
been reduced to a mere formality. The World Tribune reported its
sources said Mubarak privately blamed Arafat for the widespread protests
throughout Egypt in support of the Palestinians and against the regime in
Cairo. But that seems to be exactly what Arafat wants.
In the meantime, there is evidence that
Israel is planning a major attack on Iranian missile bases controlled by
the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. Before returning home from his March 20
meeting with Bush and other top administration officials, Sharon told the Wall
Street Journal that the Hizbollah had positioned Iranian El Fajr
(Pager) surface missiles with a range of 120km in southern Lebanon. After
a frank discussion between president George W. Bush and Israeli prime
minister Ariel Sharon on March 20, Israel may attack the Hizbollah in
southern Lebanon sometime very soon, according to intelligence provided by
the March 24 DEBKAfile.
"The IDF has begun assembling forces on its northern frontier –
according to military sources, in readiness for a large-scale exercise.
The same sources report that the Syrian army, Hizbollah units and the
Lebanese army have been placed on alert," reports The DEBKAfile.
According to the March
25 WorldNetDaily, Syria has 35,000 troops in Lebanon and
controls Lebanon's political and military decisions.
The missiles are capable of striking at
points in heavily populated central Israel. Earlier, Bush gave Sharon the
green light to "strike at the core of the blossoming radical Middle
East bloc linking Baghdad, Gaza, Tehran, the Hizbollah and possibly
Damascus, before it ripens," reported DEBKAfile. "A
comprehensive Israeli offensive directed simultaneously against the
Iranian force commanding the missile strength in Lebanon, the Hizbollah
and the Syrian arms supply routes from Damascus airport, at the same time
taking out Palestinian bases, would all fall within the province of the
understandings Sharon reached with President Bush last Tuesday in the
White House," said the DEBKAfile.
DEBKAfile also believes that
President Bush's March 29 stern warning to Arafat to stop the violence
following the summit was going to be his last. “I can’t make it any
more clear,” said Bush. “I hope Chairman Arafat hears it loud and
clear, and that’s the message he’s going to hear on the telephone
today." The phone call was made by Secretary of State Colin Powell
who issued what DEBKAfile ’s Washington sources describe as “America’s
last warning.” Powell is reported to have left no doubt that the US
would hold Arafat solely responsible for the outbreak of a regional war in
the Middle East, and demanded that the Palestinian leader back off,
abandon his war plans and tell his people in their own language to halt
the terrorism. The Bush administration did not say what the US would do if
Arafat started the war with Syria and Iraq. The State Department also took
direct aim at Iran's support for the Lebanon's Hizbollah and Yasser Arafat
by warning Iran to back off from their involvement in international
terrorism. The Iranian missiles came from technology sold to Iran by
Russia, which, in turn, is part of a larger
plan by Russia and China to form alliances with the
EU (minus Britain), Japan and all of southern Asia and the Mideast to
isolate the US and break its unipolar dominance over the world. Towards
this effort, Russia and Iran are working on an arms
deal that will supply Iran with about $300 million in arms annually.
Are you ready?
Step by step the Mideast is inching towards
a confrontation that has every appearance of being the trigger for setting
in motion the last days prophesied by the prophets of the old and new
testaments. World government and religion are within a few years of being
a reality, if not a few months. Even though it will not be the war of Gog
and Magog described in Ezekiel
38 and 39, it is now highly probable that war, probably using weapons
of mass destruction, will erupt in the Mideast, forcing the international
community to impose a forced peace settlement in Israel. Never has any
generation lived so close to witnessing the greatest event in earth's
history--the return of Jesus Christ to defeat, with finality, the great
deceiver known as Satan.
Yet, the Christian Church is every bit
asleep today as the Jews were in the days Christ walked the earth as the
suffering Messiah. Jesus warned us in Matthew 24:42 and 44 to ‘‘keep
watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.... So you
also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you
do not expect him." So many who call themselves Christians say
they love Christ but are totally absorbed in the affairs of life. Jesus
warned in Luke 21:34 that each person must ‘‘be careful, or your
hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the
anxieties (affairs) of life, and that day will close on you
unexpectedly like a trap." Don't be caught in that trap. V
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