Another Intifada

From Asia News:

Toll from attack rises to 19 dead. Roads to the West Bank and the Gaza crossings closed. Access to Temple Mount mosques forbidden. Raed Salah, Palestinian leader of the northern Israel is seriously hurt. Arab and Israeli strikes in Gaza. Abbas declares three days of mourning and calls the Israeli operation “a massacre”. Israel claims aid ships were “a provocation” with links to terrorism. Anti-Israeli demonstrations in Istanbul. Ankara withdraws its ambassador from Tel Aviv.

Israeli police and security forces have raised a state of alert across the country after the attack on a group of ships off the coast of Gaza, leading to at least 19 dead and dozens injured (see Israel attacks ships carrying aid to Gaza. At least 10 dead). An Israeli policeman tells AsiaNews that “We are on the brink of war or a new Intifada.”

The IDF did screw this one up from a PR standpoint at the very least, but it’s also pretty evident that this was a deliberate set-up designed to make them look bad. One, unfortunately, that Israel walked right into at just the wrong moment, making it even easier for the current American administration to withdraw support for Israel from the U.N. at a time when the U.N. is trying very hard to take away Israel’s “Samson Option”:

The premier [Benjamin Netanyahu] was “promised [by the Obama Administration] that there would be no resolutions adopted at the UN that would hurt the vital interests of Israel,” the official added, referring to Friday’s landmark agreement reached by the members of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that singles out Israel and seeks a 2012 conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons.

The document calls on Israel to join the NPT and urges it to open its facilities to inspection, but makes no mention of Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

We’ll see how long the promises hold up. My guess is, exactly as long as it takes to secure campaign donations from American Jewish groups for the November mid-terms.  In the meantime, the International Atomic Energy Commission has released a report stating that Iran has already has two tons of enriched uranium, enough to produce two nuclear weapons.

The news about Ankara is interesting.  There were Turkish Jihadists among the passengers of the “humanitarian” ship, who attacked the Israeli soldiers while chanting, “[Remember] Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!” referring to the name of the last Jewish village destroyed by Muhammed in 628.

According to this source, Ankara has placed batteries to block any attempt by Israel to cross Turkish airspace to get at Iran.

Turkey has installed Anti-Aircraft Hawk Missiles at a village close to the Syrian border in an attempt to prevent Israeli war jets from violating Turkish Airspace in case of an attack against Iran or Syria. . . Installing the batteries is more of a message than a military act as Turkey is not interested in any military combat but at the same time will not allow its airspace to be used in attacking neighboring countries, the official stated.

The batteries in question happen to be rather antiquidated equipment and are being set up in all of one village. Nevertheless, an Israeli attempt to take out the batteries would constitute an act of war on a NATO member.  It seems that Turkey, after long being rebuffed in its attempts to join the European Union by Westernizing, is returning to its Islamic–and imperial–roots.

Having blocked the best avenues to allow Israel to make a conventional strike on Iran’s nuclear weapon capability, the world seems bent on putting Israel in the position of having to use its undeclared nuclear arsenal so that the U.N. can apply pressure to take that arsenal away.  Once Israel loses the “Samson Option”–the under-the-table threat that if Israel looks like its about to go down, it will take Mecca, Medina, Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, Riyadh and every other major city in the Mid-east with it–the House of Islam thinks that it will be ripe for destruction by a conventional war.

Ezekiel 38-39 speak of an invasion of the Middle-east, and Israel specifcally, by an alliance that includes Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Beit Togarmah, and Persia. Though specific identifications vary among scholars, most premillennialists see this as including Russia, Iran, Turkey, and possibly Armenia. I am not going to claim that the Magog invasion is imminent–for one thing, I don’t believe it occurs before the beginning of Daniel’s 70th Week. But neither will I claim that it is not imminent, or that I can’t see the alliances taking shape exactly as Scripture predicted 2600 years ago.

It’s possible that another Inifada would just be another Middle-eastern scrap, an atrocious waste of lives to no purpose, after which things will settle into the status quo. It’s possible that it will simply result in another Israeli victory and the securing of more of the ancestral territory of the Jewish people. It’s also possible that it will result in Israel being pushed to the point of seeking someone with the strength to enforce a peace treaty on the region . . . say, for a span of seven years.

We’ll have to wait and see . . . and to continue to pray for the shalom of Jerusalem, and to pray for the soon return of the Sar Shalom, the Prince of Peace.

Shalom.