Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** “Give Gaza to Egypt”.  Moshe Arens, former defence and foreign minister of Israel, argued in an article in Haaretz on 28 June that Israel should give full control of the Gaza Strip to Egypt.  His argument is that now that the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been opened the Gaza Strip is closer to Egypt and it has freed Israel of some of its responsibilities.

Arens argued: “With Gaza under Egyptian control, the generally accepted paradigm of the ‘solution’ to the Palestinian problem being the ‘two-state’ solution may in time be seen in a different light.  The problems of the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and of those living in the Gaza Strip, separated by an expanse of territory under Israeli sovereignty, is likely in time to be viewed differently by the world in general, by the Arab world in particular, by Israel, and by the Palestinian populations themselves.”

He added that from now on Egypt should be made responsible for preventing the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip - and for terrorist attacks originating in Gaza and perpetrated with smuggled weapons.

*** Iranian missile threat.  Iran’s air force commander-in-chief, Brigadier-General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, told journalists on 28 June that Iran’s missiles are intended to threaten US bases in the region and Israel, not Europe or any other countries.  He said: “Our missile range is 2,000km and our trans-regional enemies are America and Israel.  We do not feel any threat from other countries.  As a result, the range of our missiles is designed so as to target the American facilities in the region and Israel...America has made things easy for us because it has built its bases within 120-700km from Iran and we can attack all American facilities in the region by these missiles.”

The comments coincided with this week’s Great Prophet 6 missile exercise.  The conservative paper Khorasan noted: “The most important strategic ally of the US in the Middle East, Israel, can no longer think of initiating war.  Iran’s defensive power is a trump card in possible negotiations with countries, which earlier used to believe that if the diplomatic tool would not result in stopping Iran’s nuclear programmes, the military tool would inevitably be effective.”

*** Taiwan’s concerns.  Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou said on 24 June that Taiwan’s attempts to buy F16C/D jet fighters from the US were “not going well”.  Ma told Paul D Wolfowitz, the chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council: “We had hoped to send our letter of request to the US, but the US has all along been unwilling to accept it, and has even hinted that we should not make such a request.”