Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Israel prepares for another kidnapping.  Swapping 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier, as Israel recently did, is certain to encourage further kidnappings.  If you reward people for kidnapping, they will kidnap.  It was therefore not surprising to see Israel holding a large-scale exercise this week for dealing with another abduction.  The exercise in the Jordan Valley was overseen by the chief of the general staff, Lt-General Benny Gantz.  The scenario included a soldier being kidnapped by Palestinians and moved around the Jordan Valley area. 

An army spokesman confirmed that the drill, the first such drill at the General Staff level for many years, was in response to a number of warnings and alerts about plans to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

*** Warnings on Gaza, West Bank, and Egypt.  Israel’s chief of general staff General Benny Gantz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on 15 November that Israel may have to take the offensive in the south.  He said that it would be better to initiate an operation than to be dragged into one.  He also warned, in regard to the West Bank, that as more time passes and Palestinian disappointment builds, the chance of a violent conflict remains.

Parliamentarian Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who is described as having been a close friend of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, told the same committee that the post-Mubarak developments in Egypt indicate that “over time, Israel will find itself in a head-on confrontation” with Egypt.  He said: “We are in the midst of an earthquake, and I still can’t see it subsidising, definitely not in the near future when elections are on the horizon [in Egypt].  Today it is clear that for the first time in history the Muslim Brotherhood will win at least a third [of the seats in parliament].  Islamization is taking the place of nationalism.”

*** Rise in East German extremism.  The arrest of four members of a neo-Nazi group in Germany, accused of killing eight Turkish immigrants, a Greek, and a policewoman over 11 years, comes at a time when right-wing violence is increasing in East Germany. 

According to the latest figures there was a 4.8% rise last year in rightwing extremist violence in the five East Germany laender although there was a fall overall of 14.5%.  Of a countrywide total of 762 rightwing extremist acts of violence, 306 were committed in these laender, that is 40%.  Only 15% of the German population lives in these regions.