Sometime this week, all Israelis will get the following SMS message in Hebrew on their cell-phones: “Home Front, testing cellphone warning system.”
The test is the final preparation before declaring the new warning system operational next month, according to military officials who explain that the mechanism is believed to be an effective way to transmit messages during wartime.
Text messaging is just one more step in what seems to be a flurry of visible preparations for possible hostilities with Iran. The city of Tel Aviv, for example, has released a map detailing the locations of all 241 public shelters, with room for a total of 40,000 people. “Of these, 111 are equipped with an air filtration system against chemical warfare,” officials said in a statement. “The municipality is constantly planning and practicing for an emergency situation.”
All Israeli homes and apartments built since 1992 are required to include private bomb shelters. At the same time, two Israeli newspapers, one on the political left and one on the right, warned on Sunday that Iran has made significant progress in assembling a nuclear warhead. On Friday, Israel’s largest circulation daily trumpeted a report that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak would like to attack Iran’s nuclear program before the US presidential elections in November, but do not have the support they need within the Israeli cabinet and the military.
Also on Sunday, Netanyahu told his cabinet that Israel is ready for whatever happens, thanks to Israel’s anti-missile systems: the Iron Dome, which can intercept short-rang missiles: the Arrow, for longer-range missiles; and the Patriot anti-missile missile system.
“There has been a significant improvement in our home front defense capabilities, in Iron Dome, in the Arrow, in structural reinforcements and shelters, in warnings and in other areas,” Netanyahu said. “All of the threats that are currently being directed against the Israeli home front pale against a particular threat, different in scope, different in substance, and therefore, I reiterate that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons.”
Security experts opine several possible reasons for Israeli officials to be so notably ratcheting up their rhetoric. “The newspapers all planned for Israel to win at least one gold medal in the Olympics and when that didn’t happen, they were left with lots of space to fill,” Meir Elran, the director of the Homeland Security Program at the INSS think tank told The Media Line, speaking facetiously. “I don’t think anything specific has happened in the past few days.”
Elran said that groups which support a preemptive strike on Iran and others that oppose it are using the media as the forum for airing their differences while trying to rally the public behind them. “There is a genuine discussion on this issue and the prime minister and the defense minister need wider support in whatever they are planning,” Elran said. He noted that there is no panic in Israel, with Israelis more caught up with summer vacations and getting children ready for the upcoming school year.
Some analysts say that the surfeit of talk makes it less likely that there will be any action. “We didn’t threaten Iraq in 1981 (before Israel attacked the Osirak reactor); or Syria in 2007 (when Israel struck a nascent nuclear reactor); so why are they talking so much now?” Dr. David Menashri, the founder of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University told The Media Line. “One has the urge to tell the politicians, ‘If there is something you have to do, just go and do it. Why talk about it?’”
Menashri said Israel has made a fundamental mistake by making a nuclear Iran seem like a unique Israeli problem. “We have managed to make the world believe that this is an exclusive problem for Israel and the solution must be ‘made in Israel,’” he said. “This is regrettable. Saudi Arabia is certainly not happy about the Iranian program but they do not speak of it.”
The Israeli talk of a possible strike on Iran comes as the US election campaign is heating up. President Obama has made it clear that he does not want an Israeli strike before the November elections and has sent a parade of American officials to Israel to try to convince Israeli leaders that sanctions are working.
Iran expert David Menashri says there is growing discontent among young people in Iran, but it is impossible to tell if and when a popular movement against the Iranian government might break out. “They look at Syria, Egypt and Libya and they know people can make a difference, but a popular movement could take two weeks to start or two years,” he said. “Two trains have left the terminal – the political train and the nuclear train, and the nuclear train seems to be moving faster.”
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