DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Hizballah Resupply Route Ran Through Turkey - Eli Lake (New York Sun)
    In the days prior to the August 14 cease-fire, a shipment of spare parts and components for mobile missile launchers was sent by truck from Iran through Turkey to Syria and then into northern Lebanon before being funneled down to front-line Hizballah terrorists in southern Lebanon.
    The information that Turkey, a NATO ally and a candidate for EU membership, allowed the transshipment of Iranian arms to Hizballah caused so much concern in Washington that a formal representation to the Turkish government was made to express America's displeasure.
    However, the Bush administration is now satisfied that the Turks will monitor their border with Iran more aggressively.

Eleven Israeli Tourists Killed as Bus Overturns in Egyptian Sinai - Revital Levi-Stein and Mijal Grinberg (Ha'aretz)
    A bus overturned near the Sinai peninsula town of Nuweiba on Tuesday, killing at least 11 Israeli Arab tourists.
    Yehuda Shushan, director of the Magen David Adom ambulance service's southern district, said efforts were made by the IDF, border officials, and the Foreign Ministry to allow the entry of Israeli rescue forces into Sinai to care for the injured and evacuate them to Israel.
    Egyptian authorities, however, informed Israel that they do not need help to rescue those injured in the accident.

In Bashar Assad's Syria, a Growing Passion for War - Ammar Abdulhamid (Daily Star-Lebanon)
    The Assads in Syria have already called up large reserve cohorts that are busy digging trenches all around the country.
    Calls to reopen the Golan front are routinely reiterated during the Friday sermons, and communist and nationalist groups have recently joined the chorus.
    The minority character of the Syrian regime and its consolidation around the private interests of two particular families, the Assad-Makhlouf clan, have served from the very beginning to undercut the potential for serious reform in the country. The author is a Syrian dissident.

Germany Train Bomb Suspect Held (AP/CNN)
    Youssef Mohamad E.H., 21, a Lebanese student suspected of helping plant two bombs that failed to explode on German trains, was detained Saturday in Kiel pending possible terrorism charges, federal prosecutors said.
    He is being held on suspicion of membership in a German-based terrorist organization, attempted murder, and attempting to cause an explosion.
    Prosecutors say they suspect the arrested man was part of a larger group.

Israel Buys Two Submarines from Germany - Yaakov Katz (Jerusalem Post)
    Israel signed a contract with Germany last month to buy two Dolphin-class submarines for $1.27 billion, a third of which will be financed by the German government.
    According to foreign reports, the submarines will provide superior second-strike nuclear capabilities.
    The Israeli Navy already has three Dolphin-class submarines.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

The Critical Importance of Israeli Public Diplomacy in the War Against the Iran-Hizballah Axis of Terror - Dr. Raanan Gissin (Institute for Contemporary Affairs - Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

• Instead of the war being about Israel's right of self-defense, Hizballah was able to turn it around so that the issue on the international agenda became Israel's destruction of Lebanon. Israel should have been seen as the victim. We were being attacked. We were the ones who fulfilled all of the requirements of the game. We were true to the international border, we restrained ourselves, we held back. Why should it be that once we start attacking, we immediately start to lose in the diplomatic arena? Because Nasrallah and his patrons in Iran successfully integrated the "ABCs" of public diplomacy into their long-term strategic war doctrine.
• Nasrallah ordered his men to remove their uniforms and blend in with the population and continue to fight. In this way, when Israel attacks Hizballah, the scene is one of Israel moving against what appears to be a civilian population, even though rockets fired from these villages are striking Israel. Attacks on what looks like civilian targets can then be called "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes."
• Israel now faces the "special forces" of the Iranian military, the best guerilla warfare units, in front-line positions. Over the last twenty-five years Iran has gradually created a global network, first forming an axis with Syria and then building up Hizballah, with Lebanon serving as a regional theater, part of Iran's global design in its confrontation with the West. The conflict with Hizballah in Lebanon is a testing ground - like Spain in 1936 - for weapons, tactics, and doctrine of how Iran is going to fight the war against the West.
• Israel had been operating on the assumption that Hizballah was a terrorist organization like Hamas or the PLO that had to be neutralized in order to bring about stability. But these are not merely terrorist gangs. This is an army - a well-trained, well-organized, and ideologically indoctrinated guerilla army - and Israel did not make that point strongly enough at the beginning of the war, neither to the world, nor to itself.
• From the minute Israel left Lebanon in May 2000, Iran began to implement a takeover of Lebanon by Hizballah. Israel struck over two thousand Hizballah targets, and not only in south Lebanon. Hizballah is fully deployed in south Lebanon, Beirut, the Bekaa Valley, and on the border with Syria. By looking at the targets Israel struck, one can see the extent of the Hizballah takeover.

  The writer, a former senior advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is one of Israel's leading spokesmen to the foreign press and the international community on security and strategic issues.