Following a trial run in May a coordinated effort was launched by Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Syrian regime to mount a massive three-pronged border invasion into Israel. The aim was to gain international propaganda by the sight of thousands of unarmed protesters demonstrating their desire "to return home to Palestine". The anticipated numbers were put at 100,000. Israel prepared itself to face this illegal action.
The organisation began to unravel from the beginning. The Palestinians had just announced a unified front between Fatah and Hamas and the Palestinian leadership insisted that this was not the time to disrupt delicate international diplomacy with a violent confrontation with Israel. In a secret agreement, the Palestinian Authority agreed to let some local Arabs blow off steam in and around Jerusalem if Hamas backed off. In a surprising show of authority, the Lebanese Government told Hizbollah that they would not tolerate a major border incident with Israel and placed troops along the border to head off the rioters. And so the much vaunted "humanitarian" cry to return home came down to about a thousand Syrians transported to the border near Magdel Shams, and about five hundred on the Golan border near Kunetra. Each was paid the equivalent of a thousand dollars each for their time and efforts to breach the border fence.
The IDF was instructed to act with restraint using tear gas and only open fire if the border fence was breached and then only to fire at the legs of demonstrators. This, indeed, was the tactic employed on the borders. The "Skunk" liquid canon was used in the demonstrations in Kalandiah near Jerusalem after rocks were thrown by rioters and injuries began to occur among the soldiers as a result of the stoning.
The Syrian regime, keen to distract attention from their wholesale slaughter of their own people, announced that twenty three demonstrators had been killed in the border incident. This false claim was immediately adopted by extremist anti-Israel activists as a club to beat Israel. The West Dumbarton Council (emphasis on the word DUMB in the middle of their title), an insignificant local authority in Scotland that has been hijacked by radical leftists including a Jim Bollan, has recently passed a resolution boycotting Israel and banning Israeli books from their library. The radical rantings of Bollan preferred to support the lies of an Assad regime that butchers its own people than, heaven forbid!, accept the truth from Israel and from non partisan observers that twenty three Syrians were not killed by Israeli gunfire during a massed and violent border incursion attempt.
Sky News were also guilty of unsubstantiated sensationalism when they announced the Syrian numbers without prefixing their announcements with words like "alleged" or "according to Syrian sources". Instead, they gave out the number as if it were fact.
When I say that no one was killed by Israeli gunfire my claim is much closer to the truth than the murderous Assad regime's falsehoods. Several were injured as can be seen by video footage.
The truth is that four people were killed when they strayed into an old Syrian minefield near Kunetra. You would have thought that the Syrian and Palestinian organisers would have warned them of the existence of this minefield on the Syrian side of the border with Israel but, hey, what's a few lives to a regime that has recently butchered over one thousand five hundred of its own people?
It was noted, at least in Israel, that the Kunetra protesters turned around and went home after seeing poeple blown to smithereens in a desolate minefield. Well, your confidence in your leaders would dissipate a little if that happened to you, wouldn't it? You too would lose faith in the leaders that set you up for death, and that was exactly the motive of the organisers, to try and show the world Israelis shooting and killing unarmed protesters who only wanted to go home..
Instead, the paid volunteers (a contradiction in terms if ever there was any) angrily turned on their local Palestinian leader, Ahmed Jibril, demanding to know why he sent people to their deaths on behalf of an evil Syrian regime who wanted to use the Palestinian issue as a distraction. Jibril, you see, is not only the representative of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Syria. He is also a high official in the Syrian Intelligence Service.
Palestinians in Syria enjoy dual citizenship, unlike in other Arab countries but Jibril has been a useful instrument to the Assad family for decades.
And so the recent border incursions failed. This, however, will not stop the Arabs from attempting to redesign the model of massive protest across borders in the future and Israel must take radical action now in preparation for future violent border events. It is vitally important for the IDF to preserve the ethos of purity of arms when confronting overwhelming civil unrest. Every method should be taken that leaves the use of live fire as a last resort.
My recommendation to Israel's security and military leadership is to prepare and lay stretches of minefields at strategically sensitive locations. They should be laid in a design that leaves no possibility that innocent civilians can stray into these areas. This, on our borders, can easily be done by using the no mans land of the space between two border fences. On top of this minefield stretch should be placed barbed wire coils. The fence should be clearly marked in Hebrew and Arabic "Warning! Minefield!" Any approaching mass demonstration can be met by Israeli soldiers cautioning them over loudspeakers that they are approaching minefields. There would be no need to open fire and anyone stupid or radical enough to venture into a declared minefield would only have themselves to blame for the consequences.
Israel has successfully deterred Arab nations from initiating conventional warfare against it. Israel has taken radical steps to reduce the scourge of suicide bombers to zero. Israel can clearly think outside the box when it comes to organised and massive border incursions.
My opinion was formed from living in Israel, witnessing the horror of terror, reading the misinformation and downright lies perpetrated by the Western media, seen the incompetence of Israeli leaders to project the facts. My website comes from a particularly personal perspective. The articles may be controversial and provocative. For whatever strikes Israel today will surely visit you tomorrow.
