Secret US Base in Israel

According to a report, two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multi million dollar contract to build US troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named ‘Site 5’, the longstanding US base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel. 

On October 07, however, when thousands of Hamas rockets were launched, Site 512 saw nothing — because it is focused on Iran, more than 700 miles away.

The US Army is quietly moving ahead with construction at Site 512, a classified base perched atop Mt. Har Qeren in the Negev, to include what government records describe as a ‘life support facility’: military speak for barracks-like structures for personnel.

Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret US military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing. 

The US$35.8 million US troop facility, not publicly announced or previously reported, was obliquely referenced in an August 02 contract announcement by the Pentagon. Though the Defense Department has taken pains to obscure the site’s true nature — describing it in other records merely as a “classified worldwide” project — budget documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that it is part of Site 512.

“Sometimes something is treated as an official secret not in the hope that an adversary would never find out about it but rather because the U.S. government, for diplomatic or political reasons, does not want to officially acknowledge it,” Paul Pillar, a former chief analyst at the CIA’s counterterrorism center who said he had no specific knowledge of the base, told The Intercept.

“In this case, perhaps the base will be used to support operations elsewhere in the Middle East in which any acknowledgment that they were staged from Israel, or involved any cooperation with Israel, would be inconvenient and likely to elicit more negative reactions than the operations otherwise would elicit.”

Rare acknowledgment of the US military presence in Israel came in 2017, when the two countries inaugurated a military site that the US government-funded Voice of America deemed “the first American military base on Israeli soil.”

Israeli Air Force’s Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch called it “historic.” He said, “We established an American base in the State of Israel, in the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time.” 

A day later, the U.S. military denied that it was an American base, insisting that it was merely a living facility for US service members working at an Israeli base. 

The US military employs similar euphemistic language to characterize the new facility in Israel, which its procurement records describe as a life support area.

Such obfuscation is typical of US military sites the Pentagon wants to conceal. Site 512 has previously been referred to as a “cooperative security location”: a designation that is intended to confer a low-cost, light footprint presence but has been applied to bases that, as The Intercept has previously reported, can house as many as 1,000 troops.

Site 512, however, wasn’t established to contend with a threat to Israel from Palestinian militants but the danger posed by Iranian mid-range missiles.

The overwhelming focus on Iran continues to play out in the US government’s response to the Hamas attack. In an attempt to counter Iran — which aids both Hamas and Israel’s rival to the north, Hezbollah, a Lebanese political group with a robust military wing, both of which are considered terror groups by the US — the Pentagon has vastly expanded its presence in the Middle East.

Following the attack, the US doubled the number of fighter jets in the region and deployed two aircraft carriers off the coast of Israel. 

“My speculation is that the secrecy is a holdover from when US presidential administrations tried to offer a pretense of not siding with Israel.”

Top Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have nonetheless castigated Biden for his purported “weakness on Iran.”

While some media accounts have said Iran played a role in planning the Hamas attack, there have been indications from the US intelligence community that Iranian officials were surprised by the attack.

The history of the US–Israel relationship may be behind the failure to acknowledge the base, said an expert on overseas US military bases.

“My speculation is that the secrecy is a holdover from when US presidential administrations tried to offer a pretense of not siding with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts,” David Vine, a professor of anthropology at American University, told The Intercept.

“The announcement of US military bases in Israel in recent years likely reflects the dropping of that pretense and a desire to more publicly proclaim support for Israel.”

 

Iran: Khamenei urges Muslims to boycott Israel

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslim states to cease oil and food exports to Israel, demanding an end to its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

"The bombings on Gaza must stop immediately ... the path of oil and food exports to the Zionist regime should be stopped," Khamenei told a group of students in Tehran.

Israel has vowed to wipe out Tehran-backed Hamas, which rules Gaza, in retaliation for an October 07 attack that killed 1,400 people and saw hundreds taken hostage.

Israel has launched an unprecedented bombardment of Gaza and imposed a siege of the enclave. Palestinian authorities say more than 8,000 people have been killed.

Iran's clerical rulers have warned Israel of an escalation if it failed to end aggressions against Palestinians, with authorities indicating Tehran-backed proxies in the Middle East were ready to act.

Backing the Palestinian cause has been a political pillar of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and a way in which its Shi'ite Muslim theocracy has fashioned Iran as a leader in the Muslim world.

Khamenei, Iran's top authority, said the United States was complicit in Israel's "recent crimes against Palestinians".

"The Islamic world should not forget that in the crucial issue of Gaza, those standing against the oppressed Palestinian nation were the United States, France and Britain," Khamenei said to chants of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America".

Israel, which Tehran refuses to recognize, has long accused Iran's clerical rulers of stoking violence by supplying arms to Hamas. Tehran says it gives moral and financial support to the group, which controls the Gaza Strip.

"One of the shameless acts of the West is accusing Palestinian fighters of terrorism," Khamenei said.

Palestinians halt Israeli ground offensives

The al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas fired anti-tank missiles at Israeli forces on Tuesday, troops were trying to infiltrate south of Gaza city. 

A Hamas spokesman confirmed the presence of Israeli tanks in Salah ad-Deen highway, located in the middle of the Strip, which he pointed out the Palestinian resistance forces have prevented them from moving north toward Gaza city. 

Reports from inside Gaza have also said that attacks by the resistance fighters forced the occupation troops to withdraw from the Salah ad-Deen area, east of the Zeitoun neighborhood in central Gaza, following heavy clashes. 

Hamas also attacked two Israeli tanks and bulldozers in northwest Gaza with missiles.

The al-Qassam brigades added its fighters targeted Israeli forces with Al-Yassin 105 shells, and destroyed a Zionist vehicle east of Erez (located one kilometer north of the Gaza Strip), with an explosive device and two Al-Yassin 105 shells.

The Israeli military acknowledged that its troops were attacked by anti-tank missiles and machine gunfire. 

Reports from inside Gaza say the resistance engaged in heavy clashes with the occupation, east of the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, and thwarted the regime's incursion attempt.

The Palestinian resistance is said to have inflicted casualties on the occupation ranks after confronting regime troops at the Karam Abu Salem site east of Rafah near the border with Egypt. 

Elsewhere, the resistance engaged in clashes with the occupation forces during their attempt to storm eastern Bureij.

Reports point out that the Palestinian resistance launched surface-to-air missiles to confront Israeli aircraft, believed to be drones, in the eastern Gaza Strip.

Violent clashes have also taken place, according to verified reports from inside the coastal sliver, between the resistance fighters and the occupation forces east of the town of al-Qarara, which is located near the southern city of Khan Yunis.

The heavy clashes indicate two main points. 

One is that Palestinian resistance factions have heavily disrupted Israeli attempts to advance into urban areas of the Gaza Strip, restricting the regime's troops to the enclaves' borders and agricultural land, which it had bombed before. 

There are no military achievements so far, according to Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasim. 

This is contrary to Western reporters who are spreading unverified information while outside the Gaza Strip and relying mainly on Israeli military statements. 

The Israeli military has forbidden any reporters to accompany them into the battlefield. 

Experts say this is supposed to avoid reports being published of any ambushes and traps, and would essentially increase the anger of Israelis watching on intensely across the occupied territories and beyond.

Secondly, the fierce exchange of fire and airstrikes in the Southern Gaza Strip debunk the Israeli myth that it would have been safe for Palestinians to travel south. 

A series of Israeli raids have targeted residential areas east of Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip, as well as other areas in the south where the regime is bombing civilian sites and trying to conduct military operations by land. 

Actually, for the civilian population trapped in Gaza there is nowhere to run or to hide.  

The high level of Israeli bombings so far (from the air, sea and land) has not stopped Palestinian resistance forces in the Gaza Strip from launching retaliatory operations. 

Israeli media reported that air raid sirens sounded in many settlements, including Netiv Haasara, Kissufim, Erez, Ashkelon, Zikim, and Sderot as a result of Palestinian rocket barrages on Monday and Tuesday. 

These are mostly settlements north and northeast of the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military claims to be attacking with more intensity. 

Air raid sirens sounded in the Red Sea settlement of Eilat with an Israeli military warning of an approaching aerial target. 

A statement warned of a possible hostile aircraft intrusion. The Israeli military said its systems identified an aerial target approaching Israeli (occupied Palestinian) territory.

Unconfirmed reports on Israeli radio have suggested that a drone was spotted over the Red Sea.

Hours later, Israeli media reported fresh explosions in Eilat with a flying object spotted. 

Eilat is a large southern Israeli settlement that has come under constant fire (during the current war on Gaza) by long-range missiles launched from the strip.

However, reports have emerged that the explosions may be the result of projectiles fired from Yemen in response to the regime's massacre of civilians in Gaza. 

Israeli media has reported that the first test of the land (operations) appears to have been disappointing, noting that the government is gambling with the lives of soldiers in Gaza.

This is while the al-Qassam brigade issued another brief statement on Tuesday afternoon stating that it was eliminating a Zionist force after it entered a building in Beit Hanoun, inside which our fighters were present and ambushed the force while targeting (another) bulldozer and a vehicle.

 

United States refuses to call for a ceasefire

The United States, stressing the right of Israel to defend itself, has so far refused to call for a ceasefire or place limitations on weapons it has shipped to the country should civilians continue to bear the brunt of the Israeli strikes.

A series of Israeli airstrikes hit the densely packed Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza Tuesday in what Israel said was an attempt to take out a senior Hamas commander in the area.

At least six Israeli airstrikes hit residential dwellings in the heart of the refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City, The Associated Press reported, citing the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

Gaza officials told Reuters that 50 Palestinians were killed and 150 more wounded, with footage from the scene showing people searching through gutted concrete apartment blocks for loved ones.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday claimed the airstrikes killed Ibrahim Biari, the commander for Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion, along with neutralizing an estimated 50 other terrorists, a claim that Hamas has pushed back on.

Asked about the Israeli attack on the Jabalya camp late Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said he could not speak to individual Israeli strikes, but that the US believes taking civilian safety into account is both a moral and a strategic obligation.

Defense officials do care about civilian casualties, and we’ve made it both clear publicly and privately about our concern for the protection of innocent life and the respect for the law of war, he told reporters.

Ryder also said that the Israeli military is not deliberately targeting civilians, unlike Hamas, which is creating this extra challenge for Israel as they conduct their operations.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday pressed IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht on why Israel’s military moved forward with the attacks knowing there were refugees and innocent civilians in the area.

“This is the tragedy of war, Wolf,” Hecht responded. “I mean, we as you know, we’ve been saying for days — move south. The civilians, who are not involved, please move south.”

Israeli forces stepped up their military incursion into northern Gaza over the weekend, attacking Hamas militants and infrastructure north of Gaza City. IDF claimed it also has intensified air and naval strikes as part of its ramped up counteroffensive.

At least 8,525 Palestinians have died in the violence in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. More than 21,500 civilians have been wounded since October 07, the ministry reported, pushing hospitals to the brink of collapse.

 

 

Isolating Iran No Longer Possible

The US President Joe Biden is convinced that one of the reasons Hamas launched the attack on Israel was the announcement during the G-20 Summit in New Delhi on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor .

Biden has been telling so many lies to reclaim its leadership role in the Muslim Middle East. The two most compelling realities rejecting the American leadership are: one, a strong united regional solidarity cutting across sectarian divides to seek a settlement on Palestine, like at no time before, and, two, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement. 

The latest developments involving Hamas and Israel undermined the US efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel. No doubt, the Saudi stance on the Palestine problem has hardened.

Do these words sound as if Biden is preparing for a war with Iran? For the first time, perhaps, there is a ray of hope that the US will no longer work around the Palestine problem. The bottom line, as the deliberations at the UN Security Council also testify, is that all responsible powers understand that the Middle East continues to be the centre of gravity in world politics and a conflagration in the region could easily turn into a world war. And none of the big powers wants such an apocalyptic outcome. 

That said, while the US still has unrivalled power in the Middle East, its influence has diminished, as new realities emerged which include:

Israel has grown more powerful militarily and economically vis-a-vis Palestinians, but no longer enjoys regional dominance. 

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two dominant powers in the Middle East, are increasingly asserting their own interests. 

China, although a relatively new player, is no longer confining itself to economic diplomacy. 

US has lost the capacity to leverage the world oil market, as Russia works closely with Saudi Arabia within the ambit of OPEC Plus to calibrate oil production level and prices. 

Consequently, petrodollar is weakening.  

The Abraham Accords have been shelved practically. 

The Arab-Israeli conflict has assumed new dimensions in the recent years, thanks to the ascendance of the axis of resistance, which require new postures and operational thinking on the part of the US. 

Israeli politics has swung sharply to extreme right. 

The global environment is highly complicated; the peace process can no longer be under US mentorship.

Russia hosted a trilateral meeting in Moscow with Iran’s deputy foreign minister  and a Hamas delegation. Later, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East and Africa, announced that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will soon arrive on an official visit to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

In an all-out war with Iran, the US will take heavy casualties and the state of Israel may face destruction.

Iran may opt for nuclear deterrent capability. It is a near-certainty that a US-Iran war will turn into a world war. Clearly, war is not an option. 

There is high risk, therefore, in an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. If Israel gets bogged down in Gaza, which by no means cannot be ruled out, there is a high possibility that Hezbollah may open a second front. And that, in turn, can trigger a chain reaction that may spin out of control. There is a danger if a ceasefire is not agreed upon early enough in the conflict, the repercussions could be very serious.

 

Hezbollah surprises Israeli regime again

Hezbollah has taken an iron fist approach to defend Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Lately, it has targeted Israeli military installations, troops and destroyed a sophisticated spying network. 

Since the Palestinian resistance launched the al-Aqsa Storm Operation, hostilities have gradually flared up between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanese border with occupied Palestine. 

The Lebanese organization, which forced the Israeli occupation out of Lebanon in the year 2000 and defeated the regime again when it launched a war on Lebanon in July 2006, is now engaging the regime again militarily. 

Experts believe events on the border are not exactly tit-for-tat exchanges, but far from a full-blown-out war. 

The exchange of fire has inflicted losses and casualties on both sides. 

On Monday, Israeli media reported that another regime’s soldier has been killed, and three others have been injured after their tank was overturned in the north, on the border with Lebanon. 

Hezbollah announced the martyrdom of Mohammad Najib Halawi from the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila. 

It's been this way for some two weeks now.

Hezbollah is a formidable force in Lebanon, and its impressive military capabilities have been on show once again. 

On Friday, the organization published a video detailing the functions of Israel's technical and spying equipment in 42 locations on the border, how they operate and the security threat they pose to all Lebanese people, across all of Lebanon and its borders with other Arab countries. 

The Israeli equipment includes day and night thermal monitoring and surveillance cameras, different types of radar towers, embedded systems, and naval monitoring systems. 

The Israeli intelligence systems that contact traitors in Lebanon are also shown in the video as well as sophisticated spying network technology, all of which are controlled by Israeli military operators far away from the border. 
The four-minute clip, which begins with a narration stating "These are not defensive positions that the Zionist entity portrays them to be", concludes with Hezbollah missiles, rockets and gunfire either destroying the Israeli equipment or damaging them to the extent they are out of service. 

At one point, a precision-guided missile is shown being fired toward a radar tower with a direct hit.  

Hezbollah says the damage it inflicted in destroying the equipment is a huge blow to the Israeli spying and monitoring network in Lebanon. 

Hezbollah says the calculated attacks go a long way to serving Lebanon's sovereignty, territorial integrity, and its people. 

The organization has also been targeting Israeli military vehicles, tanks, and troops in response to Israeli attacks on Southern Lebanon. 

The men it has lost are being labeled as the martyrs on the path to al-Quds, in reference to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian city that hosts the holy al-Aqsa Mosque, also known as Jerusalem. 

Israeli occupation forces continue to target forests in various areas of the Lebanese border with incendiary shells, which has led to the outbreak of a number of fires.

On Monday, the occupation regime acknowledged the death of a first sergeant in the Israeli army on the northern front, announcing that he was killed as a result of another tank being hit in the area. 

On Sunday, Hezbollah announced that it had targeted points of the Israeli army on the Lebanon-occupied Palestine border.

Hezbollah confirmed in a statement that after careful follow-up and monitoring its forces located an Israeli infantry force in the al-Malikiyah area and its surroundings (in southern Lebanon), which was immediately targeted with appropriate weapons, inflicting confirmed casualties.

In a separate statement, the group said that it had targeted the al-Samaqa area in the occupied Lebanese Sheba'a farms with appropriate weapons that led to direct hits on Israeli forces.

The group also announced that its forces targeted an Israeli drone with a surface-to-air missile, hitting it directly, and it was spotted within eyesight as it fell into the occupied Palestinian territories.

Reports suggest countries around the world, in particular the West and the United States at the forefront, have been trying their best diplomatic efforts to prevent the merciless Israeli war on Gaza from spilling over to Lebanon or elsewhere in the region. 

The regime's mass killing of children in Gaza is making that very difficult. 

Military bases belonging to the illegal American presence in Iraq and Syria have come under attack dozens of times by local forces already. 

Experts have said the silence of the Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, since Hamas staged the October 07 Storm operation, has frightened the Israeli regime, as it remains clueless whether another front will open in the north. 

The occupation regime may not have to wait too much longer. 

The Hezbollah secretary-general will deliver a speech on Friday, November 3, 2023, at 15:00 local time, during a ceremony honoring the martyrs on the path to al-Quds.

It is a widely anticipated speech in which the Hezbollah chief will no doubt address his party's position on the war on Gaza as well as the devastating Israeli bombardment on the completely blockaded coastal enclave.

 

United States unveils bill to fund Israel

According to Reuters, the US House of Representatives Republicans on Monday introduced a plan to provide US$14.3 billion in aid to Israel by cutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, setting up a showdown with Democrats who control the Senate.

In one of the first major policy actions under new House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans unveiled a standalone supplemental spending bill only for Israel, despite Democratic President Joe Biden's request for a US$106 billion package that would include aid for Israel, Ukraine and border security.

Johnson, who voted against aid for Ukraine before he was elected House speaker last week, had said he wanted aid to Israel and Ukraine to be handled separately. He has said he wants more accountability for money that has been sent to the Kyiv government as it fights Russian invaders.

"Israel is a separate matter," Johnson said in an interview on Fox News last week, describing his desire to bifurcate the Ukraine and Israel funding issues.

Johnson has said bolstering support for Israel should top the US national security agenda in the aftermath of the October 07 attack by Hamas militants that killed more than 1,400 people and saw more than 200 others taken hostage.

Democrats accused Republicans of stalling Congress' ability to help Israel by introducing a partisan bill.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement accusing Republicans of politicizing national security and calling their bill a non-starter. To become law, the measure would need to pass the House and the Senate and be signed by President Biden

"House Republicans are setting a dangerous precedent by suggesting that protecting national security or responding to natural disasters is contingent upon cuts to other programs," Representative Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.

The House Rules Committee is expected to consider the Republican Israel bill on Wednesday.