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Hamas fires rockets for first time since 2012, Israeli officials say
Volley that hit near southern communities Monday may have been launched by terror group to warn Israel against targeting its members
BY AVI ISSACHAROFF AND TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF June 30, 2014, 1:40 pm 29


Hamas operatives were behind a large volley of rockets which slammed into Israel Monday morning, the first time in years the Islamist group has directly challenged the Jewish state, according to Israeli defense officials.

At least 16 rockets were fired at Israel Monday morning, most of them hitting open areas in the Eshkol region, the army said.

The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more.

A member of Hamas’s militant wing was killed in the attack, Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra said.

While Israel has maintained it holds Hamas responsible for all rocket attacks, officials have said that smaller groups, such as Islamic Jihad, are usually behind the rocket attacks, while Hamas squads generally attempt to thwart the rocket fire.

Hamas hasn’t fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012, and has yet to take responsibility for this latest barrage.

The group fired hundred of rockets at Israel over eight days during Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, as Israel carried out punishing strikes on the Palestinian enclave.
Officials said Monday’s rocket attacks, which appeared to deliberately target Israeli communities close to the border with the Gaza Strip, may have been intended to warn Israel against targeting Hamas operatives.

The army said in a statement that the Sunday night air raid was targeting terrorists “in the southern Gaza Strip, during​ their final preparations to launch rockets at civilian communities of southern Israel.”

“Hamas is responsible for the outrageous attacks originating from Gaza, and will be pursued as such,” IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.

The air force attack on Khan Younis Sunday night came minutes after Palestinians in the coastal enclave fired a volley of rockets at southwestern Israel. The Iron Dome defense system shot down two of the projectiles — Grad rockets — over Netivot. There were no reports of injury or damage in the rocket attack.

Early Sunday morning, air force planes struck 12 sites in Gaza in response to rockets fired over the weekend. Two rockets hit the town of Sderot, close to the border with Gaza, late Saturday, causing a massive fire that destroyed a paint factory.

The latest series of attacks comes amid an escalation in hostilities along Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, as IDF troops scour the West Bank for three missing Israeli teenagers.

Israel has accused Hamas, which rules the Strip, of abducting the teens on June 12 and named two Hamas men as the suspected perpetrators.



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Israel finds bodies of three missing teenagers in West Bank
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8:55pm EDT
By Noah Browning and Ali Sawafta
HEBRON West Bank (Reuters) - The bodies of three missing Israeli teenagers were found in the occupied West Bank, and Israel vowed to punish Hamas, the Palestinian group it accuses of abducting and killing them.
"They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by beasts," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after the military discovered on Monday the remains of the Jewish seminary students who disappeared on June 12.
"Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay," he said.
U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the killings but called on all parties to exercise restraint.
Netanyahu, who earlier on Monday held Hamas responsible for new rocket strikes from Gaza, convened his security cabinet to consider moves against the Islamist group, which has neither confirmed nor denied Israel's allegations about the kidnapping.
The senior ministers ended their late-night session without taking any final decisions and plan to reconvene later on Tuesday, a government official said.
"Netanyahu's threats against Gaza and against Hamas do not frighten us," the movement's Gaza-based leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was quoted as saying by its Al-Quds television station.
At the square in Tel Aviv where Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, scores of Israelis lit memorial candles for the teenagers, a day after thousands attended a prayer vigil for them at the same spot.
Hamas has been rocked by the arrest of dozens of its activists in an Israeli military sweep in the West Bank over the past three weeks during a search for the teenagers that Israel said was also aimed at weakening the militant movement
Up to six Palestinians died as a result of the Israeli operation, local residents said.
The kidnapping, near a settlement in the West Bank, appalled Israelis who rallied behind the youngsters' families in a display of national unity reminiscent of times of war or national crisis in a country with deep political and religious divisions.
"On behalf of the people of Israel, I wish to tell their dear families ... our hearts are bleeding, the entire nation is weeping with you," Netanyahu said in the statement.
The bodies of Gil-Ad Shaer and U.S.-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, were found in a field near Hebron, a militant stronghold, not far from a road where they were believed to have been abducted while hitchhiking, security officials said.
ABBAS CRITICIZED
The teens, who attended a religious school in a Jewish settlement, had apparently been shot soon after having been taken, the officials said. Two of the youths lived in Israel.
"They were under a pile of rocks, in an open field," said Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman. The alleged abductors are still at large. Israeli media said the break in the case came after their relatives were interrogated.
Troops set off explosions in the family homes of the alleged abductors, blowing open a doorway in one, an army spokeswoman said, while television footage showed the other on fire after the blast. Neighbors said both houses were empty. After news of the teenagers' deaths, condolence messages and condemnation of the killings poured in from foreign leaders. "The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms, this senseless act of terror against innocent youths," Obama said in a statement. "I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation."
Netanyahu seized on the abduction to demand Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas abrogate a reconciliation deal he reached with Hamas, his long-time rival, in April that led to a unity Palestinian government on June 2.
Abbas condemned the abduction and pledged the cooperation of his security forces, drawing criticism from Hamas and undercutting his popularity among Palestinians angered by what they saw as his collusion with Israel.
Hamas, which has maintained security control of the Gaza Strip since the unity deal, is shunned by the West over its refusal to renounce violence. The group has called for Israel's destruction, although various officials have at times indicated a willingness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire.
(Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Mohammad Zargham and Cynthia Osterman)

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Home News National Police officers dismissed in wake of botched kidnapping call
Police officers dismissed in wake of botched kidnapping call
Committee probe finds severe misconduct in handling of emergency hotline center on night three teens were kidnapped in West Bank; Police commissioner calls failure 'unforgivable.'
By Yaniv Kubovich | Jun. 30, 2014 | 5:35 PM

The committee investigating the conduct of the operators of the Judea and Samaria Police emergency hotline the night of the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers on June 12 found that there was a "severe failure of conduct."

The findings, published on Monday, focused on the phone call received on the night of the kidnapping. They describe a "mishandling of the telephone call received at the center, as far as the professional standards expected from emergency hotline operators on all levels, and which included all the ranks: police, officers and commanders involved."

As a result of the findings, Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino immediately dismissed some officers involved in the incident, among them the chief operations officer and the head of the command and control center. Neither will be able to serve in any position of authority over the next three years. The emergency hotline's shift supervisor and manager will also be dismissed, and their continued service in the police will be examined.

According to the report, on the night of the kidnapping at about 10:25 P.M., a telephone call was received and a soft voice of one of the abductees said the words "I have been kidnapped."

The operator called over the shift supervisor, a police sergeant major, who tried to speak with the abductee and call back the traced number no less than eight times. The manager was also informed of the call, and both reached a decision that night not to look into the call any further.

The report's findings state that according to protocol, the hotline staff should have tried to locate the identity of the caller and to try and track the owner of the mobile phone and then assess the location of the caller.

Danino said that the case involved "severe misconduct regarding the handling of a distress call," that cannot happen. "The failure to provide a suitable response to a distressed caller is unforgivable" and could damage the public's trust in the police force.

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3 July 2014 Last updated at 21:30 GMT
Syria conflict: UK planned to train and equip 100,000 rebels

By Nick Hopkins
Investigations correspondent, BBC Newsnight

The UK drew up plans to train and equip a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army to defeat President Bashar al-Assad, BBC Newsnight can reveal.

The secret initiative, put forward two years ago, was the brainchild of the then most senior UK military officer, General Sir David Richards.

It was considered by the PM and the National Security Council, as well as US officials, but was deemed too risky.

The UK government did not respond to a request for comment.

Lord Richards, as he is now, believed his proposal could stem the civilian bloodshed in Syria as rebels fought troops loyal to Mr Assad.

The idea was considered by David Cameron and Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, and sent to the National Security Council, Whitehall sources said.

It was also put to senior figures in Washington, including General Martin Dempsey, the US's most senior military officer.

nsiders have told BBC Newsnight that Lord Richards, then chief of the defence staff but since retired from the military, warned Downing Street there were only two ways to end the Syrian civil war quickly - to let President Assad win, or to defeat him.

'Extract, equip, train'

With ministers having pledged not to commit British "boots on the ground", his initiative proposed vetting and training a substantial army of moderate Syrian rebels at bases in Turkey and Jordan.

Mr Cameron was told the "extract, equip, train" plan would involve an international coalition.

It would take a year, but this would buy time for an alternative Syrian government to be formed in exile, the PM was told.

Once the Syrian force was ready, it would march on Damascus, with the cover of fighter jets from the West and Gulf allies.

The plan envisaged a "shock and awe" campaign, similar to the one that routed Saddam's military in 2003, but spearheaded by Syrians.

Opportunity 'missed'

Though the plan was put to one side at the time, Mr Cameron was later persuaded to consider military action when evidence emerged of chemical weapons use in Syria.

However, MPs voted against giving authority for a direct intervention last August.

The US and UK accused the Assad government of being behind the attacks, but Damascus blamed rebel groups.


Monzer Akbik, spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, an opposition alliance, said: "The international community did not intervene to prevent those crimes and at the same time did not actively support the moderate elements on the ground.

"A huge opportunity was missed and that opportunity could have saved tens of thousands of lives actually and could have saved also a huge humanitarian catastrophe."

'No good options'

Professor Michael Clarke, of the Royal United Services Institute think tank, added: "We have missed the opportunity to train an anti-Assad force that would have real influence in Syria when he is removed, as he will be.

"I think there was an opportunity two or three years ago to have become involved in a reasonably positive way, but it was dangerous and swimming against the broader tide of history… and the costs and the uncertainties were very high."


He said it was now too late for the West to get involved.

"Western policymakers in a sense have got to have the courage to do nothing and to work on what comes after the civil war," he said.

"There are no good options over Syria. It is a slow-motion road accident."

Tens of thousands of people have died and millions more have been displaced in three years of civil war in Syria.

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delft said:

Two years ago the senior British army officer put forth a plan to recruit, equip and train a mercenary army of 100 000 Syrians to conquer Syria with full air support from Western air forces, and d*** the Charter of the United Nations:

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Would these mercenaries have been better than the Iraqi army?

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Afghan runoff may lead to civil war
By M K Bhadrakumar

The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan announced in Kabul on Monday that according to preliminary results Dr Ahsraf Ghani won the June 14 run-off presidential election with 56.44% of the votes. The final tally is expected on July 22.

Ghani's opponent Dr Abdullah Abdullah has forcefully rejected the results and his camp described it as a "coup" against the Afghan people. Abdullah has been alleging that there has been extensive gerrymandering through the use of governmental machinery and accusing President Hamid Karzai of manipulating the runoff.

A smooth transition of power in Afghanistan appears highly problematic unless some sort of deal is worked out between Ghani and Abdullah before July 22. The residual hope lies in that Afghan-style deal-making can be quite deceptive. Compromise is found often at the last minute when outsiders have already given up hope.

In this case, such an outcome cannot entirely be ruled out - although, the prospects of that happening are receding by the day.

The official stance is that these are preliminary results and "there is possibility the outcome might change after we inspect complaints [of vote rigging]".

The US State Department takes a similar stance too - "these figures are not final or authoritative and may not predict the final outcome, which could still change based on the findings of the Afghan electoral bodies".

These cautious words are probably meant to calm down Abdullah's camp, but the damage has been done. In fact, if Ghani ends up as the loser when the final tally comes out in July 22, an even more ugly stalemate ensues.

In sum, the paradox is that ultimately there can only be one candidate winning in a runoff election.

Even if a deal is stuck between Ghani and Abdullah at this point - and politically speaking, that may seem the right approach - it still remains an unlawful method of transfer of power.

The bottom line is that the credibility of the Afghan presidential election has been hopelessly eroded, and that in turn could weaken the authority of the next president, whoever it is.

In the worst-case scenario, an Iraq-like ethnic divide may appear - Abdullah's power base is among Tajiks, while Ghani's is among Pashtuns.

If that happens, there is high risk of violence erupting between ethnic groups or even the secession of parts of the country. Abdullah draws much of his support from the Panjshir Valley that has a distinct and proud heritage of de facto autonomy, while Ghani has got hefty backing from the Pashtuns.

No doubt, at the root of it all is the Pashtun claim to be the rulers of Afghanistan, which has been a feature of that country's history up until the Mujahideen takeover in Kabul in 1992 when the levers of power first came into the hands of the "Panjshiris" (ethnic Tajiks), who resent a return of Pashtun dominance.

The good thing is that the Afghan people are tired of war and may not feel the urge to fight a civil conflict over the political future of Abdullah or Ghani.

But, equally, the bad thing is that the running mates of Abdullah and Ghani - Balkh governor Commander Atta Mohammad Noor (who is a Tajik) and the erstwhile Uzbek commander Rashid Dostum respectively - also have an old feud to settle between them, and in the present scenario only one of them can emerge the winner in the runoff, which in turn will impact the delicate ethnic balance in Amu Darya region, and an upheaval in northern Afghanistan may ensue.

On the other hand, Ghani's election victory would be more due to a combination of fortuitous circumstances than of genuine popularity. In some ways, therefore, he becomes a figurehead for an array of interest groups, internal and external.

Ghani secured the backing of the powerful Kandahari tribes in the southern Pashtun belt despite being a Kochi himself - and that too, from the north - thanks to the deal he worked out with Zalmay Rassoul, a former foreign minister, who was widely regarded as Karzai's favorite.

At the same time, the erstwhile Mujahideen group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (which is strong among the southeastern Pashtun tribes and continues to be mentored by the Pakistani security establishment) also gave its backing to Ghani.

Meanwhile, Ghani also made a shrewd choice as his vice-presidential running mate - Rashid Dostum - with a view to rope in ethnic Uzbek support.

Thus, a formidable coalition is no doubt backing Ghani, but he will still remain in popular perceptions to be a "Pashtun president", and any president other than a unifying leader acceptable to all sides cannot easily hold the country together at this juncture. Simply put, the danger of Iraq-style fragmentation is the specter that haunts Afghanistan if the Tajiks reject Ghani as their president.

It is not only that Afghanistan could split into fiefdoms, locked in another round of fratricidal strife, but the Afghan armed forces will almost certainly disintegrate in that eventuality.

On the face of it, Washington has ostentatiously kept a distance from the Afghan presidential election, careful not to avoid the mistake of the 2009 election, when Karzai alleged blatant US interference.

But behind the scenes, there is reason to believe that Washington will be quietly pleased that Ghani, whom it promoted in the 2009 election, is emerging as the winner.

The point is, unlike Abdullah who has a strong nationalistic streak in his political DNA, Ghani, an ex-World Bank official, would be a pliant figure for Washington.

Besides, Ghani also enjoys warm ties with Islamabad, and he has openly voiced interest in working out a power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban, which the US would also encourage as the prerequisite for stabilizing Afghanistan.

Ironically, therefore, as things stand today, the final victor in the Afghan presidential election could turn out to be the Taliban. Indeed, the Taliban would seem to be sensing the "homestretch" ahead already. They have lately stepped up their offensive in Kabul, including an attack on the city's international airport, they have gained a "foothold" in the key southern province of Helmand and are holding parts of Kapisa.

Indeed, regional politics casts its shadow on these developments:
The prospect of the establishment of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization military bases in Afghanistan (which Ghani is enthusiastic about),
the deep chill in the US' relations with Russia,
China's disquiet over the Hindu Kush becoming a link in Washington's "pivot" to Asia,
Tehran and Delhi's tacit support for Abdullah,
Islamabad's preference for Ghani,
the bearing of the Afghan situation on Chechnya and North Caucasus, Xinjiang in China and the Ferghana Valley in Central Asia ...
... the interplay of these factors will almost inevitably prompt the regional powers to take a renewed interest, and even leading to their intervention, on the Afghan chessboard.

Over and above, the propensity of the US to use Islamist groups as instruments of geo-strategy - combined with the fact that a Ghani presidency is willing to accommodate the Taliban in the top echelons of power in Kabul with the tacit backing of a US-Pakistani-Saudi condominium - will unnerve many capitals in the region, which are already stunned by the Caliphate emerging out of the fog of war in Iraq and Syria.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

(Copyright 2014 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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The Arab revolt against Obama

The expulsion by Bahrain of a visiting senior official from the US state department — Assistant Secretary Tom Malinowski — half way through his scheduled consultations in Manama amounts to a huge diplomatic snub, causing insult and embarrassment to the Obama administration that cannot be explained away. That such a tiny Gulf country — the tiniest, in fact — could show the thumb so daringly at the superpower was unthinkable.

Bahrain lives under Riyadh’s political, economic and security cover and it is inconceivable that its belligerent move to snub the Obama administration would have been without some sort of Saudi nod. The point is, the folks in Manama knew jolly well that Malinowski’s job in Faggy Bottom is to relentlessly hold a torch light at authoritarian regimes the world over that trample on human rights and do not subscribe to democratic values — and today it is Bahrain, tomorrow it could be Saudi Arabia itself.
True, Bahrain couldn’t prevent Malinowski from coming to Manama on the ‘inspection tour’ when Washington accepted its ‘pre-condition’ that a local mentor would be present at all his meetings with human rights activists. We don’t know what exactly happened — whether Malinowski gave the slip to his mentor, whether he articulated such incendiary ideas while in Manama that the Emir panicked, whether he met people he ought not to have, and so on.
At any rate, at some point Bahrain decided it couldn’t take the nonsense anymore. The rulers in Bahrain are very sensitive about the Saudi-backed state sponsored repression let loose against the country’s majority Shi’ite population clamoring for justice and empowerment. This is particularly so today when the sectarian fault lines are appearing all across the region. Indeed, Bahrain has drawn a ‘red line’ for the Obama administration.
Washington is mulling over “a range of options” in response to Bahrain’s snub. But Riyadh and Manama can’t be faulted if they have already weighed the pros and cons and concluded that the US simply cannot afford to over-react — the US’s Fifth Fleet is anchored in Bahrain, after all.
The episode underscores the overlapping templates of the US’ strategic predicament in the Middle East.
Bahrain has challenged America’s ‘exceptionalism’. The region will be watching how Washington takes up the challenge.
Partly at least, the Gulf Arab rulers are showing such spunk today, because of the polarization in American politics. Obama has come under fire for his Middle East policies and the Republicans criticize him for letting down the US’ traditional allies in the Arab world such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
Bahrain’s snub is not an isolated affair. Simply put, the US’ Arab allies are increasingly becoming rowdyish, and getting out of control. The nerves are frayed when it comes to the ‘Arab Spring’. In Syria and Egypt, there has been strategic defiance.
Again, Washington recently told Baghdad that it would augment the latter’s air power to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant only if there is a change of government and Prime MInister Nouri al-Maliki simply ignored the demand and got his attack jet aircraft from Russia and Iran instead.
Israel of course has always remained a law unto itself and it is a special case of the tail wagging the dog, but the Gulf Arabs cannot hope to graduate to Israel’s level. The Gulf oligrachies are hopelessly compromised, lacking legitimacy for their rule and when the chips are down, they still expect American protection.
Besides, the petrodollar is also an umbilical chord that ties them to the Western banking system. The entanglement becomes two-way and mutual when we factor in the range of the petrodollar recycling.
In the recent years, Turkey too has shown signs of doing things its own way ignoring the US counseling but that too is a calibrated defiance intended more for impressing the domestic audience within Turkey as to what an Islamic party could do to uphold national honor. But the bottom line is that Turkey is a NATO member country and it is acutely conscious of its ‘European’ identity.
Now, Afghanistan becomes the latest instance in the Greater Middle East where the US’s regional influence is going to be tested. Will the rival candidates in the presidential runoff — Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani — listen to the sensible advice given by Washington to show restraint or prefer do things the way it has been in the Afghan bazaar from time immemorial? But it needs separate explaining.
Posted in Diplomacy, Politics.

Tagged with Afghan runoff, Arab spring, Bahrain, ISIL, Sunni-Shi'ite strife.

By M K Bhadrakumar – July 9, 2014

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Iraq tells U.N. 'terrorist groups' seized former chemical weapons depot
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Tue, Jul 8 2014
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq's government has lost control of a former chemical weapons facility to "armed terrorist groups" and is unable to fulfill its international obligations to destroy toxins kept there, the country's U.N. envoy told the United Nations.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, made public on Tuesday, Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said the Muthanna facility north of Baghdad was seized on June 11. He said remnants of a former chemical weapons program are kept in two bunkers there.
"The project management spotted at dawn on Thursday, 12 June 2014, through the camera surveillance system, the looting of some of the project equipment and appliances, before the terrorists disabled the surveillance system," Alhakim wrote in the letter dated June 30.
The Sunni Muslim group known as the Islamic State is spearheading a patchwork of insurgents who have taken over large swaths of Syria and Iraq. The group, an al Qaeda offshoot, until recently called itself the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
"The Government of Iraq requests the States Members of the United Nations to understand the current inability of Iraq, owing to the deterioration of the security situation, to fulfill its obligations to destroy chemical weapons," he said.
Iraq would resume its obligations when the security situation improves and it has regained control of the facility, Alhakim said.
U.S. Defense Department spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said last month that the United States' best understanding was that "whatever material was kept there is pretty old and not likely to be able to be accessed or used against anyone right now."
"We aren't viewing this particular site and their holding it as a major issue at this point," Kirby said. "Should they even be able to access the materials, frankly, it would likely be more of a threat to them than anyone else."
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Missy Ryan in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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Syria's Western-backed opposition elects new president
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8:16pm EDT
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's Western-backed opposition, the National Coalition, elected Hadi al-Bahra, chief negotiator at the Geneva peace talks, as its new president on Wednesday after a three-day meeting in Istanbul.
The United States and other key powers have designated the National Coalition as the main body representing the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but it has little power inside Syria where disparate militant groups outside its control hold ground.
Bahra, a U.S-trained industrial engineer, has close ties to regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, as did his predecessor Ahmad Jarba, who stood down after serving the maximum two six-month terms.
"We will not give up the fundamentals of the revolution and our demands are freedom and human dignity," Bahra told a news conference in Istanbul on Wednesday evening.
Bahra's election is unlikely to have any impact on the situation in Syria or within opposition ranks for now, though France - the first Western country to back the Coalition - welcomed his appointment and said it was still striving for a political resolution of the conflict.
The United States also applauded Bahra's selection. "We look to President-elect Bahra and other new leaders to reach out to all Syrian communities and to strengthen unity amongst moderate opposition institutions," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.
Infighting within the opposition coalition has undermined rebel efforts to take on forces loyal to Assad, playing into the hands of rival, more hardline groups that include foreign militants, such as the Islamic State.
Talks sponsored by the United States and Russia in Switzerland to end the three-year-old civil war stalled after two rounds in January and February, when the coalition and Assad's representatives failed to make substantive progress.
Bahra, born in Damascus in 1959, has worked in Saudi Arabia as a businessman running hospitals and a Jeddah-based media and software distribution company, a biography on the National Coalition's website said.
While welcoming Bahra's election, the French Foreign Ministry said Paris would not change its stance of providing civilian and non-lethal military aid. The rebels say they need heavy weaponry to change the balance on the ground in Syria.
"We will continue to provide support to help (the Coalition) fight oppression and terrorism," spokesman Romain Nadal said in a daily online briefing.
"This aid aims to help the moderate opposition protect the population against attacks by the regime and terrorists and provide basic public services in liberated zones."
A French diplomatic source said there was no real political will in Paris to increase military support and that the French wanted to focus on humanitarian efforts.
(Reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, John Irish in Paris and Missy Ryan in Washington; Editing by Gareth Jones, G Crosse and Mohammad Zargham)

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Gaza rockets land deep in Israel as it bombards Palestinian enclave
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7:50pm EDT
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli air strikes shook Gaza every few minutes on Wednesday, and militants kept up rocket fire at Israel's heartland in intensifying warfare that Palestinian officials said has killed at least 53 people in the Hamas-dominated enclave.
Missiles from Israel's Iron Dome defense system shot into the sky to intercept rockets launched, for the second straight day, at Tel Aviv, the country's commercial capital. Some were also aimed at Israel's Dimona nuclear plant, 80 km (50 miles) from Gaza, but were either shot down or landed in open country.
With cries of "Allahu akbar" (God is Greatest), Palestinians in the Gaza Strip cheered as rockets streaked overhead toward Israel, in attacks that could provide a popularity boost for Islamist Hamas, whose rift with neighboring Egypt's military-backed government has deepened economic hardship.
Dimona, desert site of a nuclear reactor and widely assumed to have a role in atomic weaponry, was targeted by locally made M-75 long-range rockets, militants said. The Israeli army said Iron Dome shot down one and two others caused no damage. It was unclear how close they came to the town or the nuclear site.
Communities near coastal Tel Aviv and in the south, closer to Gaza, were also targeted. In the longest-range attack since Tuesday, when Israel stepped up its offensive, a rocket hit near Zichron Yaakov, a town 115 km (70 miles) north of Gaza.
At least 45 civilians, including 12 children, were among the 53 Palestinian killed in two days of fighting, and more than 340 people have been wounded, hospital officials said. Forty-five of those killed were civilians, and 12 were under 18 years old.
No Israeli deaths or serious injuries were reported and Israeli news reports hailed as heroes the military crews of the Iron Dome batteries, which are made in Israel and partly funded by the United States. The military said 48 rockets struck Israel on Wednesday, and Iron Dome intercepted 14 others.
With frequent explosions from air strikes echoing through Gaza City, its main shopping street was largely deserted. Residents reported hundreds of attacks on Wednesday.
The Israeli military said it had bombarded 550 Hamas sites, including 60 rocket launchers and 11 homes of senior Hamas members. It described those dwellings as command centers.
In the latest strikes, Israel targeted a car marked as a media vehicle of a Gaza website which had the letters "TV" on it and killed the driver, four others were killed in the bombing of a cafe in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, and a 37-year-old man was killed in central Gaza, hospital officials said.
Palestinian officials said at least 25 houses were either destroyed or damaged, and not all belonged to militants.
BARRAGES
The fighting is the most serious between Israel and Gaza militants since an eight-day war in 2012. Violence began building up three weeks ago after three Jewish students were abducted in the occupied West Bank and later found killed. Last week, a teenage Palestinian was kidnapped and found killed in Jerusalem.
Cairo brokered a truce in the conflict two years ago, but the current, military government's hostility toward Islamists in general and to Hamas, which it accuses of aiding fellow militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, could make a mediation role more difficult. Hamas denies those allegations.
Palestinian rocket barrages have sent Israelis racing for bomb shelters, with radio stations constantly interrupting broadcasts to announce where sirens have sounded. But the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange seemed untroubled, ending the day with shares slightly higher. [ID:nL6N0PK1BX]
Israeli leaders, who seem to have wide popular support at home for the Gaza operation, have warned of a lengthy campaign and possible ground invasion of one of the world's most densely populated territories, home to nearly 2 million Palestinians.
"We have decided to step up even more the attacks on Hamas and terrorist organizations in Gaza," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
"The Israel Defence Forces are prepared for every option. Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing at Israeli citizens."
Netanyahu's security cabinet has already approved the potential mobilization of up to 40,000 reserve troops.
"This operation could take time. We are resolved to defend our families and our homes," the prime minister said.
Netanyahu's office said he had discussed the situation with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and that he would speak to other world leaders later.
Washington backed Israel's actions in Gaza, while the European Union and United Nations urged restraint on both sides. U.S. President Barack Obama, in a German newspaper article to be published on Thursday, said: "At this time of danger, everyone involved must protect the innocent and act in a sensible and measured way, not with revenge and retaliation."
Life appeared deceptively normal in Israeli cities, where shops were open and roads clogged with traffic. But questions were being asked on radio talk shows about an exit strategy and a timeframe for the offensive.
At a sidewalk cafe on a fashionable avenue in Tel Aviv, patrons seemed to take an air raid siren in their stride, staying in line for their coffee as joggers and cyclists passed.
Some 80 km (50 miles) away, outside homes hit by air strikes in Gaza, there were scenes of panicked neighbors, including mothers clutching crying children, running into the street to escape what they feared would be another attack.
At one convenience store, which had remained open, customer Abu Ahmed, 65, said he was pleased by the militants' resolve. "I am fine, as long as Tel Aviv is being hit," he said as he bought cigarettes.
HOMES HIT
In an air strike on a home in the north of the Gaza Strip, a leader of the Islamic Jihad group and five of his family were killed, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said. An 80-year-old woman was killed in an Israeli attack on another target in the center of the 40-km-long (25-mile-long) territory, local officials said.
A 60-year-old man and his son were killed when two missiles hit their house in Beit Hanoun in the north.
Israeli strikes on militants' homes, local residents said, are usually preceded by either warning fire or a telephone call telling its inhabitants to flee, in an attempt by Israel to avoid civilian casualties. But such bombing sometimes wounds or kills people in neighboring houses.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and entered a power-sharing arrangement with Hamas in April after years of feuding, said he had spoken to Egypt about the Gaza crisis. "This war is not against Hamas or any faction but is against the Palestinian people," the Western-backed leader said.
Egypt's state news agency said Egyptian authorities had decided to open the Rafah border crossing to Gaza on Thursday to allow wounded Palestinians to receive medical care in Egypt.
Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Cairo has secured closures on the Gaza border, increasing economic pressure on Hamas from a long-running Israeli blockade.
"Sisi stressed Egypt was interested in the safety of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and sparing this grave assault," a statement from Abbas's office said, adding that Cairo would "exert efforts to reach an immediate ceasefire".
But an Israeli minister appeared to play down any expectations that Egypt would intervene soon.
In the West Bank, about 400 Palestinian youths, chanting their support for Hamas's armed wing, threw stones at an army checkpoint. Troops responded with teargas and rubber bullets.
Israel has blamed Hamas for the killing of the three Jewish seminary students who disappeared while hitchhiking in the West Bank on June 12. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied a role.
The rocket fire from Gaza began after Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas activists in a West Bank sweep it mounted in tandem with a search for the youths, who were found dead last week. A Palestinian teen was abducted and killed in Jerusalem last Wednesday in a suspected revenge murder. Six Israelis have been arrested in that case.
While threatening an "earthquake" of escalation against Israel, Hamas said it could restore calm if Israel halted the Gaza offensive, once again committed to a 2012 truce and freed the prisoners it detained in the West Bank last month.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Maayan Lubell and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Noah Browning and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Mark Felsenthal and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Will Waterman, Alastair Macdonald and Mohammad Zargham)

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Austal announced earlier this year that it has been awarded a contract from a naval customer in the Middle East for the design, construction and integrated logistics support of two new 72 metre High Speed Support Vessels (HSSVs) based on the U.S. Navy's Joint High Speed Vessels design. It now appears that this customer is the Royal Navy of Oman.

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