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Monday, April 14, 2008       Free Headline Alerts

Report: Israel's tiny air space makes it vulnerable to 9/11-type attack

TEL AVIV — A report by Haifa University found that increasing civilian air traffic to Israel has increased the risk of a suicide air attack similar to that which struck the United States in 2001.

The report said Israel was also increasingly vulnerable to air strikes from neighboring countries.

"Israel's air space is very small," the report said. "The flight time of an airliner — civil or military — from Beirut to Haifa is about seven minutes, and two minutes from the border crossing at Rosh Hanikra. Crossing the width of the entire country by air takes less than five minutes. Therefore, the task of defending this open space is a big challenge."

The report said Israeli peace accords with Egypt and Jordan have exposed the Jewish state to significantly greater air traffic. The flight routes were established in the 1990s before the Al Qaida strikes on New York and Washington.

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Israel Air Force Lt. Col. Ron Tuegeman drafted the report, supported by the Israeli National Defense College and the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies. The air force has been on alert for Al Qaida-type suicide strikes, particularly from neighboring Lebanon.

The report cited the Israeli southern city of Eilat. Eilat is located next to airports in neighboring Egypt and Jordan, and close to an air path to the Gulf.

"The city of Eilat is an example of the complexity of policy-making following the signing of peace accords," the report said. "The new flight paths G-183 and 'Trans-Israel,' which opened during a period of positive trends in planning, are now weak points which put the Israeli air defense establishment in a very difficult position. It seems that today, with the hindsight of the air terror attack on the United States, these lanes of air travel would not have been opened."

The report said Israel must take into account the vulnerability of its air space in any accord with the Palestinian Authority. Researchers cited Israel's Ben-Gurion International Airport, located within three kilometers of the West Bank.

"It will be enough if the Palestinians acquire an anti-aircraft missile system — shoulder-launched missiles such as SA-7 — to shut down Ben-Gurion Airport and effectively halt the majority of Israeli air traffic," the report said. "In any political-security agreement, Israel will not be able to concede sovereignty over its air space to any neighboring Palestinian entity that will be established."

To see these two men honored by President Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom was shocking. They both deserved major reprimands and removal from their posts, rather than medals. Their effrontery has no bounds evidenced when each produced a book seeking to absolve themselves of blame. Both have since been hooted off the stage by the reading public.


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