PBS Newshour 5/13/2011
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"British Commander Says Libya Fight Must Expand" by JOHN F. BURNS, New York Times 5/15/2011
Excerpt
Two months into the NATO bombing campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, Britain’s top military commander has said that the Libyan leader could remain “clinging to power” unless NATO broadened its bombing targets to include the country’s infrastructure.
The comments, by Gen. Sir David Richards, came at the end of a week that saw NATO step up its airstrikes, with an accelerated tempo of attacks on the capital, Tripoli. In the predawn hours of Thursday, a volley of heavy bunker-busting bombs that struck Colonel Qaddafi’s underground command headquarters in the city appeared to have narrowly missed killing him.
Colonel Qaddafi’s defiant audio message after that attack, telling NATO he was “in a place where you can’t get me,” appears to have played a part in galvanizing opinion among NATO commanders, particularly in Britain and France, the nations carrying out the bulk of the bombing.
Britain, in particular, with heavy combat commitments in Afghanistan and mounting costs for the Libyan air campaign straining its military budget, has been concerned that the conflict could be settling into a long-running stalemate.
Under the United Nations Security Council resolution approving the Libyan air campaign, NATO was empowered to use “all necessary means” to protect the country’s civilian population from attack by pro-Qaddafi forces, which hold Tripoli and much of western Libya, while rebel forces control much of the country’s eastern region. That mandate has been stretched beyond attacks on tanks, artillery and other units engaged in front-line combat to a wide range of targets in Tripoli and elsewhere that have been identified by NATO as “command-and-control” centers, including Colonel Qaddafi’s Tripoli bunker.
But with the war now at the end of its third month and the two sides skirmishing in battle zones spread across hundreds of miles, there has been growing concern in NATO capitals that the strategy needs a game-changing adjustment that might bring a rebel victory closer.
NATO officials have made no secret of their belief that this would most likely come with attacks that weaken Colonel Qaddafi’s hold on Tripoli, ideally attacks that spread a sense of despondency among Qaddafi forces and lend an impetus to a rebel underground that has roots in some quarters of the city.
"Israeli Troops Fire as Marchers Breach Borders" by ETHAN BRONNER, New York Times 5/15/2011
Excerpt
Israel’s borders erupted in deadly clashes on Sunday as thousands of Palestinians — marching from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank — confronted Israeli troops to mark the anniversary of Israel’s creation. More than a dozen people were reported killed and scores injured.
With an unprecedented wave of coordinated protests, the popular uprisings that have swept the region touched Israel directly for the first time. Like those other protests, plans for this one spread over social media, including Facebook, but there were also signs of official support in Lebanon and Syria, where analysts said leaders were using the Palestinian cause to deflect attention from internal problems.
At the Lebanese border, Israeli troops shot at hundreds of Palestinians trying to force their way across. The Lebanese military said 10 protesters were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Israel said it was investigating the casualties.
In the Golan Heights, about 100 Palestinians living in Syria breached a border fence and crowded into the village of Majdal Shams, waving Palestinian flags. Troops fired on the crowd, killing four people. The border unrest could represent a new phase in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
In the West Bank, about 1,000 protesters carrying Palestinian flags and throwing stones and occasional firecrackers and gasoline bombs fought with Israeli riot troops near the military checkpoint between Ramallah and Israel. Scores were injured, local medical officials said.
In Gaza, when marchers crossed a security zone near the border, Israeli troops fired into the crowd, wounding dozens.
In Jordan and Egypt, government security forces thwarted protesters headed to the border.
Every year in mid-May, many Palestinians observe what they call “the nakba,” or catastrophe, the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 and the war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes through expulsion and flight. But this was the first year that Palestinian refugees and their supporters in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, inspired by the recent protests around the Arab world, tried to breach Israel’s military border from all sides.
Israel will never learn.
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