US Building Military Base On West Bank Border?
israelinsider reports,
The sudden appearance south of Rosh Ha’ayin of a massive army “supply base,” built by the U.S. army engineering corps for the IDF with Arab workers, has raised eyebrows and suspicions about the real purpose and intended users of the massive facility.
According to an IDF spokesman, the new base (dubbed “Nachshonim,” after a nearby kibbutz) and located less than 10 minutes east of Ben Gurion airport, will be used as a storage facility for reservists’ equipment, including beds, uniforms, etc.
Still, the base’s massive size — dozens of huge warehouses, with reinforced bunkers, watchtowers, and tunnels — casts a shadow of doubt over this singular explanation for its use.
[…] According to one former American soldier who viewed photographs of the base (and who would only speak on condition of anonymity) “I saw these kind of installations when I was in the [U.S.] military. For years I was stationed at a base where a major part of it was like this. These are not barracks of any kind. The metal facilities built up on the rocks are huge electronic facilities, probably filled with CIA and extensive phone and other electronic monitoring stuff. I have seen bunkers like this before, at a base in California. It is a missile launch bunker. Somewhere within a mile to 5 miles are silos with the missiles in them,” he said.
But, the IDF spokesman insists: “It’s a storage facility for emergency supplies.”
Now don’t get too excited: Barry Chamish broke the story.
a couple of the other lesser know israel jblogs had this with even pictures about 4 months ago
hope it’s true, it will further solidify israeli-us relations and demonstrate again the usefullness of israel to america.
We pass this on one of the routes to my village (aka “settlement”).
We’ve received no solid answer, but the base laps up against an army training range on its southern side, a new haredi town on its west side, and the Green Line is literally a stone’s throw to the east.
Anyone care to guess what it means that the US is building a base that sits on the Green Line?
Best news I’ve heard in a long time!
Americans building IDF bases in nothing new. Both the tank school and engineering school in the south were built by the Americans.
Mob,
just because Barry Chamish broke it means it doesn’t exist?
Harry,
you’re missing the point. There is an american flag flying at the gate, it isn’t like Ovda or Shizafon which were built specifically by ‘America’ for the IDF. And the base wasn’t built to store beds and uniforms, it is m a s s i v e (relatively speaking though), with bunkers, blast shields like on aircraft hangars and much more.
avigreen,
I’m leaning towards the theory that this is probably to ‘solidify’ the Israeli-US relations and the demonstrate again the dependance of Israel on ‘America’. I have no doubt that one day in the near future, there will be a breakdown of Israeli society and US and/or US troops will be ‘required’/’invited’ to be ‘peacekeepers’.
I’ve passed by the base a few times and it is awesome. The pictures in the link below only show part of it.
http://tinyurl.com/7luv3
missed the “barry” reference before, taking the source into account, this is obviously an extension of area 54, the us is now outsourcing to israel the storage and dissection of aliens from mars, expect israel to be outfitted in the near future with death rays, invisibility shields, and molecular transporters. all aboard mr. spock
Josh is right this is very bad for Israel.
We should have no dependence on other countries.
Yes, I also had the first initial reaction that this is bad for Israel.
But that doesn’t hold up on second thought.
If the Americans are saying, “right, we finally get it, we are not going to base our Mideast presence in hostile Arab countries that are not reliable allies, instead we will base ourselves in Israel” – that would actually be very positive for Israel. It would give the Americans strong motives to increase intelligence and other cooperation with us, and would be a disincentive to administrations whose policies would leave Israel vulnerable.
Certainly, one American base full of American soldiers cannot do more damage to Israeli democracy than our own left-leaning media, judiciary, and political crony-ocracy have already done. The events of this past year – and especially these last few months – have shown how close we already are to being a banana republic.
For Israel to be so closely linked to the USA makes Arab claims that Israel is a colonial entity more believable to many people.
And for the USA to so closely link its military presence in the region to Israel makes claims of a Zionist-controlled US gov more believable to some. I think both the USA and Israel could do good, but it would be harder for them to do it while so closely linked in public image.
If Iraq goes down the tubes any more, Israel, and more precisely American Jews take the blame for the whole war that doesn’t seem to have any reasons.
If the USA pumps up its pro-Israel sentiments in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, both countries lose credibility in the region.
Are we really worried about people who think that Joos control the US government? If the base weren’t built – would those people have a more rational line? Are we really depending on these people for our “credibility”?
So far, it looks like just one base – possibly used to share intelligence, possibly to store armaments as part of America’s (now obvious) long-term presence in the region.
So? Nobody is disbanding the IDF.
When the Pentagon budget gets cut, countries from Belgium to Borneo scramble to make sure *their* American base is not removed. Exclude the Muslims, and you can count the number of countries that have had trouble hosting American troops on the fingers of one hand – and have fingers left over.
And I can’t think of anything better than American troops camped on the green line to put a brake on “screw the Jews” policies in Washingon.