Hamas and Al-Qaeda Attack Israel Through Egyptian-Controlled Sinai
From Amy Tiebel, AP Jerusalem, "Attackers from Egypt kill 7 inside Israel," http://news.yahoo.com/attackers-egypt-kill-7-inside-israel-141615092.html
Squads of gunmen armed with heavy weapons and explosives crossed into southern Israel from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Thursday, killing seven Israelis in an audacious series of attacks, officials said.
Note the scale of this action -- section- and possibly platoon-level. This was a coordinated effort by Hamas, and represents a deliberate resumption of active warfare on the part of the Gaza city-state.
The violence stoked concerns about Palestinian militants exploiting instability in Egypt.
The point being that the Egyptian border guards were either incompetent, corrupt or sympathetic to the terrorists, since a whole section of Hamas troops could not have easily gotten through alert, honest and loyal border guards.
The attacks began around midday and lasted for about three hours. Israeli security forces tracked down some of the assailants and killed several in a gunbattle, military spokesman Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai said.
"Several" is a worrisomely-small claim, which implies that the majority of the Hamas troops escaped. This will embolden Hamas to launch further attacks. Note that these must have been among the elite, probably Iranian-trained forces, of which Hamas possesses only limited numbers, so Hamas cannot afford to throw them away as they do their militia.
Defense officials said three bodies were booby-trapped and Israeli TV channels said seven attackers were killed.
"Seven" would be bad news, because it would mean that Hamas actually managed to achieve a 1:1 kill ratio. If this is true, Israel for her own sake had better resume bombardment of the Gaza, in order to ensure the infliction of an exchange rate unsustainable by Hamas.
Israel almost immediately said the attackers came from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and made their way through Sinai, which borders both Israel and Gaza. That raised the specter of an Israeli military reprisal against the Palestinian territory.
Again, one would hope in this case that Israel would hit the Gaza, and hit it hard. The Israelis should also consider increasing their blockade to totality, and specifically striking against Hamas supply depots. The Gaza Palestinians need to suffer for this, and by "suffer" I do not merely mean a shortage of chocolate and coriander.
Egypt and Hamas denied the allegations.
The Hamas denial is to be expected, as they are honorless vermin who we may properly assume to be devoted to the cause of genocide. The Egyptian denial is more worrisome, because it implies that the Egyptians will do nothing to prevent recurrence of such attacks, which in turn means that Egypt has abandoned the Camp David peace accords. If that is true, then Israel now has the right to retake the Sinai, by force if necessary, since the Sinai was yielded on the condition that Egypt not allow it to be used for attacks against Israel. This could mean an Egyptian-Israeli war down the pike.
Last week, Egypt moved thousands of troops into the Sinai peninsula as part of a major operation against al-Qaida inspired militants who have been increasingly active in Sinai since Mubarak's ouster in February. The militants have taken advantage of the security vacuum caused by the abrupt withdrawal of police forces. Authorities have blamed the militants for brazen attacks on police patrols as well as a string of bombings on a key pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel and Jordan.
The Al-Qaeda connection here is worrisome, because it adds another viciously-hostile player to the game. Note that Egypt also is a target of Al Qaeda here. Also note the similarity to the tactics that Al Qaeda is using in Pakistan: targeting the non-Terrorist regime while attempting to take advantage of sympathizers among the victim state's population. This tactic works because of the extremely low loyalty of most Muslim populations to their own governments, even Muslim governments, which in turn derives from the transnational nature of Islamism as an ideology.
The attacks began around midday, when assailants targeted a packed passenger bus driving along a highway about 10 miles north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat, close to the border crossing into Sinai. Within the space of about an hour, the attackers opened fire on two more buses and two civilian cars ...
Note the immediate escalation to attacks on the civilian populace, which means that Israel bears no moral onus for any civilians who will be killed in the retaliation, as much as certain fools will claim she does. Al-Qaeda and Hamas have set the rules of this game, and will as usual lose even under those rules.
This is almost certainly the point at which most of the seven Israelis were killed, as sitaution in which the Arabs engage Israeli troops tend to produce very different casualty patterns!
Around the same time, an undisclosed number of mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli soldiers conducting routine maintenance work on the security fence along the Israel-Egypt border.
Which pretty much proves Hamas involvement, since it was from the Gaza which is tightly controlled by Hamas.
In Egypt, a senior security official denied that the attackers crossed into Israel from Sinai or that the buses were fired at from inside Egyptian territory.
"The border is heavily guarded," said a Sinai-based official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Pretty foolish of the Egyptian official, since this denial is not in the interests of the Egyptian government. (We know that the Terrorists attacked through the Sinai, so such a denial implies that they did so with Egyptian compliance, the scenario in which Egypt would have committed an act of war against Israel. By contrast, if the Terrorist simply moved with stealth through Egyptian territory, Egypt would have faced an embarassment but not committed an act of war against Israel). This is par for the course, as a demonstration of the incompetence of Arab regimes.
Palestinian leaders in the West Bank have drawn up plans for rallies in September in hopes of boosting their drive for U.N. recognition - an initiative begun after Palestinians lost faith in peace talks with Israel. Those negotiations have been frozen for most of the past three years and there is no sign the two sides can agree on conditions to resume them.
My guess is that Hamas chose to do this now rather than later in the hopes of preventing the UN recognition from succeeding. UN recognition would boost the power and prestige of the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank, which is the last thing that the rulers of a radical breakaway Palestinian city-state would want to see happen.
Here's hoping that Israel hits back and hits back hard, so that the Gaza Palestinians stop crying about 2009 and have some whole new sources of misery! :)
Comments very welcome.
Squads of gunmen armed with heavy weapons and explosives crossed into southern Israel from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Thursday, killing seven Israelis in an audacious series of attacks, officials said.
Note the scale of this action -- section- and possibly platoon-level. This was a coordinated effort by Hamas, and represents a deliberate resumption of active warfare on the part of the Gaza city-state.
The violence stoked concerns about Palestinian militants exploiting instability in Egypt.
The point being that the Egyptian border guards were either incompetent, corrupt or sympathetic to the terrorists, since a whole section of Hamas troops could not have easily gotten through alert, honest and loyal border guards.
The attacks began around midday and lasted for about three hours. Israeli security forces tracked down some of the assailants and killed several in a gunbattle, military spokesman Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai said.
"Several" is a worrisomely-small claim, which implies that the majority of the Hamas troops escaped. This will embolden Hamas to launch further attacks. Note that these must have been among the elite, probably Iranian-trained forces, of which Hamas possesses only limited numbers, so Hamas cannot afford to throw them away as they do their militia.
Defense officials said three bodies were booby-trapped and Israeli TV channels said seven attackers were killed.
"Seven" would be bad news, because it would mean that Hamas actually managed to achieve a 1:1 kill ratio. If this is true, Israel for her own sake had better resume bombardment of the Gaza, in order to ensure the infliction of an exchange rate unsustainable by Hamas.
Israel almost immediately said the attackers came from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and made their way through Sinai, which borders both Israel and Gaza. That raised the specter of an Israeli military reprisal against the Palestinian territory.
Again, one would hope in this case that Israel would hit the Gaza, and hit it hard. The Israelis should also consider increasing their blockade to totality, and specifically striking against Hamas supply depots. The Gaza Palestinians need to suffer for this, and by "suffer" I do not merely mean a shortage of chocolate and coriander.
Egypt and Hamas denied the allegations.
The Hamas denial is to be expected, as they are honorless vermin who we may properly assume to be devoted to the cause of genocide. The Egyptian denial is more worrisome, because it implies that the Egyptians will do nothing to prevent recurrence of such attacks, which in turn means that Egypt has abandoned the Camp David peace accords. If that is true, then Israel now has the right to retake the Sinai, by force if necessary, since the Sinai was yielded on the condition that Egypt not allow it to be used for attacks against Israel. This could mean an Egyptian-Israeli war down the pike.
Last week, Egypt moved thousands of troops into the Sinai peninsula as part of a major operation against al-Qaida inspired militants who have been increasingly active in Sinai since Mubarak's ouster in February. The militants have taken advantage of the security vacuum caused by the abrupt withdrawal of police forces. Authorities have blamed the militants for brazen attacks on police patrols as well as a string of bombings on a key pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel and Jordan.
The Al-Qaeda connection here is worrisome, because it adds another viciously-hostile player to the game. Note that Egypt also is a target of Al Qaeda here. Also note the similarity to the tactics that Al Qaeda is using in Pakistan: targeting the non-Terrorist regime while attempting to take advantage of sympathizers among the victim state's population. This tactic works because of the extremely low loyalty of most Muslim populations to their own governments, even Muslim governments, which in turn derives from the transnational nature of Islamism as an ideology.
The attacks began around midday, when assailants targeted a packed passenger bus driving along a highway about 10 miles north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat, close to the border crossing into Sinai. Within the space of about an hour, the attackers opened fire on two more buses and two civilian cars ...
Note the immediate escalation to attacks on the civilian populace, which means that Israel bears no moral onus for any civilians who will be killed in the retaliation, as much as certain fools will claim she does. Al-Qaeda and Hamas have set the rules of this game, and will as usual lose even under those rules.
This is almost certainly the point at which most of the seven Israelis were killed, as sitaution in which the Arabs engage Israeli troops tend to produce very different casualty patterns!
Around the same time, an undisclosed number of mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli soldiers conducting routine maintenance work on the security fence along the Israel-Egypt border.
Which pretty much proves Hamas involvement, since it was from the Gaza which is tightly controlled by Hamas.
In Egypt, a senior security official denied that the attackers crossed into Israel from Sinai or that the buses were fired at from inside Egyptian territory.
"The border is heavily guarded," said a Sinai-based official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Pretty foolish of the Egyptian official, since this denial is not in the interests of the Egyptian government. (We know that the Terrorists attacked through the Sinai, so such a denial implies that they did so with Egyptian compliance, the scenario in which Egypt would have committed an act of war against Israel. By contrast, if the Terrorist simply moved with stealth through Egyptian territory, Egypt would have faced an embarassment but not committed an act of war against Israel). This is par for the course, as a demonstration of the incompetence of Arab regimes.
Palestinian leaders in the West Bank have drawn up plans for rallies in September in hopes of boosting their drive for U.N. recognition - an initiative begun after Palestinians lost faith in peace talks with Israel. Those negotiations have been frozen for most of the past three years and there is no sign the two sides can agree on conditions to resume them.
My guess is that Hamas chose to do this now rather than later in the hopes of preventing the UN recognition from succeeding. UN recognition would boost the power and prestige of the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank, which is the last thing that the rulers of a radical breakaway Palestinian city-state would want to see happen.
Here's hoping that Israel hits back and hits back hard, so that the Gaza Palestinians stop crying about 2009 and have some whole new sources of misery! :)
Comments very welcome.