Showing posts sorted by date for query egypt explosives. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query egypt explosives. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Monday, August 30, 2010

  • Monday, August 30, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Over the weekend, Egyptian security forces discovered five separate caches of weapons, explosives and ammunition that were on their way to Gaza.

110 anti-aircraft missiles were found in one area, and 60 more in another. A third contained 100 kg of explosives. The others had ammunition, more explosives and weapons.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

  • Wednesday, July 21, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
For years, the Western media has been enamored with Gaza's tunnel industry. Reporters were keen to be lowered into the tunnels, lionizing the industry to sometimes outrageous degrees. 

The articles barely mentioned the fact that Hamas smuggled weapons as well through the tunnels. Even when Egypt would confiscate large caches of weapons in Rafah meant to be shot at Israelis, or when Hamas themselves bragged about the amount of weaponry and explosives they managed to bring through the tunnels, the mainstream media steadfastly downplayed that aspect of the industry and instead romanticized it.

The media also loved to characterize the smugglers as heroes of Arab capitalism, and ignored the fact that Hamas had de facto control over the tunnels and taxed them for its revenue - revenue that went towards more weapons, as Gaza's infrastructure was being paid for by clueless Westerners.

It looks like the love affair between the media and the smugglers is not over yet.

Now that Gaza is awash in consumer goods from Israel (that the media tried to downplay as well,) the new stories are about how horrible this development is - to the smugglers.

One very telling example comes from The Atlantic:

[A]t the Egyptian border, in the heart of Gaza's tunnel industry, there's little if any rejoicing at the blockade's dismantlement. As Israeli consumer goods saturate Gaza's markets, the tunnels have lost their clientele. Smugglers understand that their days are numbered, but there's nothing to replace the jobs the industry provided.

"Work has run dry. Every day is getting worse and worse. It's the end of the tunnel period," says Abu Mohammad, a tunnel owner who has made millions from the industry. "It's not just me suffering. It's everyone in this business. ... No one knows what will happen to us."

The resilient industry survived Israeli bombings, Egyptian gassing, and flooding. Days after the end of Israel's 22-day offensive in January 2009, activity in the tunnel zone was frenzied--generators hummed, pulleys screeched and loading trucks banged. Most recently, smugglers drilled through the steel subterranean wall Egypt began to construct last December.

Today, though, the tunnel district is eerily silent. Market traders have either bought Israeli or stalled orders in anticipation of new goods from the Jewish state. An estimated 10 percent of the tunnels are still operating, but even those work sporadically.

Most tunnels are concentrated about half a mile from the Egyptian border, in an area five miles long and less than two miles wide. They open up in neat rows, shaded by white and black plastic tents.

Abu Saber's tunnel is at the front line, closest to the Egyptian border. Rolls of smuggled iron sheet are stacked neatly at the passageway's entrance. The haul is Saber's first shipment in 10 days.

The sandy floor of his tunnel slopes downward, easing into the ground. Buttressed inside by iron walls, the tunnel is about five feet wide and high enough to walk only slightly hunched. Inside, it's muggy and dank, pungent with the smell of earth and human sweat.

Before the blockade was eased, Saber's tunnel, like many others, operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week and employed 10-12 people for each 12-hour shift, carting everything from chocolate to refrigerators. Now, Saber says, he's barely making enough hauling iron, steel, and ceramics--products that remain embargoed. And even profits on those have dropped dramatically.

"Before one ton of iron sold for $400 [U.S.], now it goes for between $150 and $200. These prices are not good enough for labor and expenses," Abu Saber laments.
How many ways can a single article make smugglers sound heroic? Gaza's economy has improved dramatically in a few short weeks, people who hate Israel are happily buying Israeli items - and the Atlantic spends 12 paragraphs talking about how the media's heroes are coping at the loss of their illicit businesses.

This is just a further example of how much the mainstream media is at the mercy of memes. Once a narrative is established, reporters act like sheep in following and expanding it - but rarely challenging it. This is why the stories out of Gaza all the same - poor Palestinian Arabs, heroic smugglers of consumer goods, Israel blockading essential goods, a looming humanitarian crisis.

Almost invisible are the stories about the upper and middle class Gazans, going to spas and even building mansions, eating out and working out and playing. Even rarer are the stories of Hamas' intimidation of ordinary Gazans, increasing religious legislation in the sector, tortures and killings.

The journalists are happy to follow but loathe to challenge. Hamas may be threatening and intimidating them but it doesn't take much to make journalists toe the line.

If you don't believe me, just try to find an article by a journalist that tried to find any weapons smuggling tunnels in Gaza. You won't. Grad missiles and anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons just magically appear in Gaza - but from reading the media you just couldn't figure out how.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

  • Sunday, July 11, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Haaretz reported last week:
Mexico foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to establish a network in South America, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Hezbollah operatives employed Mexicans nationals with family ties to Lebanon to set up the network, designed to target Israel and the West, the Al-Seyassah daily said.

According to the report, Mexican police mounted a surveillance operation on the group's leader, Jameel Nasr, who traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hezbollah commanders there.

Police say Nasr also made frequent trips to other countries in Latin America, including a two-month stay in Venezuela in the summer of 2008.

Nasr was living in Tijuana, Mexico at the time of his arrest, the report said.

The report follows warnings from the United States that Hezbollah and its backer Iran are stepping up operations in the region.

In June, a U.S. congresswoman wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to warn that Hezbollah was increasing its presence in Central and South America.

In her letter, Congresswoman Sue Myrick called on the U.S. to work with Mexican forces, as there was intelligence that Hezbollah was working in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2009 a U.S. commander tasked with overseeing U.S. military interests in the region said Hezbollah was linked to drug-trafficking in Colombia.
Hezbollah's activities in Central and South America are a bit more long-term and entrenched, however. From The Sunday Paper, May 21, 2007:
Argentina linked Hezbollah to the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the Argentine-Israeli Community Center in 1994, both in Buenos Aires. A car bomb loaded with 300 kilograms of explosives was used to execute the latter attack, which killed 81 people.

In February 2000, Paraguayan authorities arrested Ali Khalil Mehri, a Lebanese businessman with financial links to Hezbollah, in the country's Tri-Border Area, so called because Brazil and Argentina's borders meet Paraguay's there. In November of that year, Paraguayan authorities arrested Salah Abdul Karim Yassine, a Palestinian who allegedly threatened to bomb the U.S. and Israeli Embassies in Paraguay, and charged him with entering the country illegally.

As reported by the Washington Times on Aug. 21, 2001—less than a month before Sept. 11—U.S. Special Forces were training Paraguayan soldiers here in anti-drug operations "that closely resemble counterinsurgency operations," while hundreds of U.S. soldiers spent four months in Paraguay which had "long been a home to Arabs linked to the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad militias."

As reported in international Spanish newspaper El Pais in November 2001, an investigation by the National Direction of Civil Aeronautics determined that 16 foreigners enter Paraguay illegally on a weekly basis via the airport of Ciudad del Este, paying some $5,000 in advance, but many more are believed to enter by land.

According to the state department, since 2003, "al-Said Mokhles was extradited from Uruguay to Egypt, Ali Nizar Dahroug was convicted in Paraguay of tax evasion and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison, and Assad Ahmad Barakat, the Hezbollah financial kingpin in the Tri-Border Area, was extradited from Brazil to Paraguay also to face tax evasion charges."

[Quoting Forbes] Iran is the biggest patron of Hezbollah, delivering $100 million or so a year to the terrorists ...Last year, Rady Zaiter, a Lebanese citizen, was arrested in Colombia for allegedly heading a cocaine smuggling outfit in Ecuador that sent most of its profits to Hezbollah … The Party of God gets $10 million a year from the area where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet.
Hezbollah's international reach is barely reported in the MSM, as it continues to morph Western perceptions of the organization from a worldwide terrorist group into just another Lebanese political party.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

  • Wednesday, May 12, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Today reports that for the third time in 48 hours, Egyptian forces have uncovered a major cache of weapons on their way to Gaza.

These included anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles as well as explosives.

They were hidden in the central Sinai.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

  • Tuesday, May 11, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
Ma'an (Arabic only) reports that Egyptian authorities have seized two more caches of arms and explosives near the Rafah border with Gaza.

One cache, which included anti-tank mines, was discovered in a graveyard some 3 km from the border. The other was found in a nearby warehouse, and Egyptian authorities have been increasing monitoring of Sinai warehouses.

These sorts of stories have not been making it into the English-language media very often, although they are regular events.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

  • Thursday, January 21, 2010
  • Elder of Ziyon
BBC 2 sent a real soldier, Iraq war veteran Col. Tim Collins, to look at Sderot and Gaza. He saw the evidence of secondary mosque explosions that Goldstone didn't. He interviews Gaza rocket makers and gets chased out of Rafah where the weapons smugglers work. He honestly looks at one of the bigger accidents of the war, where the Gaza doctor's daughters were killed, and shows how difficult it would be for Israelis to have distinguished the civilians.

Wish I could embed it.

(h/t t34zakat)
UPDATE: Here's the article about the video that includes most of the text, from Conflictzones.tv: (h/t Gaia)
Inside the Gaza Strip – subjected to a short but bloody war against Israeli forces that ended in January 2009, and under the control of the Islamist militant movement Hamas - Colonel Tim Collins drove up to a massive roadside poster.

“It shows the Legoland town of Sderot [southern Israel] being bombarded by unguided weapons,” said the Colonel. “[Responding to] this is what the Israelis say the attack was all about. But this poster wasn’t produced by an Israeli PR company. It was paid for by Hamas, and they’ve got their badge on it – showing a war crime by any standard.”

The main target for the rocket fire depicted in the Hamas roadside billboard had indeed been the small Israeli border town of Sderot.

In the town, British-born Tottenham-supporting police officer Micky Rosenfeld showed the Colonel gaily-painted bomb-shelters into which the town’s 30-thousand citizens would flee for relative safety every time they heard a piercing “Red Alert” siren. The Colonel noted that fragments [of metal ball-bearings stuffed into rocket-heads] had ripped holes even into the thick metal walls that surround the bomb-shelters. “That’s vicious,” Colonel Collins said. “If that hits your flesh it would tear you up.”

Thousands of rockets and mortars had fallen during the eight years before Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008, Colonel Collins was told.

“Growing up in Belfast during The Troubles, I can sympathise with them. It’s no way to live … These were by and large people who had decamped from an Islamic society in north Africa and found themselves living on the front-line,” Colonel Collins said, [referring to Jews from Arab north Africa who had come to Israel in the 1950s and had often settled in small towns in the country’s under-developed south.]

Behind the town’s police station was a collection of the remnants of rockets that had struck the town. Colonel Collins picked up a rusting rocket casing. “It can’t be accurate, because it’s heavy and imprecise – so this is an indiscriminate weapon,” said Colonel Collins. Police Chief Inspector Rosenfeld told him how he believed the rocket-firers sometimes managed to target their missiles -- by listening to Israeli radio which revealed where the first rocket or rockets had hit, and then adjusting their sights to make the next ones more lethal.

Rosenfeld also showed him the remnants of more advanced Grad rockets, which he said had been smuggled to the armed Palestinian groups via a number of countries through tunnels under the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt. Twenty of these had hit cities far further up the coast or far further inland during three days at the start of the Gaza-Israel war, he said. Israel feared that if it failed to act, Palestinian militants in Gaza would over time be able to smuggle in or develop rocketry that could hit further and further away until missiles reached the main Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

Late at night, the Colonel managed to rendezvous inside the Gaza Strip with men who fired rockets across the border into Israel. The Colonel was being driven by Abu Haroon, a beaded fighter from a sub-group of Fatah called the Abu Rish Brigade. At the rocket men’s makeshift base inside a refugee camp, Abu Haroon and his men produced a rocket and started dismantling it. “TNT [a high explosive] was spilling out of the back of it,” recalls the Colonel, “and I was particularly nervous when they put a badly-constructed home-made fuse on top of the device, making it a live weapon, then brandished a detonator.”

Abu Haroon made it clear that these rockets were “simple” devices that could not be accurately targeted. “We don’t know where these drop,” he told the Colonel. “Because there are no electronics here. Not big shooting rocket like Israel says about it.” Expressing the hope that conflict will end and that “the children can grow up without ever having known the war that Abu Haroon and his men have known, God willing,” Colonel Collins left and was driven back to his hotel in Gaza City.

Later, in Bet Hanun, northern Gaza Strip, the Colonel examined the remains of a deserted and destroyed mosque -- one of several that had been smashed during the Gaza-Israel war. Inside the now deserted mosque, Colonel Collins looked up at a gaping hole left by an air strike. “The allegation was that this was used as a storage facility for weapons,” said the Colonel as he tramped about the ruined structure. “I have to say that what was commonplace in Iraq was also seemed to be evident in Gaza as well. Down in the cellar of the mosque there was clear evidence of secondary explosions. It’s my opinion that the only thing that could have caused this was that explosives were stored here.”

The Colonel also went to the scene of possibly the most well-publicised tragedy of the war. A tank had fired two rounds into an apartment block. The shells struck a bedroom and killed three daughters and a niece of a local doctor, Ezzedeen Abualaish. Colonel Collins found the scene “heart-rending”, but when he painstakingly found the exact spot from which the tank, perched on a hillside overlooking Gaza City, had fired two rounds, he was able to work out what the Israeli tank-gunner would have been able to see.

“The civilians had been evacuated into Gaza…. I have to say that it would be difficult from this range, even through optic sights, to make out clear targets. So you would only see shadows.” However the Colonel said firing a main armaments round without actually identifying the target was “questionable”. [An Israeli military investigation in 2009 stated that the gunner had believed there were Palestinian fighters moving around in what he and his commander thought was an abandoned building. The doctor had been telephoned by an Israeli military officer days before advising him and his family and all inhabitants to leave the building, the report stated.]

On his way out of the Gaza Strip, Colonel Collins passed alongside a plethora of roadside pictures and billboards plastered with the faces of young men killed in years of conflict with Israel, each shown in a heroic pose wielding a weapon. “Some call them ‘legitimate targets’, others call them ‘martyrs’. They’ve certainly been ‘martyred’ to suit someone’s agenda. In my view, like in Ireland, it’s a waste of young lives.”

As Colonel Collins walked towards a heavily fortified checkpoint to exit Gaza, he reflected on his visit. “The real victims here are the people of Gaza, and the people of Sderot, who’ve been used like cattle,” he said. “In my view that’s the real crime.”

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

  • Tuesday, December 29, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Last year on this day, I posted this article:

There has been no shortage of criticism of Israel for finally deciding to do something about incessant rocket attacks against its citizens. From the U.N. Secretary-General calling Israel's actions "excessive" to French President Nicolas Sarkozy saying that Israel is using a "disproportionate use of force" to the EU's Javier Solana saying "There is no military solution" to the situation in Gaza, down to the more reliably anti-Israel crowd from the "progressive" Left who decry the deaths of civilians, a large segment of the world seems to agree that israel has no right to act as it has been for the past few days.

Certainly, no one wants to see innocent people die in a massive military operation. But before you criticize Israel you need to answer a simple question:

What is the alternative?


It is easy to mindlessly repeat the comforting words "peace" and "truce" and "practice utmost restraint." Mantras require no thought. They are just soothing, comforting sounds with no meaning and no depth.

But calling for "peace" without a plan is not only shortsighted; it is counterproductive to the idea of peace itself. Certainly terrorists are not subject to international pressure nor to criticism by peace activists; their goals are inherently antithetical to peace. By calling on "both sides" to halt "hostilities" you are equating terror with self-defense, you are legitimizing terrorism and you are calling on the terrorized side to turn the other cheek and become the passive recipient of death and destruction - because the terrorists are unlikely to be swayed by your arguments. A vague desire for "peace" is not only meaningless, but it helps embolden terror.

The most common plan is never stated but it is implied by "peace activists." This plan is for Israel to do nothing - to accept rockets in the Negev as an ugly but permanent fact, perhaps to move residents further north for their own protection; to continue to provide Gaza with aid and to medically treat Gazans, to open the borders for unlimited trade with Gaza, to allow Hamas to import as many weapons as it wishes - because anything less than that is still considered "occupation." These so-called peace activists are nothing of the sort - they just want Israel to be destroyed as much as the Arab terrorists do. Their real plan is to replace the Jewish state with another Arab state where terror attacks against Jews can again become a daily occurrence in Tel Aviv and Haifa and Jerusalem. If this describes you, sorry for wasting your time - I suggest that you volunteer as a human shield for Qassam rocket launchers.

Some have called for another "truce." The idea seems appealing - let both sides stop attacks and bring things back to the status quo.

However, the status quo was completely unacceptable. Let's look at the last "truce." While Israel sent hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid, building materials, food, fuel, clothing and many trucks full of other essentials, Hamas eliminated any vestiges of freedom, arrested scores of Fatah members who survived the coup, imported Katyusha rockets and tons of weapons and explosives, built hundreds of Qassams, built up its cash reserves by indirectly using money that the international community sent to build up the PA, and started building tunnels for the express purpose of kidnapping Israelis. Even the rocket fire didn't halt until September and it restarted only two months later.

It is a well-established rule that it costs much less to solve a problem earlier rather than later. The "truce" - as well as the one that preceded it in late 2006 and early 2007, when Israel likewise refrained from military actions while Gaza terrorists continued to shoot rockets and arm themselves - is not a solution to any problem; it is a postponement of a much bloodier clash that is inevitable when we are dealing with one side that wants no less than the utter destruction of the other.

Another alternative that peace activists like to trot out is "end the occupation." Somehow, it is hoped, Israel's giving up land will magically make Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the PFLP and DFLP and PRC and Al Aqsa Brigades and Free Galilee Brigades and all the other terror groups put down their arms and happily accept Israel's existence.

Not only is this wishful thinking, but all evidence proves the exact opposite. Israel quit Gaza and it only emboldened terrorists to do more. What can explain thousands of rockets towards Sderot if you think that Arab terrorists do not have any land ambitions beyond the "territories"? In Arabic, they call Sderot and Ashkelon and Netivot "settlements," which means that the careful distinction that the world laboriously makes between "Israel proper" and the "territories" is completely meaningless to one side of this conflict.

Some say they understand Israel's motivation, but call for Israel's response to be "proportionate." What they don't recall is that Israel has had that policy for years now. Rather than respond immediately and devastatingly to rocket attacks, Israel has counseled its Negev residents to grin and bear it; it built shelters and installed sirens; it occasionally responded with targeted attacks against rocket launchers or terrorist leaders. This did not stop the rocket fire - rockets that have no purpose other than to terrorize civilians. For Israel to slowly increase the level of response is the guaranteed way to start the dreaded "cycle of violence."

A single attack by Israel to shut down the kidnap tunnel in November resulted in hundreds of rockets in response. A massive attack is meant to stop the "cycle of violence," and it has a much better chance of doing so.

Of course Israel needs to ensure that a minimum of civilians are hurt - and it is doing so. If you have any suggestions of how Israel can do a better job in that respect, I'm sure that the IDF is more than willing to listen. But keeping Hamas in power, unchecked, is not a formula for peace.

Criticizing is easy. Solving a problem is much harder. If those who say they want peace can offer better and realistic alternatives, where Israeli citizens as well as Gazans can both be safe and secure, please offer them.

One year later, it is instructive to see how the normally leftist writer Yaron London looks at the results of Cast Lead:
A year has passed since Operation Cast Lead. The Gaza vicinity region is calm and prosperous. Residents who left for fear of Qassams are returning home. Apartment prices are increasing. Even nature is blossoming. The blessed rain of the beginning of winter has woken the sleepy seeds of wild flowers. The soft hills of the "vicinity" have been speckled with yellow and red patches. It's possible that this is what these landscapes looked like last year as well, but no one was gazing at them, but rather westward, to locate a rising missile and precede its diving fall by taking shelter.

Hamas is deterred. Not because its leaders and the teachers of Islamic law have changed their opinion as to the way the conflict in the Middle East should be solved. Our monitors, who listen to the preaching in their mosques and to the radio broadcasts on their stations, have not discovered signs of moderation. As they did before the operation, the preachers talk about the Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs, who spread wars and epidemics and heresy and communism in the world, and that they must be expelled from the this world. Hamas fighters have not lost their courage. They are as fanatic and daring as they were. The virgins waiting for them in heaven have not lost their patience as well.

Hamas refrains from firing because it needs a timeout in order to establish its rule, rebuild the destructed houses, intensify its military power and fulfill the Shalit deal. When its leaders feel that they have completed their missions, when they believe the time is right, they'll resume their attacks. And maybe not. Perhaps they have learned their lesson. In any event, we cannot doubt the assertion that had we not sent a blow of fire to Gaza, Hamas would have continued firing.

We're enjoying a state of calm which is seldom violated. What was its price? The price was 10 fallen soldiers and more than 300 injured Israelis. There is no way to weigh this loss. The world has worsened its criticism against Israel. It's unpleasant, completely unpleasant, to face boycotts and curses, but the stains added to our image have not damaged us in measurable areas. The economy is good. The commerce relations have not been hurt. The countries leading the world – the United States, Russia, the European community, China, India, Canada, Brazil – have not changed their attitude towards us. They have not even compensated the Hamas regime for the suffering of the Strip's residents. Egypt has tightened its relations with us. Saudi Arabia has rebuked Hamas and has not adopted the Gazans with money. The Palestinians in the West Bank have not launched a third intifada. For now. Turkey, with which we have always had unstable relations, was angry and cursed us, but a year later it is clear that its interests have cooled the growling of its feelings. Venezuela, Bolivia, Mauritania and Qatar have severed their diplomatic ties with Israel. It's a shame, but not a disaster.

In fact, the prices for housing in Sderot have skyrocketed since the operation.

Israel's MFA says:

In 2008, 1750 rockets and 1528 mortar bombs were fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip against communities in southern Israel. In addition, during the three weeks of the operation, Hamas launched another 571 rockets and 205 mortar bombs at Israel. Yet, in the year since the operation, only 127 rockets and 70 mortar shells have been fired into Israel. This dramatic decrease in the number of missiles hitting the south is positive proof of the operation's success.
From Israel's perspective, if it would not have attacked after patiently absorbing years of incessant rocket and mortar fire, things would be worse today than has Cast Lead not happened. President Obama's wonderful oratory would not have convinced Hamas to stop the rocket fire. While I (and the PA, incidentally) would have preferred to have seen Hamas destroyed, the major objective of the operation has been met: to enable the residents of southern Israel to have reasonably normal lives, and to protect their human rights - an objective that most "human rights" activists seem to minimize or ignore.

For the many facile critics of Operation Cast Lead, they have yet to have offered an alternative. Anyone can criticize; but those who cannot offer a better idea have no basis for criticism.

And, like it or not, Cast Lead has accomplished what nothing else would.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

  • Wednesday, December 02, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine Press Agency reports that Egyptian security forces caught a cache of weapons and explosives being smuggled to Hamas in Gaza.

It included suicide bomb belts and hand grenades.

Monday, October 26, 2009

  • Monday, October 26, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Egyptian security forces said on Sunday that they discovered and seized a major weapons cache and arrested a suspected smuggler in near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian security officials said police stopped the suspect when he was driving in the area. The suspect, Ahmad Abu Maleeh, 30, from the Egyptian side of the city of Rafah, told interrogators that he had just driven another smuggler to tunnel in the area.

Security forces also discovered a tunnel in the same area, and confiscated what they said was a large quantity of firearms and ammunition. The officials said that the security presence in the area was increased as a result of the discovery.
Egypt has found tons and tons of explosives and weapons in recent months. Yet the Western media rarely mentions these regular finds by Egypt. Instead, they talk about how the tunnel trade is being used for consumer goods with barely a mention of the major reason that Gaza is under a blockade.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Part Two, Section A of the Goldstone Report is dedicated to "Military Operations." Goldstone decides to begin this section with a description of the blockade:
311. The military operations of 28 December to 19 January 2009 and their impact cannot be fully evaluated without taking account of the context and the prevailing living conditions at the time they began. In material respects, the military hostilities were a culmination of the long process of economic and political isolation imposed on the Gaza Strip by Israel, which is generally described as a blockade.
Why exactly does Goldstone choose the blockade as the beginning point of the narrative? It would be at least as valid to choose the beginning of the Qassam rocket fire on Israelis several years beforehand, or perhaps the violent Hamas coup against the PA, or perhaps the rocket fire that came after Israel's disengagement from Gaza, or any of a number of other seminal events each of which helped shape the circumstances of the fighting.

By choosing the blockade as his starting point for the military operations, Goldstone specifically chooses an event that makes Israel appear to have initiated the conflict. (He repeats the same pattern in choosing December 27th as the beginning of actual hostilities, and ignoring Hamas' effective declaration of war on December 24th, accompanied by a huge rocket barrage. )

Is it not strange to ignore the role that thousands of Qassam rocket attacks had in setting this fighting into motion, and that they are not considered a seminal event by Goldstone?

The blockade section of the report blames only Israel. It does not note that the Quartet participated in the blockade (except for an elliptical statement "This was also accompanied by the withholding of financial support for the Gaza Strip by some donor countries and actions of other countries that amounted to open or tacit support of the Israeli blockade.)

Goldstone also does not saythat Egypt has any part to do with the blockade. In fact, in paragraph 278, the report says:
Israel controls the border crossings (including to a significant degree the Rafah crossing to Egypt, under the terms of the Agreement on Movement and Access 163) and decides what and who gets in or out of the Gaza Strip.
However, the link he provides to this Agreement shows no such thing.

In reality, Egypt was not a signatory to the Rafah Agreement - it was between Israel, the PA and the EU. Israel could veto specific people from going into Gaza, and it could watch the crossing via closed-circuit TV, but the Rafah Agreement provided for EU observers to be the main gatekeepers and for the Palestinian Authority to be the party responsible on the Gaza side. After the Hamas coup, the Rafah crossing was closed because the EU observers could no longer travel there safely and because the PA was no longer in charge, as per the agreement. Israel's influence over Egyptian behavior at Rafah has nothing to do with this agreement, that was in any case effectively abrogated by Hamas' coup.

Egypt has opened up the Rafah border on a number of occasions, for humanitarian aid and for people to cross (often for pilgrimages to Mecca or medical reasons.) There is nothing in the Rafah Agreement that precludes Egypt from fully opening up Rafah. There are obvious reasons why it doesn't do so, and they have little to do with Israel.

In other words, Goldstone blames Israel exclusively for the blockade, even on the Egyptian side, using a link to a UN document that shows nothing of the sort.

(At times, Hamas also limits movement out of Gaza as well, another salient fact that Goldstone ignores. Hamas stopped Fatah members from attending the Bethlehem conference and it stopped Gazans from leaving when Egypt opened the border in May.)

In the blockade section of the report, Goldstone mentions (para. 320)
The tunnels built under the Gaza-Egypt border have become a lifeline for the Gaza economy and the people. Increasing amounts of fuel (benzine and diesel) come through those tunnels as well as consumables.
Yet he doesn't mention other major imports through the tunnels - explosives, rockets and weapons. Egypt has confiscated many tons of weapons before they reached Rafah. Goldstone elsewhere mentions that some of Hamas arsenal are "thought to be smuggled" and "allegedly smuggled" without saying exactly how (para. 1621 and 1622.)

Since Goldstone ignores the smuggling of weapons to Hamas through the tunnels in context of the blockade, it doesn't even address the concerns that Israel has about allowing construction materials or infrastructure materials like metal pipes into Gaza. It ignores the fact that Hamas has confiscated metal pipes meant for sewage treatment in order to manufacture rockets.

More generally, Goldstone doesn't address other pertinent facts about the reasons for the blockade. Hamas takes all of the available materials that Israel allows into Gaza first, and then hands over the leftovers to the rest of the territory. It ensures that it has all the fuel it needs before it allows the rest to go to ordinary Gazans. Hamas has also stolen ambulances donated by other countries and converted them for military use. All these are ignored by Goldstone as he assails Israel alone for the blockade.

Hamas' apparent policy is that any imports to Gaza are primarily used for military purposes and only secondarily to help Gazans themselves. If that policy would change, in a transparent manner, all indications are that Israel would allow far more goods through to Gazans. One only needs to see the differences between how Israel treats Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and those in Gaza to see that the driving factor for Israeli behavior is not to punish the people but to protect Israeli citizens.

Goldstone sees no such nuance. He flatly states that the blockade "amounts to collective punishment intentionally inflicted by the Government of Israel on the people of the Gaza Strip" (para. 1878).

One can argue whether the blockade is effective, and one could argue whether the specific goods Israel disallows into Gaza can be used against Israel. But if Goldstone is being fair he should at least mention Hamas abuses with the goods that are brought into Gaza as a possible reason for Israel's reticence to provide it with such goods.

Similarly, he fails to point any blame at Hamas for Israel's reluctance to provide Gaza with materials that Hamas would immediately use against Israelis.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

  • Thursday, September 03, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Now that UNRWA has proven itself to be a useful puppet of Hamas, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry is accusing UNRWA of seizing medicines and participating in the blockade against Gaza. Hey, UNRWA clearly will accede to any Hamas demands, so why not just turn UNRWA into another Hamas agency? The UN won't protest.

The moderate PA is creating a tripartate commission, with their ministers of health, interior and foreign affairs, to investigate whether Israel stole organs from Palestinian Arabs, as alleged by a Swedish newspaper. This commission will, no doubt, be as fair and honest as the commission to determine exactly how Israel murdered Arafat. (Major pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat already takes the accusations as simple fact.)

A US Army delegation paid a surprise visit to the hospital in El Arish, Egypt. Many speculated that this might mean that the US is planning to deploy troops at the Rafah border as part of a peace deal between Israel and the PA.

Hamas took credit for shooting four 80mm mortars at IDF forces, possibly in Gaza itself. As far as I can tell, this is the first time since Cast Lead that Hamas has admitted any involvement in shooting at Israeli troops.

Russia admitted selling MIG-31E aircraft to Syria.

Hamas told a surgeon in the shifa Hospital to leave the premises. When he refused, they literally threw him out on the street. (Palestinian Ministry of Health webpage mentions thi sas well, but it cannot be linked to.)

Egypt has confiscated nearly three tons of explosives on their way to Gaza in two separate seizures in the past couple of days.

Firas Press, in their regular feature of pictures of cute Palestinian Arab kids, brings us this lovely photo of a child wrapped in a Fatah-logo blanket, complete with chic "resistance" keffiyeh. He can remain warm at night snuggling with the rifle, submachine gun, and hand grenade helping his sweet dreams of destroying Israel (represented on the flag as well.)

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

  • Wednesday, August 19, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Firas Press reports that Egyptian security forces discovered a warehouse near the Gaza border with bags filled with TNT, in the sizes necessary to transport through Rafah tunnels. Recently they also seized M-16s and missile warheads. Egypt also discovered five tunnels, including one from a house that was over 100 meters from the border.

The smuggling tunnels are still being used for explosives and weapons, but the media only talks about consumer goods.

By the way, Israel's recent delivery of cement to Gaza for humanitarian purposes was partially seized by Hamas to build weapons bunkers. And this delivery was closely coordinated with UNRWA and the World Bank.

Monday, July 20, 2009

  • Monday, July 20, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
The Fatah infighting continues. A special session of the PLO Executive Committee met on Saturday to condemn Farouk Kaddoumi for his accusations that Mahmoud Abbas plotted to assassinate Arafat, but the session was clearly put together only by Kaddoumi's enemies. Meanwhile, four armed factions of Fatah, including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a group of Israeli Arabs, declared their support for Kaddoumi. Dov Weisglass, who attended all the Sharon/Abbas meetings, says the entire episode was made up by Kaddoumi, and Suha Arafat is also upset because blaming Abbas takes away the responsibility from Arafat's real killers - Israel.

Palestine Press Agency quotes a US magazine as giving out specific details on how Israel would strike Iran, along with operational windows for the strike and where the IDF is practicing. Hard to say whether the articles, in Global Politician, are legit or not.

Egypt seized a half ton of explosives and ten mortars on their way to Gaza.

Two Gazans, including a 17-year old, were killed in a smuggling tunnel collapse.

The PA shot and wounded two Hamas members in the West Bank. Their neighbors in the Al-Jalazoun camp tried to protect the Hamas members from arrest.

A group of Israeli Arabs demanded that the Israel compensate them for damage done by wild boars. They didn't seem to blame "settlers," apparently boars inside the Green Line have different masters than those on the outside.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is now at 118.

Friday, July 10, 2009

  • Friday, July 10, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
A 60-year old Arab man was released by Israel from prison, went home to Hebron, and got shot dead three days later by his own people. Makes prison sound a little better, doesn't it? (I'm reasonably certain I got this story right, it was a tough autotranslation and only reported in one newspaper so far.)

Palestinian Arabs are having a hard time finding people who want to join the security forces being built by General Dayton. Since there used to be well over 80,000 Palestinian Arab "security forces" employed by Arafat, and there are only a few thousand "Dayton forces," it looks like the motivating factor for going into that kind of work is not money nor an interest in the future of a Palestinian Arab state, but rather the idea that you will be able to use these neat weapons against Israelis.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for shooting at a car driven by Jews in the West Bank. The interesting thing is that the PA claimed that the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades was dismantled years ago.

Hamas staged a mass wedding in Gaza of a hundred couples, of whom some of the women were widows of Hamas terrorists killed in January who are now second- or third-wives to others.

Egypt found another 700 kg of explosives meant for the peaceful people of Gaza.

The 2009 PalArab self-death count is at 115.

Monday, June 22, 2009

  • Monday, June 22, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
The media likes to portray the smuggling tunnels under Rafah as pure capitalism at work, where people desperate for money or goods are forced to engage in this dangerous but heroic activity to bring in candies, schoolbooks and cattle into Gaza.

However, a story in Palestine Today puts a lie to that.

There have been a large number of motorcycle accidents in Gaza over the past few months, and many people are complaining about it. As a result, Hamas has put a number of restrictions in place on motorcycles, mandating helmets and restricting underage drivers and so on.

One of their restrictions is to ban the import of more motorcycles from Egypt through the tunnels.

How can Hamas restrict the goods being smuggled into Gaza unless they know about and control each tunnel?

And if Hamas does control the tunnels, how much effort do they place in importing weapons and explosives compared to consumer goods?

The media doesn't seem to worry about that part of the issue very much.

Friday, June 12, 2009

...with a brand new fuel pipeline:
On, June 11, 2009, an Israeli construction team finished its work on a new pipeline for the transfer of fuel and natural gas from Israel to the Gaza Strip. The decision to build the pipeline was made in accordance with decisions made by the Israeli Government, following security assessments and as a result of the coordination between the Civil Administration and the Palestinian side. The construction was performed by both Israeli and Palestinian construction crews.
Reuters adds its spin:
Israel says that since its December-January offensive against Islamist militants in Gaza it has opened the border to larger amounts of food and medicine.

Gazans have also imported some supplies, including fuel, through smuggling tunnels that run under the border between the coastal territory and Egypt.

Indeed - to Gazans, explosives and weapons smuggled under Rafah are simply considered "supplies."

Reuters now doesn't even bother mentioning weapons smuggling into Gaza - the very reason there is a blockade to begin with!

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

  • Tuesday, June 09, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
There are reports that three rockets were shot Gaza on Monday night - into Egypt. The rockets did not explode.

The PA confiscated some two tons of explosives from Hamas members in Qalqilya, in the West Bank. They found out about it from previous arrests of Hamas members. Some of the explosives were in a Jacuzzi.

The PA also found a Hamas member in Nablus with over one million euros. It was apparently meant to build up the Hamas movement in the West Bank to destabilize the PA.

Meanwhile, the PA also arrested three Hamas women planning suicide attacks - against the PA. When Hamas said a few weeks ago that they will treat the PA the way they treat Israel, they weren't kidding!

A leader of Islamic Jihad has again rejected the idea of a two-state solution.

A chain reaction of exploding cooking gas canisters injured 30 people in Khan Younis.

Late last week a Gaza farmer was killed when he apparently came across some unexploded Hamas explosives, putting the 2009 PalArab self-death count at 96.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

  • Tuesday, May 26, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Ma'an:
Four Egyptian police officers stationed in the northern Sinai were arrested on suspicion of receiving bribes from Gazan smugglers, an Egyptian security source said on Tuesday. According to the source, the four officers are first lieutenants, and they were taken to north Sinai security department in Al-Arish city for questioning.

The four, according to the source, received a sum exceeding 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($17,800) each. The source highlighted that Egyptian Minister of Interior Habib Al-Aadily ordered suspending the four officers and withdrawing their weapons.
The bribes are nothing new.

This helps explain why Egypt regularly finds caches of weapons and explosives hidden in the Sinai but never seems to find them en route to Gaza from Rafah. The Rafah police are part of the problem.

Monday, March 23, 2009

  • Monday, March 23, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas seized a medical center in Gaza and arrested its head doctor, who was a critic of Hamas.

There are large billboards in Ramallah and surrounding areas saying "no, no, a thousand times no" to Iranian interference in Palestinian Arab affairs.

Egypt this morning seized 5 tons of cement and 560 sheep on their way to being smuggled to Gaza. Oh, and a half-ton of explosives, too.

Egypt finds the idea of its diplomats participating in any celebrations of the 30th anniversary ofthe Israel/Egypt peace agreement to be extraordinarily distasteful, but the Egyptian ambassador is "mandated" to attend.

Friday, March 20, 2009

  • Friday, March 20, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
For the third day in a row, Egypt opened the Rafah border - and Hamas kept it closed. Yet there have been no protests against Hamas' illegal siege of the Gazan people.

Egypt has found another cache of weapons in a warehouse near Rafah, including a half ton of explosives.

PCHR has released their list of fatalities in Gaza, in Arabic. Interestingly, they list 1417 people, not the 1434 they mentioned in last week's press release. When it comes out in English I will look more closely at how they categorize "civilians."

Shimon Peres sent New Year's greetings to the people of Iran.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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