TEL AVIV — Israeli military sources said hundreds of weapons, including anti-aircraft
missiles, anti-tank rockets and bomb components, have been smuggled over the
last three days from the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip.
The sources said
Palestinian insurgents brought the equipment from Egypt in wake of the
Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
So far, more than 10,000 Palestinians have crossed the Gaza border and
made their way to towns in eastern and northern Sinai. The sources said they
included hundreds of operatives from Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, some of
whom directed the flow of Palestinians into Sinai.
On Wednesday, Egyptian authorities continued to allow thousands of
Palestinians to freely enter Sinai, Middle East Newsline reported. Many of the Palestinians were said to
have made their to Rafah and El Arish. El Arish, the largest town in the
Sinai, has been a major way-station for weapons smuggling to Palestinian
insurgency groups.
"In the first moments of Israel's abandoning of Gaza they smuggled
weapons," Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuval
Steinitz said. "The ink on the agreement has not even dried and the
Philadelphi route [Egyptian-Gaza border] is being used for massive weapons
smuggling."
"I am not optimistic," Col. Yoav Mordechai, the outgoing military
liasion with the Gaza Strip, said. "We are walking on very thin ice. One
attack could result in major retaliation by the military."
The sources said the PA has ordered SA-7 surface-to-air missiles from
Egyptian smugglers in the Sinai. They said the amount of weapons brought to
the Gaza Strip this week exceeded the volume of that smuggled via tunnels in
all of 2005.
"Many of these weapons, particularly the anti-aircraft missiles, had
been stored in eastern Sinai, but could not be brought into the Gaza
Strip — at least not in large quantities — because of our presence along
the border," a source said. "These stockpiles are now being depleted."
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has warned that Israel would not honor its
commitments to ensure the free flow of people and goods to and from the Gaza
Strip unless its border with Egypt was immediately closed. Mofaz also
ordered the military to reinforce its presence along the new border with the
Gaza Strip.
"This [smuggling] not only harms us but Egyptian sovereignty," Amos
Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's political-military division, said. "We
have relayed our feelings to the Egyptians. They claim that they haven't
completed their [border] preparations."
The military sources said many of these Palestinians
could seek to infiltrate Israel from the Sinai.
"They are exploiting this for the smuggling of weapons and ammunition,"
Gilad said. "They could use this for attacks. If this continues for too
long, it could mark a precedent."
[On late Tuesday, Palestinian insurgents hurled a grenade toward an
Israeli military patrol in a kibbutz adjacent to the northern Gaza Strip.
Hours later, Palestinian insurgents opened fire toward Israeli soldiers
around the evacuated Jewish community of Kadim in the northern West
Bank.]
PA officials have acknowledged that arms smuggling to the Gaza Strip has
intensified. They said Egypt and the PA would impose order by the weekend.
Egypt plans to complete the deployment of 750 police commandos along the
14-kilometer Gaza-Egypt border by next week. But the sources said the
military, despite a border security agreement signed earlier this month,
doubts whether Egypt would stop the flow of weapons to the Gaza Strip.
At a counter-terrorism conference of the Herzliya-based Institute of
Counter-Terrorism, Israel Navy deputy commander Rear Adm. Yuval Zur said the
PA would use the new Israeli-approved port south of Gaza City to import
large amounts of weapons. Zur said the PA has sought to obtain anti-aircraft
missiles, medium-range rockets, assault rifles and ammunition.
"It [the Gaza port] will help the transformation from smuggling to
import," Zur said on Tuesday.
