Terrorist missiles hit Eilat

‘Yesterday we celebrated Independence Day and this morning we received a painful reminder of the reality in which we exist’

Wednesday, April 17, 2013  Israel Today Staff

Two missiles slammed into the southern Israel resort town of Eilat early Wednesday morning, causing damage to a residential area, but, miraculously, no injuries.

Area children, who had only recently arrived for school, were rushed to bomb shelters.

Israeli forces said the missiles were fired from the Sinai Peninsula, where various regional terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are known to have set up shop in recent years.

Egypt initially rejected reports that the attack had emanated from Sinai, but later Egyptian forces began searching the area for possible launch sites.

Israeli Water and Energy Minister Silvan Shalom spoke for the government when he issued the following statement:

“Yesterday we celebrated Independence Day and this morning we received a painful reminder of the reality in which we exist. The shooting highlights our need to protect ourselves and not put our fate in the hands of others.”

Later in the day a Salafi Muslim group calling itself the Mujahedeen Shura Council claimed credit for the attack, announcing on its website that its fighters had managed to “target occupied Eilat with two Grad rockets.”

 

NEWS FLASH: IDF soldier killed, another injured in firefight along Egyptian border

From IDF Web site:

An IDF soldier of the Artillery Corps was killed today (Friday, September 21) in a firefight with terrorists along the Israeli-Egyptian border. A second soldier was moderately to severely injured. The soldiers’ families have been notified.

An initial inquiry indicates that the terrorists opened fire on IDF soldiers as the soldiers performed routine activity to secure the construction of the fence along the Israel-Egypt border. One of the terrorists was armed with an explosive belt. An additional IDF force patrolling nearby identified the three terrorists and opened fire, killing all three.

IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yoav (Poly) Mordechai stated that initial findings show that the IDF force successfully prevented a large-scale attack on Israeli civilians. No terrorists managed to infiltrate into Israel.

 

Israel becoming concerned by Egypt’s Sinai deployment

Israel allowed temporary deployment of extra troops in Sinai; but now Egypt is rolling in tanks in gross violation of the Camp David Accords, and experts believe they are there to stay

Monday, August 20, 2012 | Ryan Jones – http://www.israeltoday.co.il

Egyptian armor

Last week, a leading Israeli media analyst suggested that Israel’s government should be more concerned about Egypt’s growing military deployment in the Sinai Peninsula, instead of focusing all its worries on Iran.

“The development that, more than any other, should set off warning bells in Jerusalem, is the unilateral action taken by the Egyptians in Sinai during the past few days,” wrote Ha’aretz columnist Avi Issacharoff.

“While Israel is prattling itself to death on the Iranian issue, the decision makers here are choosing not to respond to the fact that Egypt is moving forces into Sinai, contrary to the terms of the peace agreement,” Issacharoff continued.

Earlier this summer, Israel did approve the deployment of additional Egyptian soldiers to Sinai to help battle the regional terror groups taking root there. Members of many of Sinai’s Bedouin tribes have in recent years joined the ranks of groups like Hizballah and Al Qaeda. Two weeks ago, the members of one such group killed 17 Egyptian soldiers while perpetrating a cross-border raid into southern Israel.

However, it now appears that Egypt is deploying forces far beyond what Israel approved (the 1979 Camp David Accords put strict limits on the amount of forces Egypt can deploy in Sinai). According to some reports, in addition to a much larger than expected number of infantry, Egypt is also rolling armored forces into Sinai.

Issacharoff called the deployment the “most extensive activity by the [Egyptian] army in Sinai since the Yom Kippur War 39 years ago.” And that should be cause for concern.

At present, those forces are ostensibly being used to root out terrorist forces, which would ultimately benefit Israel, too. But officials believe Egypt is only going to do what it needs to placate public opinion at home, and nothing more. In the meantime, those new forces deployed to Sinai are not likely to be removed.

On top of all this, Egypt is now ruled by a group that maintains as one of its long-term goals the destruction of Israel. And just last week, the Muslim Brotherhood removed the former heads of Egypt’s military and installed more compliant generals.

Anyone not seeing these developments as cause for concern has his or her head in the sand.

According to pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Israel’s government is indeed concerned, and has asked Cairo to withdraw its armored forces from Sinai. Experts have noted that tanks and armored vehicles will at any rate be useless against the mountain-entrenched Bedouin forces in central Sinai.

 

Muslim Brotherhood seizes control of Egyptian military

Monday, August 13, 2012 | Ryan Jones – http://www.israeltoday.co.il

Brotherhood army

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Sunday stunned the region and caused grave concern in Israel when he dismissed all of Egypt’s top generals and installed commanders loyal and subservient to his Muslim Brotherhood.

Following the ouster of former dictator Hosni Mubarak, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces headed by former Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi had held de facto power, and had placed certain limitations on the presidency when it became clear the Muslim Brotherhood would the election.

For instance, the Tantawi-led council had introduced a constitutional amendment that forbade the president from declaring war without the council’s approval.

In addition to firing Tantawi, the Egyptian chief-of-staff, and the heads of the navy and air force, Morsi also rescinded all of the council’s constitutional amendments, effectively granting his office outright control of military matters.

So long as Tantawi and the other older generals were largely in control of military matters, Israeli leaders were more or less certain that Egypt’s revolution would not lead to armed conflict with the Jewish state. But with the Muslim Brotherhood seizing control of the armed forces, previous assessments are now void.

Israeli commentators said they do not expect a sudden “call to arms” in Egypt, but are concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood-appointed generals will not cooperate with Israel like the old generals did. That will ultimately result in a situation similar to Lebanon, where Israel is forced to act on its own in foreign territory to stop terrorist threats.

And the Egyptian Sinai is fast becoming a regional hotspot of terrorist activity, making it all but inevitable that Israel would have to launch military incursions should Morsi’s forces stop preventing attacks on the Jewish state.

On the other hand, only last week, Israel approved a temporary amendment to the Camp David Accords to allow Egypt to deploy more forces to Sinai to root out local terrorist gangs. There is now concern that Morsi will not pull those forces back once their mission is complete.

As a demonstration of why Israel is so concerned by the Muslim Brotherhood’s power-hungry moves, last week Arab television stations around the region broadcast a recent interview with Egyptian-born cleric Salah Sultan, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the interview, Sultan stated that people he has met all over Egypt and the Middle East “thirst for the blood of the Jews.”

Sultan operates an Islamic teaching center in the American state of Ohio.

Speaking of America, the Washington Post reported that the Obama Administration is not at all concerned by Morsi seizing control of the military, and that it has “confidence” in the newly installed generals.