Al Qaeda infiltrators from Libya are spearheading much of this month’s anti-Israel violence from Sinai and the Gaza Strip - a dangerous development Israel, Hamas, Egypt and the US prefer to conceal. It appears to tie in with the arrival of al Qaeda’s ex-Iraq fighters in Syria as part of its leader's master plan. Deeply concerned to check the spillover from Libya into Egypt, Cairo has posted its elite counter-terrorist “999 unit” in El Arish, on Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip and along the northern sector of its frontier with Israel.

The combination of lawless Sinai under the control of Bedouin bands, al Qaeda and Salafist militias and Cairo ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood is the recipe for strife between Israel and Egypt.

At a particularly sensitive moment in Israeli-Egyptian relations, Israel’s military leaders were caught napping by the June 18 terrorist attack from Sinai on the southern Route 10, in which an Israeli fence team worker was killed. Because they were too slow to catch on to the identity of the perpetrators (al Qaeda), those military chiefs aimed their reprisals at the wrong quarters (Hamas and Jihad Islami) and so set off a three-day, still ongoing missile-for-air strike cycle in Gaza.
Egyptian liaison officers meanwhile refuse to meet Israeli commanders.

Egyptian Sinai is being turned into a lawless wasteland and jihadi recruiting center by the influx of al Qaeda fighters from across the Muslim world. Al Qaeda in Sinai is preparing to open a new front for terror in the western Middle East.

Monday, April 24, the Obama administration stepped in to damp down the military frictions developing between Jerusalem and Cairo, fanned further this week by a dispute over the suspension of Egyptian gas to Israel. Earlier that day, Egypt’s military ruler Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi said: “If anyone comes near Egypt’s border, we will break their leg.” Egyptian Islamists and Bedouin groups have since announced they would mark Israel’s Independence Day Thursday with a mass assault on the Sinai memorials of Israel’s fallen soldiers.

Monday night, Jan. 2, Al Qaeda claimed to have established its first Jerusalem operational cell calling it the "Sunni Youth Movement Cell in Greater Jerusalem." Bulletin No. 1 with details of the organization and its targets was promised in the next few days. debkafile's counter-terror sources report Israeli security services are taking the development very seriously. They tie it in with Palestinian plans for a West Bank uprising and the jihadist trend spreading through Palestinian centers in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Israel's targeted killing Thursday Dec. 8 of Ismail Batash, commander of the "Army of Believers" (a Hamas terrorist front group), may have done more harm than good. Aside from triggering a hail of Palestinian missiles against Israel, debkafile's sources report it strengthened the Hamas-Salafist Bedouin pact in northern Sinai and is speeding up the transfer there of Hamas' terrorist infrastructure from Gaza – out of Israel's reach. The terrorist peril to southern Israel, including Eilat, has mounted, while the IDF's hands are tied.

Egypt's military rulers have their hands too full with the breakdown of order in Egypt's cities to attend to the rising Islamist power in parliament. In any case, we reveal that while the Muslim Brotherhood won the election, the liberal bloc came second – not the Salafis and Mubarak ...

The claim Friday by Field Marshall Mohamed Tantawi, head of the military junta ruling Egypt, of "complete security on the Sinai Peninsula" was belied Monday, Oct. 10, by the Israeli Counterterrorism Bureau's warning against travel to Sinai for Sukkot. As Cairo lets Sinai security go by the board, the Netanyahu government leans over backwards to pretend business with Egypt is back to normal – even after armed Bedouin cut the trade route between Egypt and Israel through Sinai three weeks ago.

Egyptian natural gas is flowing again to Jordan – but not to Israel, debkafile reports. Cairo and Amman are keeping quiet about the resumption of supplies through the Sinai pipeline which was sabotaged five times since February. Cairo has broken off negotiations with Jerusalem on new prices - so making sure that supplies to Israel are cut off for good. As Egypt pulls away from peace ties with Israel, security is breaking down on their common border and the Israeli ambassador's return to Cairo indefinitely postponed.

Turkey sharply ratchets up its threat of war with Israel. Three Turkish frigates were ordered to the eastern Mediterranean and instructed to disable Israeli military ships if encountered outside Israel's 12-mile territorial waters. This was reported by Turkish naval sources Sept. 12 as Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was due in Cairo for a controversial visit - in defiance of the Egyptian government's effort to cool the crisis in relations with Israel.

Home Front Commander Maj. Gen. Eyal Eisenberg warned Monday, Sept. 5 of the increasing peril of a total Middle East war in the wake of the Arab revolts and Israel's rift with Turkey. His comments shocked Israel's policy-makers and defense establishment out of their placidity. The defense minister's adviser Amos Gilead, hurriedly denied this prediction. "Israel's security situation has never been better," he said insisting "The Arab regimes around us are stable."
debkafile: The general's wake-up call was both apt and timely.

The Cairo media's highly colored accounts Monday, Aug. 30 of 1,500 Egyptian commandos and tanks supposedly raiding Jihad Islami and al Qaeda cells in Sinai are pure fiction, debkafile's military sources confirm. Israeli forces along the Gazan and Egyptian borders down to Eilat stand at the highest level of preparedness for a Jihad Islami group which left the Gaza Strip for Sinai on Aug. 24 to strike. The terrorists now hold the initiative thereby sapping the IDF's deterrent strength.

Israeli units on the Egyptian frontier went on peak alert Wednesday night, Aug. 24, following specific intelligence that Palestinian Jihad Islami was set to launch another cross-border attack from Sinai. Earlier Wednesday, Gen. Benny Gantz, Chief of Staff announced that Israel's Defense Forces were no longer treating the Egyptian frontier as a border of peace because of new threats. The new situation was exemplified by the terrorist attacks Palestinian gunmen launched from Egyptian Sinai on Aug. 8 killing eight Israeli civilians and injuring forty.

Intense diplomatic efforts by Washington Saturday, Aug. 20, have produced a compromise for resolving the Egyptian-Israeli crisis - moments before their 1979 peace accord was overturned. Cairo agreed not to recall the Egyptian ambassador from Israel, whereas the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak apologized publicly for the deaths of three Egyptian policemen.  debkafile discloses: Israeli also agreed to renegotiate the treaty's Sinai demilitarization clause banning an Egyptian troop presence.

After the Israeli Air Force struck 12 Hamas and other terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday, Aug. 18, a hail of Palestinian missiles Friday hit the towns of  Ashdod, Beersheba, Ashkelon and the smaller Sdot Negev, Shar Hanegev and Eshkol villages in a continuous blitz. Ten worshippers were injured - two seriously - when one of the six Grads aimed at Ashdod hit a synagogue. Police detonated a second in a controlled explosion.  Eight Israelis were killed, 33 injured in a Palestinian multiple terror attack near Eilat Thursday.

Monday, Aug. 15, three Egyptian army brigades of 1,700 men backed by tanks, an equal number of special policemen and 3,400 security personnel drove into the northern Sinai towns of El Arish, Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah thereby launching a mission to retake Sinai from rampant Islamists, who were also responsible for sabotaging a gas pipeline. debkafile: In their first clash with Islamic Liberation Army gunmen, three Egyptian officers were kidnapped, one gunman was killed and 11 detained.

The Islamic domination of Cairo's Tahrir Square was closely coordinated with al Qaeda-linked attacks in Sinai, as radicals use the post-revolution turmoil to gain strength in Egypt, including the violent Al-Takfir wal-Hijra, believed moribund for decades, which has set up shop in Sinai.

The day after their El Arish rampage, Al Qaeda gunmen Saturday, July 30, blasted the al Shulaq terminal of the Egyptian-Israeli gas pipeline north of the Sinai town, halting supply for the fifth time since February. This time was different. The saboteurs fired rockets at the terminal until it caught fire, the same tactics they used to raid El Arish Friday. Egyptian forces confronted the assailants but could not save the terminal. This was al Qaeda's first attack on a strategic Israeli installation.

Iran, Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have set up two staging centers ion Khartoum and El Arish, Sinai for grabbing power in Cairo. The Palestinian fundamentalist Hamas has undergone a transformation in the last two years. Today, Tehran has made Hamas an important vehicle for carrying Iranian influence ...