debkafile Exclusive: Palestinian Hamas and Fatah-Al Aqsa Brigades spend hundreds of millions on… guns

While Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was busy presenting his new government, debkafile‘s military sources reveal Hamas executed the biggest arms transaction in its history – a $250,000 cash deal with Sinai arms smugglers.
The new items now restocking the Hamas arsenal include 1,000 Kalashnikov automatic submachine guns, 500 Italian-made Beretta pistols and a large supply of ammo.
Our sources add the crates were slipped through from Sinai to the Gaza Strip Saturday night, May 6, without interference by Egyptian border security guards.
The terrorist arm of Abu Mazan’s Fatah is another good customer of the Sinai smuggling gangs, some of whom also serve the al Qaeda network in the Peninsula. Indeed, the last ten days have seen al Aqsa Brigades and Hamas buyers competing for massive purchases of explosives, ammunition and weapons, and racing one other to smuggle them into the Gaza Strip. The competition has sparked battles between the two groups to commandeer space in the gunrunning tunnels that snake under the former Philadelphi border strip between Egyptian Sinai and Gaza.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources report the tunnel business is booming as never before in the last three years. It illustrates the total breakdown of all the pre-evacuation accords and arrangements concluded between Israel and Egypt – and brokered personally by the US Secretary of State – to secure the border after the Israeli pull-out. The incoming Israeli prime minister and defense minister Amir Peretz knew about the unusual volume of arms smuggling Sunday, May 7.
In their speeches to the Knesset at the swearing-in of the new government, neither mentioned the hazards building up in the Palestinian areas.
The next day, an eight-missile volley was fired from Gaza into Israel.