Israel fears unfettered Al-Qaida infiltration into Gaza Strip
By Ze'ev Schiff, Amos Harel and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondents 15
September 2005
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/625300.html

Border Policemen and Israel Defense Forces trackers in the southern Negev
region early Thursday morning arrested 20 Palestinians residents of the Gaza
Strip attempting to infiltrate into Israel along the border with Egypt.

The Palestinians, who were arrested in three different incidents, said they
exited the Strip through the Philadelphi route which borders with Egypt, and
where Palestinians have been able to cross unhindered in and out of Egypt
since Israel completed its withdrawal from Gaza.

The arrested men were taken for police questioning to establish whether they
wished to enter Israel in order to carry out terror attacks. IDF officials
said they expected this phenomenon of Palestinian infiltrations from the
Sinai into Israel to repeat itself and widen

Israel fears unfettered Al-Qaida infiltration

The collapse of the Gaza-Egyptian border in the three days since Israel
withdrew from the Strip, which has allowed thousands of Palestinians to
enter Sinai and numerous Egyptians to enter Gaza, is extremely worrisome to
Jerusalem. Israel is fearful not only of massive arms smuggling into Gaza,
and consequently to the West Bank, but also, and particularly, that Al-Qaida
operatives will be able to enter Gaza freely.

In addition, Israeli intelligence officials say Palestinian terror
organizations have been making a concerted effort in the last few days to
smuggle as many weapons as they can into the Gaza Strip via the breached
border with Egypt, which wanted Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists have been
crossing freely.

The border collapse, caused by Egypt's failure to maintain even minimal
supervision over the crossing, is occurring at a time when Egypt is having
trouble eliminating Al-Qaida cells in the Sinai. Thus far, Al-Qaida
operatives have failed to infiltrate Israel, but Jerusalem fears that now
the organization will renew its efforts to send operatives from Sinai into
Gaza, and after that to the West Bank. This will be hard to prevent without
Egyptian and Jordanian cooperation.

Palestinian and Egyptian officials promised on Wednesday to act immediately
to close the border. After they failed to stop people from crossing at 6
P.M., as planned, they announced they would close the border at midnight
Wednesday. However, Palestinian officials said Wednesday it would take at
least another few days before Egyptian and Palestinian authorities could
begin to halt the unauthorized crossings.

In addition to helping Palestinian families reunite, the opening also made
it easier for militants to smuggle weapons into Gaza. The militants
succeeded in keeping Palestinian police officers away from the Philadelphi
route on Wednesday, and the Palestinian security services did nothing to
stop the Hamas men from blasting through the wall.

Egyptian security forces announced Wednesday they had discovered and
destroyed a tunnel near Rafah in which they found hundreds of rifles and
hand grenades and several anti-tank rocket launchers. The tunnel was
apparently discovered as it was being used to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

"All the terror organizations are working energetically now," an IDF source
said. "The goal is to bring in large quantities of weapons before the
Egyptians close the breach."

The chaos at the Gaza-Egypt border, which has been underway since the IDF
completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip on Monday, raises the question
of the effectiveness of the agreement Israel and Egypt signed regarding the
deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards along the Philadelphi route in an
effort to prevent arms-smuggling.

By the time the Egyptians begin to act efficiently, a large quantity of
weapons will have been smuggled into Gaza from the Sinai. The Palestinian
terror organizations have been stockpiling a large supply of weapons in
Sinai over the last few months, since the IDF's anti-smuggling operations
were making it difficult for them to get the weapons over the border.

Israeli intelligence officials do not yet have confirmed information on the
critical question of whether the Palestinians have brought weapons into Gaza
that would alter the current balance, such as relatively long-range
anti-aircraft missiles and Katyusha rockets. Such missiles could diminish
the control of IDF planes and drones over Gaza's air space, and Katyushas
would bring more Israeli towns in the northern and western Negev within
range of rocket fire.

The IDF said Wednesday that at the moment the 14 kilometers of the
Philadelphi route are a "black hole" through which weapons are pouring into
Gaza. In addition, some militants who have stayed out of Gaza for fear of
being arrested by Israeli security forces are now heading back in. Israeli
officials are worried about some of the Palestinians, including wanted men,
who have been crossing the border into Sinai. Israel fears that some will
try to use what is being called the "living route" and continue south into
Sinai, from where they can infiltrate into Israel in areas where there is no
fence between Egyptian territory and the Negev, in an effort to carry out
terror attacks in Israel.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz called on the Palestinian Authority and Egypt
to take control of the border zone.

"It's desirable for the PA to regain its composure and immediately do what
it is supposed to do to impose law and order in the Strip," Mofaz said
Wednesday. Israel has given "very firm warnings" to the PA and Egypt
regarding the lack of supervision of the cross-border movement along the
Philadelphi route. Mofaz said he "believes and hopes that the Egyptians will
deal with the situation that has arisen, together with the Palestinian
security forces."