Free Republic

Attorney Hanan Alsanah, the director of the Center for Bedouin Women’s Rights at Itach-Ma’aki: Women Lawyers for Social Justice, was up early on October 7, preparing for a family picnic on her one day off from work. Then she started getting a slew of messages from local WhatsApp leadership groups not normally active on Saturdays. “At first I said, okay, it’s something small, the state is here and will do its work and will stop it,” she said. “But after one hour we realized the immensity of the attack and that the state was not there. I felt unsafe. It...

Hamas’ rockets never discriminate between Arabs and Jews — they fall where they fall. .. gunmen who raced across the border, butchering and kidnapping as they went, were not discriminating ... Hamas terrorists killing Muslims inside of Israel after they infiltrated the border ... Masudin’s family hails from the Bedouin village of Segev Shalom in southern Israel, just an hour’s drive from the border with Gaza. ... Gunmen burst into the city Saturday morning with their automatic rifles blazing, killing civilians and shooting it out with local police units in firefights that consumed the town. They even captured the local...

Rahat Mayor Faiz Abu Sahiban was interviewed by Channel 13 and said that he is waiting for Itamar Ben Gvir to be the Minister of Internal Security, and according to him, the situation in his city may change. In addition, the mayor of Rahat invited Ben Gvir to visit the city Maariv online 11/13/2022 Rahat Mayor Faiz Abu Sahiban was interviewed today (Sunday) on Channel 13 and said that he is waiting for Itamar Ben Gvir to be the Minister of Internal Security, and according to him it is possible that this will change the situation in his city. In...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened to scrap her visit on Wednesday to Israel if the Jewish state destroyed the illegal Bedouin outpost of ...

Senior officials from the United Nations and a number of European nations visited an exhibition hosted by the Palestinian Authority featuring explicitly anti-Semitic images last month. According to a report by Makor Rishon on Friday, early last month, a number of foreign representatives visited an exhibition set up by the Palestinian Authority in the illegal Bedouin outpost of Khan al-Ahmar. Built in the 1990s, the illegal encampment today houses some 170 Bedouin squatters just outside of the Israeli town of Kfar Adumim, east of Jerusalem. The encampment was never authorized, and is slated for demolition, after the Supreme Court rejected...

The European Union demanded that Israel cancel plans to evict Bedouin squatters from illegally-erected structures just east of Jerusalem, and condemned a planned housing project in the area for the Israeli town of Maaleh Adumim. Israeli authorities recently announced plans to demolish the Bedouin encampment known as Khan al-Ahmar. The illegal community, which lies entirely in Area C under full Israeli control, was established without any building permits. The encampment is located in the strategically important E-1 area between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim, one of the largest Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Israel also recently approved housing permits for...

President Reuven Rivlin visited the home of Nimer Abu Amar, the 15-year-old youth from the Negev Bedouin town of Lakiya who was killed by fire from an Egyptian soldier at Israel's southern border Tuesday, to express his condolences to the boy's family. "We are all citizens of the same country." Rivlin told the boy's father. "We have come to share in your profound grief." "We are all equal in this country, and there is no difference between a child in Lakiya and a child in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa." he added. The Defense Ministry treats a child from Lakiya...

The United States said Thursday it was concerned by the number of illegal Palestinian residential structures Israel demolished this month in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. “We are also very troubled by the recent escalation of demolitions and evictions, which include the destruction of dozens of structures and the displacement of over 150 people in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this month alone,” US State Department Spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday. “Such demolitions and evictions are harmful and provocative and indicative of a damaging trend, particularly given settlement-related activity and continued construction in the West Bank and...

Intelligence gathered by Egypt and Israel attest to the former Ansar Bait al-Maqdis - now reborn as the Islamic State’s operational arm in Sinai – being well into advanced preparations for a large-scale terrorist offensive targeting Israel forces manning the Egyptian frontier, along with a string of Egyptian targets across Sinai up to and including the Suez Canal and Cairo. According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terrorism sources, the Islamist group was so elated by the outcome of its multiple attacks on Jan. 29, which left at least 40 Egyptian soldiers dead and more than 100 injured in Sinai and Suez towns, that...

Critics who think Israel is taking a heavy-handed approach in destroying Hamas terror tunnels should see what Egypt has in mind. Facing the same type of underground routes out of Gaza that allowed terrorists to mount attacks on Israel, Egypt is considering creating a huge, 1,000-meter buffer zone in the Sinai Peninsula – they have already evicted 10,000 people in the process of clearing the first 500 meters -- and digging a deep-water trench that would flood any future efforts to carve subterranean routes for smuggling weapons and terrorists in and out of Gaza. And unlike the fierce resistance and...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction has exposed that Hamas is running a human trafficking network, smuggling Gaza residents to Europe for $2,000 to $3,500 per person. The charges come following reports that dozens of Palestinian Arabs drowned last week after leaving Gaza for Egypt, where they boarded an ill-fated ship bound for Europe that never reached its goal, reports Kol Yisrael (Israel Radio). Apparently Hamas used its hundreds of smuggling tunnels into the Sinai Peninsula to funnel the would-be immigrants out of Gaza and into Egypt; while an Egyptian siege limited the usage of those smuggling tunnels,...

Jewish Home party chairwoman MK Ayelet Shaked responded Monday morning to reports that the Egyptian government had offered the Palestinian Authority a state extending from Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula, and called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to take it seriously. Aiming a barb at the Israeli Left, she said the initiative proved how out of touch they were. "If the report is indeed correct, the president of Egypt has managed to understand what the Left in Israel has refused to understand for decades." She asserted that the solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian "needs to be regional,...

Egyptians protest after homes demolished to create buffer zone; Hamas official says Egyptian move could "solidify the blockade." Egyptian soldiers keep guard in Sinai Photo: REUTERSThe Hamas government said Sunday it was "surprised" to hear that Egypt is planning to create a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip. Ehab Ghissin, spokesman for the Hamas government, said that there should be no buffer zones "between brothers and friendly countries." Ghissin expressed hope that the Egyptian move would not "solidify the blockade" and increase the suffering of the people in the Gaza Strip. He called for establishing a free...

At least nine Islamist militants have been killed in a major offensive by the Egyptian army in Sinai, security officials have said. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that tanks and troops, backed by Apache helicopters, had struck the militants in towns along the Gaza Strip border. The operation is said to be the biggest of its kind in recent years in Sinai. Meanwhile, Egyptian soldiers defused mortars and other explosives found on a railway line near the Suez Canal. There have been frequent attacks on pipelines and security forces since the uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak set off an explosion Thursday, launching an ambitious and controversial plan to make the Western Desert bloom with water channeled from the Nile River. When the canal is done, if all goes according to plan, water will wind its way 190 miles (310 kilometers) across the Western Desert to irrigate 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) of virgin land. And, if all goes according to plan, the newly irrigated land will be populated by hundreds of thousands of people. The explosion Thursday was the first step in the construction on a pumping station that Egypt claims will be...

An Egyptian general is blaming Hamas and outsiders for funding 'global' jihadi groups in the Sinai Peninsula, including those that carried out Sunday's terror attack against an Egyptian army base, reported Arabic press agency al-Sharq al-Awsat. Terrorists ambushed and killed 16 Egyptian soldiers, then tried to drive hijacked military vehicles into Israel to continue the attack. Israeli military forces intercepted them, killing several terrorists. General Gamal Mazloum's comments, picked up by the Times of Israel, squarely contradict attempts by Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to blame Israel for the attack. They also demonstrate an Egyptian awareness of Hamas' long-term...

Israelis urged to return home for fear that peninsula will become launching pad for terror attacks as police abandon posts, facing increasing violence. Concern is mounting in Israel over reports that the Egyptian police force has abandoned the Sinai Peninsula in face of growing Beduin violence, and that the territory will turn into a breeding ground for global jihad. According to information that has arrived in Israel, Egyptian police authorities have abandoned dozens of police stations throughout the peninsula after they were attacked by Beduin armed with missiles and assault rifles. This concern was behind Israel’s decision two weeks ago...

Egypt Attacks May Indicate Emerging Sinai Bedouin Insurgency By Chris Zambelis Egypt appears to have scored a number of successes in recent weeks in its war against Islamist militants. Counter-terrorist units and police converged on an olive grove in the mountainous area known as Gabal al-Arish on the outskirts of the northern Sinai coastal town of al-Arish last week after receiving a tip that members of the obscure Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Struggle)—one of the main groups implicated in the deadly April attacks in Dahab and other strikes in Sinai—were hiding from the authorities (al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 9). After a...

JERUSALEM — Israeli military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet last week that an air force strike killed several Iranian, Lebanese and Syrian instructors sent to improve Hamas's military and missile capabilities. An Israeli soldier in an armored army vehicle after an operation in the Gaza Strip on March 2. AP/Sebastian Scheiner Yadlin said the death of the instructors marked a serious blow to the Hamas regime. The air force strike took place on Feb. 28 in which five people were killed in a truck filled with more than 100 missiles in the Gaza Strip. Officials said...

An Egyptian court on Saturday banned the armed wing of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, declaring it a "terrorist" group, a judiciary official said. Since Egypt's military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the authorities have accused Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, of aiding jihadists who have increased their attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula. Saturday's court verdict followed a complaint from a lawyer accusing the Hamas armed wing of direct involvement in "terrorist operations" in the Sinai, a court official said. The lawyer also accused the movement of using tunnels under the...