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Hamas helped the ISIS-affiliated group in Sinai to carry out the latest attacks against Egyptian troops and supplied them with weapons and other support, an Israeli general told Al-Jazeera on Thursday. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered condolences over the attacks that claimed the lives of dozens of people. Israel has "clear information that Hamas is supporting the Wilayat Sinai, which belongs to Daesh," Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, claimed, referring to the Islamic State group in one of its acronyms. He added that Hamas provided the Islamist group weapons and logistical support,...

ISMAILIA: Egypt launched airstrikes on Islamist militant targets in the Sinai peninsula Thursday, killing 23 fighters a day after the deadliest clashes in the region in years, security sources said. The sources said those killed had taken part in Wednesday's fighting in which 100 militants and 17 soldiers, including four officers, were killed, according to the army spokesman. Sinai-based insurgents, affiliates of ISIS, have stepped up attacks on soldiers and police since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled Islamist President Mohammad Morsi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Sisi, now Egypt's elected president, says the pro-ISIS group Sinai...

Wednesday's terror attack was the largest ever carried out by the Sinai Province, Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate, since it began its fight against the government in Cairo some four years ago. It also marked the most painful blow suffered by the Egyptian military in its war on extremist Islamist terror, which it is bent on eradicating. It was a well-planned attack, carried out by dozens of ISIS operatives in northern Sinai, and the explosions and weapons fire were heard loud and clear in Israel. Amid concerns that ISIS may try to spread their attacks in the direction of Israel -...

Yediot Ahronot: Egypt proposes water barrier and kilometer wide sterile zone in Philadelphi Corridor Dr. Aaron Lerner 23 February 2007 Yediot Ahronot correspondent Alex Fishman reported in the 21 February edition that Egypt proposed to Israel to dig a deep trench on the Philadelphi Corridor to be flooded with water from the Mediterranean in order to prevent smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza Strip. According to Fishman, the Egyptians raised the proposal during meetings with IDF officials and U.S. General Dayton along with a proposal to create a sterile cleared kilometer wide band on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi...

JERUSALEM, June 17 (Reuters) - Israel set in motion a plan on Thursday to dig a moat along the Gaza-Egypt border, inviting contractor bids for the project meant to prevent arms reaching Palestinian militants through tunnels. The Defence Ministry published the bid notice 11 days after the cabinet approved in principle a Gaza withdrawal plan, under which Israel would keep a narrow corridor on the Egyptian frontier pending possible security arrangements with Cairo. Inviting bids by July 12, the ministry said the southern Gaza Strip "canal" would be 15 metres (50 ft) to 25 metres (80 ft) deep and stretch...

alestinian sources report large IDF forces in the southern Gaza Strip ahead of expected operations to widen the Philadelphia corridor. Meanwhile, some 3000 Palestinians fled their homes in Rafah on Sunday following the High Court of Justice's turning down of a petition filed by 13 Palestinian residents against the IDF's decision to demolish houses adjacent to the Phildelphia Route in Rafah, Ynet reported. Advertisement The IDF revealed plans Sunday to create a 60 meter wide underground canal, 20 meters deep that is aimed at preventing the forging of arms-smuggling tunnels from the Egyptian side of Rafah to the Palestinian side....

The roadside bomb that killed four Americans recently had to have been imported into the Gaza Strip from someplace. Odds are, it came from underground tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Countless other weapons used in terrorist attacks against Israelis in recent years have also arrived via those same subterranean routes. So, while Egypt may not be directly responsible for the attacks that take place in Gaza, it has indirectly allowed Gaza's terrorists to arm themselves. In other words, it's time for Cairo to see the light, and put an end to the tunnels. Over the last ten years,...

<p>EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) - Dozens of Islamic militants unleashed a wave of simultaneous attacks, including suicide car bombings, on Egyptian army checkpoints in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday, killing at least 53 soldiers, officials said.</p> <p>The advanced planning and coordinated execution of the attacks show that the long-running insurgency in the area is growing stronger, posing a serious threat to Egypt's security as the military-backed government struggles to restore stability after years of unrest since the 2011 uprising.</p>

Islamic State militants launched a wide-scale coordinated assault on several military checkpoints in Egypt's North Sinai on Wednesday in which 50 people were killed, security sources said, the largest attack yet in the insurgency-hit province. Egyptian army F-16 jets and Apache helicopters strafed the region that lies within the Sinai Peninsula, a strategic area located between Israel, the Gaza Strip and the Suez Canal. It was the second high-profile attack in Egypt this week. On Monday, the prosecutor-general was killed in a car bombing in Cairo. The attacks raise questions about the government's ability to contain a Sinai-based insurgency that...

By publishing a video from within the terror tunnels on Iranian television, The al-Aqsa Brigades has continued pushing their own brand of psychological warfare against the Israeli people. A year after the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, the al-Aqsa Brigades published a video from inside a terror tunnel allegedly leading from Gaza to the Israeli border. In the video posted Sunday on Iranian television, one of the terrorists seen in the video said the tunnel measures 3.5 kilometers wide and is made entirely of concrete. The reporter in the video suggested that the underground tunnel crossed over the Israeli border...

These days Obama following the law would be news. Obama not following the law is just business as usual. So this is another case of Obama doing what he can to help terrorists while ignoring the limits on his powers.No wonder he likes the PLO. It too is run by an unelected dictator.Here's what the issue is... Two lawmakers are warning the Palestinian Authority (PA) that its economic assistance from the United States could be suspended because of its decision to initiate charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC).“By formally submitting allegations against Israeli forces to the...

AIRO — Egypt’s top prosecutor died on Monday of wounds he sustained when a powerful bomb detonated next to his car as he was driving to work, state news media reported. The prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, is the most senior Egyptian official to be killed since insurgents began a wave of violent attacks against the military-backed government nearly two years ago. At least seven other people, including two bystanders, were hurt in the attack, which incinerated several cars, in a residential area of the capital’s Heliopolis neighborhood. Gen. Osama Bedeir, the head of Cairo security, said the explosive device was planted...

Israel's embassy in France has formally complained to the French government, following an Arutz Sheva report which revealed Paris is funding at least one of the extremist organizations involved in coordinating the anti-Israel "Freedom Flotilla III" to Gaza. The flotilla is attempting to breach the IDF's blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory, which the 70-odd anti-Israel activists taking part claim is "illegal." In 2011, however, the UN's Palmer Report ruled that the blockade was in fact an entirely legal means for Israel to prevent weapons and rocket-making equipment from being smuggled into Gaza. Last week Arutz Sheva revealed that among the...

After MK Basal Ghattas (Joint Arab List) sent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu several letters protesting the IDF’s intention to prevent the Freedom Flotilla III, the Prime Minister is sending back letters to members of the flotilla. In his letter, Netanyahu says to flotilla members that they apparently “got lost.” “Welcome to Israel, but if it’s freedom you have in mind, maybe you meant to sail to another destination not far from here—Syria. There, the government is murdering and slaughtering its citizens daily, with the support of Iran,” the letter says. The letter lists the large amount of medical and other...

UN has lost its way, as so vividly illustrated by the moral equivalence, if not worse, it applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the massacres in Syria The United Nations celebrated the 70th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter on June 26th. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the UN Charter “an expression of hope.” Commemorating the signing of the UN Charter at its birthplace in San Francisco, the Secretary General added that the Charter “symbolizes the hope and aspirations that we can bring the world as it is a little closer to the world as it should...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — June 28, 2015 … In response to a PR stunt using a flotilla of boats to illegally enter Gaza, paid activists supporting Hamas in Gaza will be welcomed to Israel with a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office. The letter will be given to 50 people on the boats as they are legally detained in Israeli waters and escorted to Ashdod. The letter, which will be distributed with food and drinks, reads: “Welcome to Israel! Perhaps you meant to set sail for a place not far from here – Syria.” “There the...

For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip seen in Jerusalem tonight as a disastrous humiliation. After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on Jewish settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at...

Uproar in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has relieved Gen. Qassem Soleimani,the Al Qods Brigades chief and supreme commander of Iranian Middle East forces, of his Syria command after a series of war debacles. He was left in charge of Iran’s military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. This is revealed by exclusive Iranian intelligence sources. Since Soleimani last visited Damascus on June 2, in the aftershock of the historic town of Palmyra’s fall to the Islamic State, the situation of President Bashar Assad and his army has gone from bad to worse. The Iranian general’s...

In Jerusalem flyers were spread throughout the old city claiming to be ISIS.The bulletin which had the ISIS logo demanded that all Christian Arabs must leave eastern Jerusalem by the end of Ramadan accused of being “Israeli collaborators”. ISIS also demanded that in the case the Christians refuse to leave that Muslims in eastern Jerusalem are mandated to kill all the Christians living there.Photo Credit: Islamic State / JerusalemAl-Quds (Jerusalem Newspaper), the main Arab newspaper there had posted a reply from Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia, the Archbishop from the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. In his reply the Archbishop condemned the...

A Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) committee launched talks with Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Saturday with the objective of forming a new unity government, after Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the dysfunctional previous one earlier this month. PLO Executive Committee member Hanna Amireh told the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency about the talks, and said that they were meant to include the two terrorist organizations in the new government. The move comes despite the fact that Abbas told French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius last Sunday that Hamas should not be included in the new government. Amireh said that...