Posted on 04/27/2006 1:52:11 PM PDT by Nachum
JERUSALEM – A border deal brokered here in November by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped facilitate a major planned suicide operation thwarted at the last minute yesterday, which Palestinians say was coordinated by al-Qaida, security officials told WorldNetDaily.
"Rice's border deal has been an abject failure from the start. Now it may have enabled a major operation that would have been devastating had it not been stopped minutes before. It has allowed terrorists free passage into and out of Gaza," said a security official.
Palestinian forces yesterday stopped a car with several terrorists from passing through the Karni border checkpoint, the main cargo passage between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The crossing is controlled by the Palestinians on the Gaza side and by Israeli officers on the Israeli side.
Israel immediately closed the Karni crossing after the car was found to be explosives-laden. Security sources said the car, which was safely captured by Palestinian officers, contained "enormous" amounts of explosives meant to be detonated at the border crossing inside Israel.
At almost the exact same time in Sinai, on the Egyptian side of the Gaza-Egypt border just outside Israel's Rafah crossing, two suicide bombers yesterday exploded near a multinational United Nations peacekeeping force, injuring at least four people.
The attackers hit just two days after a triple bombing killed 24 people at Egypt's Sinai resort city of Dahab on the Gulf of Aqaba.
Israeli security officials, for now, are refraining from commenting on whether yesterday's bombings in the Sinai and attempted bombing at the nearby Israeli crossing were coordinated or if they were related to Monday's Dahab attacks, which already are being widely attributed to al-Qaida.
Senior Palestinian security officials, including the chief of a Palestinian Authority intelligence agency, told WND yesterday's attacks and thwarted bombing were indeed coordinated, were related to Monday's Dahab bombings and were the handiwork of groups working on behalf of al-Qaida.
"Al-Qaida came just a few feet from attacking Israel for the first time," said the intelligence chief, speaking on condition his name be withheld.
Palestinian security officials told WND they have information the terrorists involved in yesterday's thwarted Karni attack traveled from Gaza to the Sinai desert where they received instructions and training and met with local Sinai jihadists to coordinate the bombings.
They said a joint Egyptian-Palestinian antiterrorism taskforce began combing the northern Sinai for suspected plotters of the attack.
The Palestinian security officials said the Gaza-based terrorists involved in the thwarted attack likely were able to travel in recent months to the Sinai through Gaza's Rafah crossing, the main checkpoint between Egypt at Gaza. The checkpoint is one of the largest crossings between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. It has been the scene of rampant Palestinian weapons smuggling the past few years.
Prior to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August, the Gaza side of the Rafah border was entirely controlled by the IDF.
But Rice in November brokered a border deal, which Israel accepted reportedly after intense American pressure, restricting the Jewish state to monitoring the Rafah crossing by camera, calling for a European presence at the border station and offering the Palestinians some veto power on vehicles and persons entering Gaza.
After Rice's border deal was finalized in November, both Egyptian and Palestinian security forces deployed at the Rafah crossing, and a rotating team of European inspectors was stationed at the border. The Europeans have fled their posts several times in response to security threats.
New border rules, which sources close to the deal say were partially devised by Rice herself, stipulate Israel cannot restrict who leaves Gaza, but it can ask the European monitors to delay for several hours anyone crossing the border if Israel provides immediate information indicating an entrant may be a security threat. The regulations restrict Israel to rely on security cameras at the border and a list of entrants supplied by the Palestinians.
A WND probe recently found Rice's Rafah border agreement has allowed terrorists to infiltrate the Gaza Strip, where they are poised to attack Israel, and grants Gaza-based terrorists freedom to travel into the nearby Sinai desert, where they can meet with regional jihadists – as Palestinian officials say was the case with yesterday's thwarted bombing.
Israeli security officials told WND the cameras at the Rafah border are not sufficient to identify entrants, and they said the Palestinians have been failing to supply accurate and timely lists of individuals crossing into Gaza.
"There have been many cases of Israel not getting lists at all," said a security official. "Or we get them so near the time of arrival we don't have nearly enough time to ask an entrant to be delayed."
Israeli security officials charged the Palestinians have tampered with the names of entrants, accusing Palestinian border workers of deliberately disguising the personal information of terrorists crossing the border.
"The result," one security officials said, "is that the border between Gaza and Egypt is nonexistent."
Indeed, several senior terrorists based in Gaza previously told WorldNetDaily they were able to cross into the Sinai and back without a problem.
One terror leader – a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, which is suspected of involvement in yesterday's thwarted Israel crossing attack – said he went to the Sinai for "vacation" last month.
Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Zahar's brother, Fadel, entered Gaza through Rafah just days after Rice's border deal was implemented, reportedly bringing with him 13 other wanted terrorists. Fadel Al-Zahar had been deported by Israel to Lebanon in 1991 after he was accused of orchestrating attacks.
An Israeli official said yesterday, "We are still investigating the Karni attack. Certainly the Rafah crossing is allowing terrorists from Gaza to cross into Sinai for training and instructions. It is very likely this collapse of any security at Rafah facilitated yesterday's thwarted attack."
"Rice is a bumbling idiot."
And if you wouldn't make statements like that, people wouldn't know how ignorant you really are.
Thank you. Your reply to tomahawk was much nicer than mine. (See Post #61)
[A border deal brokered here in November by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped facilitate a major planned suicide operation...]
It seems as if their is always someone to blame. If Isreal would just handle their own problems, I'm sure they would live in peace and freedom.
[She and Bush are creating terrorist havens in the Middle East, including in Gaza and the West Bank.]
I'm sure the Taliban and Saddam have a different view. And you might want to look at a history book... terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza has been happening for some time, even before Bush.
[Pay attention to what Rice and Bush are doing re Iran: Nothing. ]
Why don't you go over there, big mouth! You seem more then willing to run into war, go for it!
It is important not to mix The Prsident's official duties with his personal faith . If everybody did that America would be Europe !
Therefore, she is worse then a bumbling idiot.
How has Rice made the situation for Israel worse than the situation she inherited from the clinton administration?
Come on. You can do better than that! Sounds like one of the cleaner things a DU'er would say about Ms Rice.
In your analogy, the Bank President would actually be Israel as they own the bank. Rice would be their biggest customer who is using her clout to influence the Bank President.
Is the customer to blame if the Bank President is so wimpy that they do whatever the customer wants?
And the Bank President didn't order security to leave, he changed security companies.
Is it the customer's fault, or even the Bank President's fault that the security guards ran away like wussies when the robbers showed up?
Republicans are in danger of alienating their Christian base with this nonsense.
I suppose so. My wife told me I was being too hard on him, and she is probably right :) I suppose I just consider Islam my enemy - not just from a Christian point of view, but also as a classical liberal.
For one, there is now a semi sovereign terrorist entity that is daily firing missiles at Israel.
That's a hell of question? How can Israel be worse off today then it was under Clinton with both a Republican Administration and post 9/11? And yet it is.
Read anything I have written for a year on the subject and you would see that I spare no criticism of the chicken s**t Israeli Government whose policies will doom Israel.
Those policies include allowing themselves to be pressured to suicide by this Administration.
Similar to the mixture of ridicule and contempt one aquires to for those who resort to simple-minded labels like "kool aid drinkers" for those who dare not to join their attacks on Bush, Rice or other republicans in general.
Some of us believe loyalty to politicians should last just as long as they do the right things.
Others believe what politicans do is unimportant just as long as the carry the right label.
And some of us are tired of self-righteous political puritans who turn on their leaders at the drop of a hat when they fail to agree with their personal position on EVERY single issue under the sun.
Such unbending and self absorbed people don't know definition of loyalty.
Others believe what politicans do is unimportant just as long as the carry the right label.
Another unfair characterization of those you disagree with as "kool aid drinkers" and mindless followers with absolutely no personal moral convictions on anything.
I don't know a single person on FR who falls into this category.
I guess it's all in how you look at politics...and loyalty.
Who owes who loyalty?
With rare exceptions the people don't clamor for a certain leader. We don't go hat in hand and beg some person to become our leader.
They come to us. They make the promises. They appeal to what parochial interests we have as a group and as individuals. A party is formed when the group's interest mesh more or less although we still retain particular interests that are more controlling.
So to some Republicans, they better get the right promises on Abortion. To other taxes. To some Israel. Usually it a combination of several factors.
And if we trust the person, they get our vote and are rewarded with power, the big house, the big plane, lots and lots of good stuff.
We don't get the good stuff. We get, we assume, what was promised.
Who owes who loyalty?
The only loyalty that I see ever owing a political figure is that if he/she is fighting for what he promised, then you don't abandon him/her during the fight- if he is keeping to the fight promised.
Mu mother didn't trust George W Bush where Israel was concerned. I convinced her that he was different, that he could be trusted on Israel. I fooled myself, I ignored cues of the first term. She voted for him in 2004. I regret what I did. My mother is smarter then me.
For Israel issues and other reasons, George W Bush, the politician, no longer has my support. He has been disloyal to my vote and trust.
George Bush is the best friend Israel has EVER had in the White House. IF you say otherwise, you are fooling yourself.
Sharon himself said Israel had never had a better friend in the White House than Bush. ``We never had such cooperation in everything as we have with the current administration.''
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