Explosives Detonate On Gaza Fishing Boat

The Israel Navy foiled an apparent attack against one of its patrol boats early yesterday off the Gaza coast.

The sailors noticed an unmanned fishing boat around 6 a.m., a few hundred feet from their vessel before it exploded without causing any damage.

“The fishing boat that was identified this morning by Israel Navy boats was booby-trapped with hundreds of kilograms of explosives,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, said.

Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi credited the Israeli sailors for their actions, which were carried out according to IDF regulation.

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“We are examining all our arrangements, and we will carry on dealing with threats of this kind also in the future.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Hezbollah’s Plan To Abduct Israelis In Sinai Thwarted

It can now be confirmed that some three months ago, Egypt arrested 49 terrorists whom it claims had been handled by Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence in order to bring down President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, to shatter the internal security in Egypt and to smuggle munitions and funds into Gaza to support terrorism there.

The affair began last November, when Egyptian intelligence received information about intentions of Iranian intelligence to cause riots in Egypt and to open centers for teaching radical Shiite Islam in the Sunni state through the infiltration of agents.

A month later, Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah attempted to inflame the Egyptian masses and called on them to start large-scale demonstrations against Mr. Mubarak’s regime and hinted at his organization’s intention to kidnap Israelis in Sinai.

On Jan. 17, at the height of Israel’s operation in Gaza, Mr. Nasrallah’s tone became even more harsh and he called on Egyptian soldiers to oppose their president. According to the Egyptians, in the course of his speech Nasrallah concealed code words aimed at ordering the terrorists cells to perform a series of attacks in Sinai, Cairo, Alexandria and across the Suez Canal, including the kidnapping of Israelis. However, immediately following the speech, the Egyptian GSS raided the hideout apartments rented by the 49 operatives across Egypt and arrested the members.

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Heading the terrorists cell was the Lebanese Sami Shihab and two Palestinian brothers who had smuggled their way into Egypt with fake passports. It appears that one of the cells dealt with forging passports and identification cards and these provided the operatives with the means of renting warehouses and apartments where they met and hid munitions making their way from Sudan. Those arrested were mostly of Egyptian nationality, others were Sudanese and one Syrian.

Immediately following their arrest, the suspects admitted to having been recruited by Hezbollah’s operational division. A short while later it became clear that two of the arrested were staff members of Iran’s television station operating in Cairo. These admitted to having been operated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

“There is a clear Iranian involvement in the formation of terrorist cells in Egypt,” said a senior security source yesterday.

The terrorists’ trial began last week behind closed doors and the indictment lists a long series of attempts to harm President Mubarak’s regime as well as tourist sites in Sinai. The indictment also attributes the suspects with an attempt to recruit Bedouins into the terrorist cells and to smuggle munitions as well as funds into Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Middle East Newsline has confirmed from security sources that Egyptian intelligence has found evidence that Israeli Arabs were being recruited by Islamic insurgency groups. The sources said the Israelis had become members of Hamas and Hizbullah and were assigned to enter Egypt as tourists and students.

“The public prosecutor received a note from state security about information confirmed through interrogation about Hizbullah leaders who sent elements to the country to attract members and persuade them to carry out aggressive acts inside the country,” Egyptian Attorney General Abdul Meguid Mahmoud said on Wednesday.

Egypt has arrested at least seven Israeli Arabs on charges of aiding Hamas on behalf of Hezbollah. They said most of the suspects, reported to have been Bedouins from Israel’s Negev Desert, were believed to have been recruited by Hezbollah while they were in Israel.

Mr. Mahmoud said the detainees had been identifying targets in the Suez Canal and along the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip, including tourist villages in the Sinai Peninsula. The suspects were also accused of forging passports as well as smuggling weapons to the Hamas regime.

“They have been provided with quantities of explosives and the means to make bombs,” Mr. Mahmoud said.

On Thursday, the Egyptian government-owned Al Ahram daily said Iran had ordered the formation of the Hizbullah network as part of a plan to attack Egypt. Al Ahram, quoting a senior security official, said the Hizbullah network, led by Lebanese national Sami Hani Shihab, planned a series of simultaneous attacks throughout Egypt.

The Egyptian announcement, dismissed by the Islamic opposition as an attempt to pressure Lebanon, was issued a day after Israel warned its nationals to leave Sinai immediately. The warning reported a Hezbollah plot against Israeli tourists.

A leading Islamic attorney was said to have been defending the Israeli Arabs and other foreigners linked to Hamas and Hezbollah. Montasser El Zayat said Egyptian intelligence arrested 50 foreigners since last November.

He said they included Egyptians, Lebanese and Palestinians.

“Most of the arrests took place in December 2008,” Mr. El Zayat said.

Islamic sources said Egypt has intensified the monitoring of young Arabs from such countries as Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. They said Egyptian intelligence has concluded that Hamas and Hezbollah were coordinating logistics, fundraising and other missions in Egypt.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah Denounces Egypt

Lebanese Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a dramatic appearance on Hizbullah TV on Saturday, which was also telecast on the Israel Broadcasting Authority TV news.

During the appearance, Mr. Nasrallah accused Egypt of arresting a Hezbollah member who had been “only offering logistical help” to Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza.

Egyptian police have confirmed they detained a man they say was transporting $2 million to north Sinai to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip to Hamas, security sources said on Saturday.

The man, Hassan Mohamed Hassouna, was detained in Cairo along with his driver and 8-year-old son about a week ago, the sources said. Mr. Hassouna named three other men as accomplices during his interrogation.

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This is not the first time that this has occurred. In March, Egyptian security forces blocked two Hamas officials from entering the Gaza Strip with around $900,000 in cash; and in February they forced Hamas official Ayman Taha to deposit more than $11 million in cash in a bank in al-Arish.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Ahmadinejad Says Iran’s Nuclear Progress A Major Political Gain

IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, reports Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that the recent achievements in Iran’s nuclear activities should be regarded as a major gain toward self-sufficiency, independence, national confidence, as well as political victory for the Iranian nation.

IRNA claims President Ahmadinejad made the remarks in a meeting with universities’ presidents and heads of research centers in Tehran on Saturday.

“The fact is that the enemies failed to deal with the political will of the Iranian nation… If we give helping hands in other areas and become mobilized, we can witness subsequent achievements,” he said, according to IRNA.

IRNA continued President Ahmadinejad declared “Iran’s victory and success in the field of nuclear technology proved that the country should be compared with big powers in this sphere and this indicates that the global equations have changed significantly, said the Iranian president” and “all political equations are linked to the decision of the Iranian nation and the way the country will deal with some big power… This is the era of prosperity, victory of justice over injustice and the domination of monotheism.”

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David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

The Newsworthy Passover Theme

“In every generation enemies rise up against us to destroy us” remains a theme of Passover chanted by Jews around the world on the Passover holiday.

There is always someone out there to explain how Jews are drinking the blood of gentiles before Passover. And if we thought this was something of the past – then we were wrong.

Palestinian Media Watch, whose TV lab follows Palestinian Television, provided a clip from the Hamas TV network on the eve of Passover that featured a Jew exclaiming that he does “not dip his hands in water but rather in the blood of young Muslims.” On Hamas TV, a Jewish father explains to his son that he must “drink the blood of Muslims.”

The film was broadcast before a live studio audience of the Islamic University.

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This is the same university that receives solidarity delegations from universities across the globe. The new spirit of the new war on the Jews does not stop with Hamas.

Zahi Hawass, a professor of archaeology who acts as the head of the official Egyptian antiquities authority, wrote an article last week, published in a key newspaper – Asharq al-Awsat, which is published in London and circulated across the Arab world – that stated the concept of murdering women, children and elderly flows in the blood of the Jews of Palestine. He wrote that it was “they who created a religion aimed against humanity in its entirety”.

This same Egyptian official also explained in an interview with official Egyptian TV that “the Jews control the world.”

In Norway last week, Mohammed Ali Chisti, a young Muslim Norwegian, addressed a public seminar in which both the foreign minister and the crown prince of Norway attended. The title of his talk was “Why I hate Jews and homosexuals.” In his talk, he stated that “Jews are behind all international conflicts. The Jews created the United States so that the latter could form Zionist Israel.”

Hebrew University professor Shlomo Avinerim, a longtime advocate of negotiations with the Islamic world, last week wrote a guest editorial in the daily Ha’Aretz newspaper in which he called on the West to realize that the Hamas war is not against Israel per se – it is a war to exterminate Judasim and the Jewish people.

For those who would compare Hamas to the Nazis, Dr. Rafi Kishon, of Tel Aviv, rejects the analogy.

Dr. Kishon, son of the late, renowned Israeli pundit Efraim Kishon, notes Nazis did everything in their power to hide their crimes, while this generation of Islamic killers never hides what they do.

In the words of Dr. Kishon, “The Nazis would always deny murdering Jews, while these Islamic groups compete to take credit when they conduct a heinous murder of a Jew.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Former Iranian Minister Predicts Regime Collapse

A former Iranian minister said the Iran’s Islamic regime is teetering on the brink of collapse within the next two years.

Former Iranian Justice Minister Mehdi Haeri Khorshidi said the regime has been growing increasingly unpopular, threatening the regime’s stability. Mr. Khorshidi, a Shiite cleric and former adviser to Iran’s prime minister who spent five years in prison for criticizing his government, made his remarks during a conference at Haifa University last week.

“Iran has powers that can stun and even defeat the government,” Mr Khorshidi said. “There are other elements that wish to separate state and religion. They see that as long as Islamic rule forcibly clings to the government, religion is connected with all that is bad, which harms [the religion].”

These elements in Iranian society include religious people, university professors, judges and Parliament members who have grown restless amid Iran’s economic decline. Iran’s government faces problems from its overwhelming youth population, and so far, its military and security forces have been successful putting down unrest amid the country’s reported 50-percent annual inflation rate.

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“We need no foreign element to replace the regime for us,” Mr. Khorshidi said. “We can and must do it alone.

“Due to the impossible financial state of affairs in Iran, along with the youths’ desires, the only thing that preserves the regime is the military. But how long can this situation continue?”

He said these Iranians want to end the corruption in the current government and establish a secular regime friendly to others in the Middle East, including Israel.

“Fifty percent of the university openings are reserved for people associated with the government, and in order to be accepted in the remaining places, the candidates must undergo tests that are of political character and not at all related to the study material,” he said.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Fatah Terrorizes While Undergoing US Military Training

Despite several years of military cooperation with Israel, the Fatah movement, the dominant force behind the Palestinian Authority (PA), has resumed terror activities against Israel, according to Middle East Newsline. This development could make things difficult for the U.S. due to a high degree of American involvement.

Over the past year, due to earlier Israeli military cooperation efforts with Fatah forces, Israel had pardoned more than 250 Fatah terrorists implicated in the attacks in 2003 and 2004, and many of them were absorbed in PA security forces.

Now, Israeli intelligence sources say, dozens of these pardoned Fatah terrorists have returned to the fighting Israel. They said these Fatah fighters have been encouraged by senior members of the movement led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to fight the Jewish state.

“The assessment is that a Fatah campaign would revive their movement and exploit the international atmosphere against the new Israeli government [of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu],” an Israeli intelligence source said.

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Fatah has claimed responsibility for killings of Israeli police and civilians in March and April.

This information coincides with Ha’aretz reports about the U.S. government’s program that provides “top-level training to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian security forces,” amid information showing Fatah operatives and members of the Palestinian security forces are being recruited for attacks against Israel.

The American-advised training course for Fatah, titled the “Senior Leaders Course,” is a two-month long program conducted in the Palestinian capital of Ramallah, which has been aided and supervised by the U.S., and remains part of the project overseen by the U.S. security coordinator in the territories, Gen. Keith Dayton.

Ha’aretz also reported the American training program for Fatah forces have produced 80 graduates divided into two 40-student classes. A third class, made up of commanders from the Palestinian National Security – the largest security force with 15,000 members, tasked with policing borders, providing military intelligence, military police services and presidential security – is currently being trained in Jordan.

The return of Fatah to terrorist activity against could place Israel on a collision course with Fatah’s American military advisers.

This could create a nightmare scenario of American military personnel caught in the crossfire between Israeli troops and Fatah terrorists.

The American consulate in Jerusalem has so far not commented on the fact that Fatah security forces, known as the al-Aqsa Brigades, are defined by American law as a terrorist entity and possibly are being inadvertently aided by the U.S. military.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Palestinian Attempts Vehicular Terror Attack During Demolition Of House Of ‘Bulldozer Terrorist’

Israeli Border Police shot and killed a Palestinian terrorist Tuesday at a roadblock in Jerusalem as he attempted to run them over with the car he was driving. Three border guards suffered slight injuries to their legs in the moments leading up to the shooting.

“We were on lookout duty, observing the intersection and suddenly spotted a white vehicle arriving without intending to stop,” said Supt. Noam Shavit, a border police squad commander who spotted the approaching car and opened fire on it. “He simply crashed into the squad, and I immediately realized this was a terror attack. I had no doubt. It clearly was not an accident, with the speed and direction of the car headed into the officers.”

The policemen were taken to a Jerusalem hospital for treatment of their injuries afterward.

Investigators identified the terrorist as Iyad Azmi Awisat, 20, of East Jerusalem’s Sur Baher neighborhood. They have not ruled out the possibility the attack was connected to the demolition of the home belonging to Hussam Duwiyat, the terrorist who went on a rampage through Jerusalem with a bulldozer in July 2008.

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The attack took place hours after the home’s demolition had begun.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Israeli FM: Don’t Stand Over Us With A Stopwatch

Israel’s foreign minister had tough words for President Barack Obama, although his name was not specifically mentioned.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday Israel would not yield to pressure for it to change its positions or give up its sovereignty.

“We haven’t intervened in others’ affairs, and we expect others not to stand over us with a stopwatch,” Mr. Lieberman said. “We don’t change our positions due to the circumstances.”

Israel, he said, has been in a deadlock with the Palestinians for 16 years, which requires a comprehensive and responsible diplomatic approach to deal with the situation.

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“We don’t intend to sit back idly,” Mr. Lieberman said. “We will say out loud what we agree to and what we don’t agree to. Policy will be formulated responsibly and seriously, and this will take between one and two months.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

Are Palestinian Policies Of New Israeli and US Administrations On A Road To Collision?

Comments President Barack Obama made in Turkey yesterday, reiterating President George W. Bush’s call for an independent Palestinian state, has placed his administration on a collision course with Israel’s new government.

His comments stand in stark contrast with those made by Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who has taken a firm stand against further Israeli withdrawals or concessions.

“It is astonishing to see every time anew how the U.S. president on-duty learns by means of trial and error how to conduct himself in the Middle East,” said Dr. Mordechai Keidar, senior fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center in Bar Ilan University. “Obama still thinks that the Palestinians want a European-style democratic state and hasn’t learned that Hamas envisions a state that is more reminiscent of Iran than it is of Jordan.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal envoy to the Palestinians, Yizhak Molcho, has participated in consultations the new prime minister has been holding to reassess Israel’s stance in the peace process. These meetings come as Mr. Netanyahu further develops his policies toward the Palestinians.

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He will likely visit Washington during the first week of May when he is supposed to present Mr. Obama with a consolidated plan addressing how his government will handle relations with the Palestinians, but that has not been firmly set.

The Prime Minister’s Bureau is evaluating whether or not to accept an American invitation to visit that week, which could afford Mr. Netanyahu with an opportunity to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference. It also is considering postponing having the prime minister meet Mr. Obama, so he can better prepare himself.

Mr. Netanyahu has also received an invitation from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to meet him in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for a conference. The prime minister has thanked him and said a firm date would be set in the next few days.

The Prime Minister’s Bureau said that the two leaders stressed the ties of friendship between their two countries and promised to continue them and even to strengthen them.

“Peace between the two countries (Egypt and Israel) is of supreme importance, and the sides have a common interest in intensifying the peace and broadening it to repel the threats against it,” Mr. Netanyahu said last night.

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com