Shin Bet chief accuses Egypt of closing its eyes to Palestinian arms smuggling to Gaza. But DEBKAfile reports its volume is dwarfed by Hizballah’s illegal imports
September 27, 2006, 9:36 PM (GMT+02:00)
Diskin informed the cabinet Wednesday, Sept 27, that since Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip, 19 tons of explosives have passed through Sinai to the Gaza Strip. “The Egyptians know who the smugglers are – we gave them intelligence – but they are doing nothing,” he said.
DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that while Egypt helps the Palestinians move the tools of war into Gaza, the Syrians have established large arms dumps for the fresh war materiel incoming from Iran and Syria itself on the Syrian side of the Lebanese border. It can be moved over to any part of Lebanon in an instant. This device enables Damascus to keep Hizballah re-supplied while pretending to uphold the arms embargo ordered in Security Council resolution 1701.
Our sources reveal 25 of these large weapons stores have been located in Syrian army camps, air bases and security installations close to the Lebanese border. They contain miscellaneous missiles, including the latest models of surface-to-air and anti-tank rockets, all sorted and marked by type of weapon and the Hizballah units for which they are destined.
Drawing on the lessons of the Lebanon war, Iranian Revolutionary Guards supply and engineering corps have dropped the use of arms trucks which drew Israeli air attacks and have attached expert “smuggling squads” to each Hizballah unit.
Syria is also topping up Hizballah’s war losses of ammunition and shells as well s mortars, machine guns, grenades, anti-tank missiles, explosives and automatic rifles.
The weapons supply situation for the Palestinians in the south and Hizballah in north means that both are in equipped with enough war materiel to open simultaneous fronts against Israel from both ends of the country.
Senior Israeli officers say that the government in Jerusalem and the military
high command have been sitting on their hands since the August 14 ceasefire instead of dealing with the dual war threat. The Shin Bet director is not alone in sounding a warning note; a past Navy commander and Shin Bet chief, the Labor MK Ami Ayalon, bluntly contradicted his own party leader, defense minister Amir Peretz, at a briefing to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee Tuesday, Sept 26. He reported according from his naval intelligence sources that UNIFIL’s naval control of Lebanon’s sea lanes is totally ineffective and Hizballah’s weapons shipments continue to be dropped ashore. |
