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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paret who wrote (9713)	8/16/2005 7:40:35 PM
From: Scoobah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Crazy stuff: But this is a War on Terror thread, not necessarily an american political issue thread: Palestinians and Al Queda: so what else is new? DEBKAfile Exclusive earlier named the Palestinian who led al Qaeda bomb teams against Taba and Sharm el Sheikh. August 15, 2005, 11:32 PM (GMT+02:00) Iyad Said Salah, a Palestinian who lived in the northern Sinai town of El Arish, is named in an Egyptian intelligence summary as the ringleader of two serial Qaeda attacks in Sinai: the Taba blasts that left 32 dead last October and the bombing strikes at Sharm al Sheikh on July 27 that killed 64. That summary of its investigations into the attacks was circulated to anti-terror authorities in the United States, Israel and the UK, none of whose governments has revealed its contents. DEBKAfile’s counter terror and intelligence sources disclose key elements for the first time. The Egyptians also reported that 16 members of the bomb teams (the Egyptians prefer not to name al Qaeda) were captured and 5 killed, including Iyad Salah, in battles that took place near Jebel Hilal in central Sinai. Two of the captives were interrogated. The Egyptian summary contains the following conclusions: 1. The network was local and anti-Egyptian. 2. It had no links outside Sinai, namely with al Qaeda or its Iraq commander, Abu Musab al Zarqawi. 3. The Egyptian roundup liquidated the terrorist teams operating in Sinai. The threat has now been eliminated. Five days after Cairo circulated this summary, all three conclusions were proven false. Monday, Aug. 15, two explosive devices were planted against a multinational force vehicle at the al Jora air base in northern Sinai. One exploded, slightly injuring two Canadian women sergeants of the force. The second was discovered in time to be safely disarmed. They were laid so that the second bomb would blow up and hit the rescue teams rushing to the scene of the first explosion and so maximize the casualty count. The dominant MFO contingent is American. Its commanders did their utmost at first to pretend that there had been no terrorist attack only “damage to a vehicle.” While one of the purposes of the terrorist attack was to kill Americans, another object was to demonstrate that the Egyptians had not liquidated the al Qaeda networks in Sinai as they claimed. Cells are still operational in the north and maybe even new networks. By targeting the MFO, the terrorists also proved they were no local anti-Egyptian networks but part of an international jihads ring that went after Americans, Israelis, Britons and other foreigners, as they did in Taba and Sharm al Sheikh. By singling out the American-led MFO, the terrorists were shouting out loud they were al Qaeda. Neither the Egyptian not the Israeli governments has admitted any of this in public because some embarrassing questions might be asked, especially in Israel. For instance, if Egyptian security and intelligence forces are incapable of rooting out one or more al Qaeda terror networks led by a Palestinian in northern Sinai, Is it responsible for the Israel government to relegate Gaza-Sinai border security along the Philadelphi strip to Egyptian border forces? Is there any guarantee that those networks will not penetrate the Gaza Strip and join up with the al Qaeda cells already present there and the Hizballah units due to be shipped in from Lebanon upon completion of Israel’s pull-out?