International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 30 Jan 2008

Egyptian security forces this week apprehended five Palestinians in Sinai armed with explosives belts and planning to carry out terror attacks in Israel, the semi-official Egyptian paper Al-Ahram reported Wednesday morning. The terror cell was arrested in Taba, just over the border from the southern Israeli port of Eilat, the site of the last suicide bombing in Israel last January.

Egyptian forces also arrested a second terror cell armed with sniper rifles and explosives, as well as maps that pinpointed information on IDF bases along the border and the magnitude of forces stationed at each base. The Cairo paper said the Palestinians offered large sums of money to Egyptian border guards so that they would allow them to drive trucks into the Sinai unimpeded.

The paper also reported that Egyptian authorities set the beginning of next week as the final deadline for all of the Palestinians who breached the Rafah border and crossed into Egypt to return to the Gaza Strip.

Egypt has also issued an ultimatum to Hamas to pull back dozens of Gazan gunmen who are reported to have crossed into Egypt over the past week. Palestinian Authority security officials in Ramallah said 300-500 gunmen, most of them belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were refusing to return to the Gaza Strip. The officials said the gunmen had sought refuge with Beduin tribes and Egyptian families in a number of places in Sinai.

In the past few days, the officials added, Egyptian authorities had detained more than 100 armed Palestinians. Most of the detainees were returned to the Gaza Strip after their weapons were confiscated, officials said

According to the officials, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had succeeded in bringing tons of explosives and various weapons into Gaza over the past week.

Several other Gazans were detained for trying to raise Hamas flags on Egyptian government buildings in El-Arish and other area towns. One diplomat told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas supporters were trying to create the impression that they had succeeded in "liberating" Egyptian territory.

The article noted that the Egyptians are deploying en masse in northern Sinai and preparing to take all legal measures possible against people who break the law there. "The current border fence will be replaced by a different, more sophisticated fence, in order to completely prevent infiltration attempts and in order to maintain Egyptian national security," one Egyptian official was quotes as saying.

Copyright © 2007 International Christian Embassy Jerusalem