Israel Matzav

Why is Israel allowing weapons smuggling into Gaza?

I have discussed the problem of weapons smuggling into Gaza many times on this blog (the search "smuggling, Gaza" returned twenty-one hits on this blog). But until I discovered this post on DEBKAfile late last night, I thought that the reason we weren't stopping the weapons smuggling was that Ehud K. Olmert and his gang of incompetents weren't willing to did not have the courage to send in the IDF and stop it. This post opens a whole new avenue: the possibility that the government is actually complicit in the weapons smuggling. It's scary, because it's essentially charging the government with treason, whether by gross negligence or willful incompetence. But that conclusion is not so far-fetched as we will soon see.

As I reported last night earlier this morning, there was another $4 million in cash smuggled into Gaza from Egypt via the Philadelphi corridor yesterday. DEBKAfile claims flat out that the Egyptians approved the entry of that cash into Gaza - and more significantly that Israel knew about it and did not even pick up a phone to ask the Egyptians to stop it. DEBKAfile reports this is part of a pattern - the reaction to prior knowledge of weapons smuggling is the same: silence. As DEBKAfile points out:

One way would be to move Israeli forces one kilometer deep into the Philadelphi border route for every $100,000 reaching the Hamas war chest. After all, Egypt contracted to seal its border against terrorist traffic under an international accord brokered by the US secretary of state. But prime minister Ehud Olmert prefers to let Cairo off the hook. Thursday, Nov. 15 [should be 16. CiJ], the day after a deadly Palestinian missile attack on Sderot, he again praised “Egypt’s role in blocking smuggling to Gaza.”

And the same is true - according to DEBKAfile - of the European 'monitors' Secretary of State Rice was kind enough to arrange - and of terrorists and their facilitators who come in with the weapons and the cash:

Have the seven Israeli cabinet ministers used their presence in Los Angeles for an intensive information campaign to expose to the American public the role the Europeans and Egyptians are playing in the availability of funds for Hamas hands, despite the freeze imposed by the Middle East Quartet? No again, although, like the Egyptians, the European monitors posted at the Rafah border crossing are instructed by their governments to turn a blind eye – not just to the suitcases stashed with dollars, but also to the Iranian and Syrian military instructors, the Hizballah agents and the al Qaeda operatives who make free of the Rafah crossing in and out of Sinai.

These entrants include bomb-makers and missile experts assigned to improving the precision, explosive power and range of the missiles fired day by day at Gaza’s Israeli neighbors - Sderot and Ashkelon.

DEBKAfile goes on to make some suggestions about how Israel ought to be reacting - which will undoubtedly be ignored unless and until Ehud K. Olmert goes home or the State of Israel is God forbid destroyed.

But I find the government's behavior puzzling. If they were turning a blind eye only to the cash, I would disagree, but at least I would see a rationale: that the government wants to let money in to Gaza by the back door to alleviate the bogus 'humanitarian crisis' that the 'Palestinians' have managed to convince the world exists. But weapons? Bombmakers? I can think of a number of explanations (including that DEBKAfile is wrong and that the government does not know these things in advance - but I find DEBKAfile's claims more plausible than that), none of which make the government look very good:

1. The government knows more about what's going on than we thought before, but still refuses to act, because acting would require admitting that the expulsion of Jews from and surrender of the Gaza Strip to the 'Palestinians' was a failure. This seems the most plausible explanation to me, because it would mean that there is no justification for the government remaining in power. And we all know how much the government wants to remain in power.

2. The government is so worried about building up a coalition against Iran that it doesn't want to rock the boat. The government is obsessed with Iran, and while Iran does constitute a clear and present danger, if things continue as they are, it is likely that we will have a mass casualty conventional war against Hamas and Hezbullah - God forbid - long before Iran reaches the point of deploying nuclear weapons.

3. The government is willing to 'sacrifice' a certain number of casualties in the Negev to convince the rest of the world that it is impossible to trust the 'Palestinians' by withdrawing from Judea and Samaria and to arouse pity on the poor Jews that will induce the world to face up to the reality of Iran. That sounds like Ariel Sharon talking - not Ehud Olmert. Ehud Olmert is a true believer in giving the country to the 'Palestinians.' Ariel Sharon was a true believer in keeping himself and his sons out of jail.

I leave you all (for an hour or two or three) to think about why the government is behaving in this manner, and to contemplate Ehud K. Olmert, Amir Comrade Peretz and Tzipi Livni fiddling as Israel burns around them.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:50 AM