While Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was busy presenting his new government, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal Hamas executed the biggest arms transaction in its history – a $250,000 cash deal with Sinai arms smugglers. The new items now restocking the Hamas arsenal include 1,000 Kalashnikov automatic submachine guns, 500 Italian-made Beretta pistols and a large supply of ammo. Our sources add the crates were slipped through from Sinai to the Gaza Strip Saturday night, May 6, without interference by Egyptian border security guards.
The terrorist arm of Abu MazanÂ’s Fatah is another good customer of the Sinai smuggling gangs, some of whom also serve the al Qaeda network in the Peninsula. Indeed, the last ten days have seen al Aqsa Brigades and Hamas buyers competing for massive purchases of explosives, ammunition and weapons, and racing one other to smuggle them into the Gaza Strip. The competition has sparked battles between the two groups to commandeer space in the gunrunning tunnels that snake under the former Philadelphi border strip between Egyptian Sinai and Gaza.
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report the tunnel business is booming as never before in the last three years. It illustrates the total breakdown of all the pre-evacuation accords and arrangements concluded between Israel and Egypt – and brokered personally by the US Secretary of State - to secure the border after the Israeli pull-out. The incoming Israeli prime minister and defense minister Amir Peretz knew about the unusual volume of arms smuggling Sunday, May 7.
In their speeches to the Knesset at the swearing-in of the new government, neither mentioned the hazards building up in the Palestinian areas. The next day, an eight-missile volley was fired from Gaza into Israel.
and also on DEBKA:
While deep in long, fruitless talks with Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya, Palestinian Authority chairman Abu Mazen over the weekend issued secret directives for mobilizing recruits to his private army and the release of cash from the “Arafat Fund” to pay their wages. This is reported by DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources.
Fatah and Hamas are organizing their forces for the armed showdown building up between them over top spot in Palestinian government. Abu Mazen controls the Arafat Fund, whose capital is estimated $ billion – certainly enough to cover the public sector payroll and ease humanitarian distress in the Palestinian territories. Instead, his Fatah released $25,000 to each of the 15 or 16 terrorist groups under its aegis, thereby following in the footsteps of the late Arafat, who used this secret nest-egg to finance his war campaign against Israel.
The total remitted by Abbas to these groups runs to around $9 million.
Hamas correspondingly distributed to each member of its armed Ezz e-Din al-Qassam force, a large food package to keep him and his family supplied for two weeks plus the sum of INS250.
Hamas leaders now threaten that should it be toppled or starved out of office by the international funding boycott, it will launch a “super-intifada” against Israel in the first stage and across the entire Middle East in the next stage, implying its ability to harness fraternal wings of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In Damascus, DEBKAfileÂ’s Middle East sources report that a delegation of European Union officials has been trying for the past two weeks to persuade HamasÂ’s senior leaders, Khaled Meshaal, Mussa Abu Marzouk and Mohammed Nazal, to accept a formula to de-freeze donations for the Palestinians. This formula is based on the 2002 Saudi peace proposal that promised Israel normal relations with the Arab states for withdrawing to the pre-1967 war lines and accepting the 1948 Palestinians refugeesÂ’ rights of return.