(Ha'aretz) - Amos Harel IDF officers have protested to the Egyptian military over the numerous infiltrations of terrorists - mostly Palestinians - from Egypt into Israel over the past two years. In 2002, the IDF counted some 1,000 incidents of infiltrations across the Egyptian border. In a number of incidents, the infiltrators were Palestinian residents of Gaza, unable to carry out terror attacks due to the perimeter fence around Gaza, who chose to cross from Rafah into Egypt, head south, and then attempt to reenter Israel across the Sinai and Negev border. The last infiltration of this kind, in January, led to the death of an Israeli soldier in the Nitzana region. According to the IDF, Egypt does not conduct sufficient security checks at Cairo's airport and the Suez border crossings in order to filter out individuals with ties to terror organizations, and does not prevent such individuals from approaching the border with Israel. The defense establishment believes that pressure on Cairo from Washington will lead to an improvement.
2003-07-03 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive