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Egypt's Warming - and Enabling - Cooperation with Hamas

[Ha'aretz] Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff - Is Egypt happy when Israel bleeds? The flood of smuggled arms into Gaza from Sinai raises the suspicion that the answer is yes. The impression is that Cairo has no great desire to stop the smuggling - and that 30 years after making peace with Israel, Egypt has no real objections to attacks continuing on southern Israel from Gaza. Israel's security services have been continually upping their estimates of the quantity of arms smuggled into Gaza in recent months. Knowledgeable Palestinian sources say the floodgates have burst since Fatah's security personnel were expelled from the Gaza-Egypt border four months ago. Egypt is becoming one of Hamas' strategic partners. Hamas owes the Egyptian security services, for turning a blind eye to the arms smuggling and helping Hamas build up its forces. Israeli sources say Egyptian Intelligence - headed by General Omar Suleiman - favors a conciliatory policy toward Hamas, and Suleiman appears to be setting the tone. A senior Fatah official commented that Egyptian Intelligence, "which knows about every husband who cheats on his wife in Cairo," has been demonstrating surprising helplessness in the face of the arms smuggling from Sinai.
2007-10-23 01:00:00
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