Soccer Dad

Surging into gaza

A day after the NY Times reporter that Hamas is taking credit for the suicide attack in Dimona, the Washington Post reports the same thing.

If proved to be the work of Hamas, Monday's suicide bombing in the southern Israeli town of Dimona would be the militant group's first within Israel since 2004.

Hamas said the two Palestinians who carried out the attack were from the West Bank city of Hebron. Many Israelis speculated Monday that the bomber and an accomplice had left Gaza after Palestinians last month demolished much of the border wall that divides the territory from Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands of Gazans to exit and reenter the strip unhindered.

Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since June, does not recognize the state of Israel and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. Suicide bombers affiliated with the group killed hundreds of Israelis from the mid-1990s until Hamas announced a 2005 cease-fire.

I'm not sure why the Hamas claim is so credible. (It might be true; it's just impossible to know at this time.) The Post reports that the two bombers named by the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade have been reported missing. There doesn't appear to be any such corroboration of the Hamas claim.

(And here too, Hamas is credited with observing a "ceasefire" over the past three years.)

The Jerusalem Post reports that the wall breach has been helpful to jihadis.

Thousands of Arab men have flocked into the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the past two weeks, offering to join in the fight against Israel, sources close to Hamas said Wednesday.

The men, who came from Egypt and several other Arab countries, entered the Gaza Strip after the border with Egypt was torn down, the sources said, adding that they had offered to join Hamas and other armed groups.

Egyptian sources said the men had toured a number of training bases and security installations belonging to Hamas and other groups and expressed their desire to remain in the Gaza Strip and launch attacks against Israel.

This would seem to support the Israeli charge that the terrorists came from Gaza. The breach was used for beefing up the terrorist forces inside Gaza.

But the next sentence is fascinating:

The sources said some of the men had recently fled from Iraq, where they had been carrying out attacks against US troops.

Another sign that the surge is working. I guess they figure that they'll have more success against Israel than against American troops at this time. (How did these training facilities exist under the watchful eye of the Egyptians anyway?)

israel, hamas, gaza.