The Muslim Brotherhood government of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is moving tanks and heavy arms towards the northern Sinai towards possible all-out battle with a gang that   kidnapped seven Egyptian security personnel four days ago.

Morsi has ruled out negotiating, saying there was “no room for dialogue with the criminals.” and that his government would not surrender to “blackmail.”

The abductors have not been identified but are thought to be jihadists who are demanding that Egypt release of political detainees.

The kidnap victims were seen on video, blindfolded and with their hands on their heads. One of them appealed to Morsi to agree to the captors’ demands.

The Sinai has fallen into anarchy the past several years, particularly since the beginning of the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Bedouin tribes and  Al Qaeda and Hamas terrorists have carved out several areas of control in the Sinai, a major route for slave trade and trafficking in drugs and weapons.

Egyptian authorities have smashed a suspected Israeli spy ring consisting of Egyptian and Palestinian Authority Arabs operating in the Sinai Peninsula, official state media reported Sunday.

The only alleged spy who has been arrested is an Egyptian national who is said to have been the ringleader and who confessed that he handed over secret military information to the Mossad.

State media said authorities are trying to track down the other members of the alleged ring.

The terrorists who are building up men and material resources in the chaos of today’s Egyptian Sinai struck again this morning. Two GRAD rockets were fired into – and struck – the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

Memo to those lacking historical, geographic or political background: Eilat is not and never has been claimed by Palestinian Arab terror apologists as “occupied territory”… other than by the many extremists who see all of Israel as the territory that is occupied. The readers of the Lebanese Al Manar news website for instance, are seeing a report at this moment headlined “Rockets Hit Occupied Town of Eilat“; Al Manar is a mouthpiece of Hezbollah. The semi-respectable Palestinian Maan News Agency has called Eilat occupied too, though never in the English language.

Times of Israel is reporting that one of the two missiles crashed into a residential neighborhood; the other in an open area on Eilat’s outskirts. Reuters says both hit open areas. Ynet says there were three rockets, and two landed in residential areas. Israel’s Army Radio, which is broadcast throughout the country, is quoted saying that a rocket “had also hit the nearby Jordanian city of Aqaba, but a spokesman for the Jordanian Civil Defense denied the suggestion.”

Fortunately, and this is a matter of divine intervention and human failure, no injuries are reported, at least  not so far. Damage is said to be light.

The IDF’s assessment, hardly surprising and certainly not for the first time, is that the attack on Eilat was made from the nearby Sinai Peninsula. The situation there is chaotic and dangerous, and growing steadily worse; we have written numerous times about Sinai’s spiral downwards into terrorist-driven anarchy [here, here, here and hereamong numerous other posts]. As a matter of consistent policy, the Egyptian authorities always respond to media inquiries with firm denials that rockets were fired from Egyptian territory; this morning they did the same again.

Israel’s security authorities saw today’s attack coming. An Iron Dome anti-missile defense battery has been stationed near Eilat for the past two weeks; there are ongoing intelligence assessments that warned of an act of terrorism like this morning’s. The system however was not utilized today, presumably because the Iron Dome controller knows to compute the expected damage in real time and to avoid firing if it is reasonable to do that.

The IDF created the Eilat Regional Brigade this past December to provide military protection, to the extent such a thing is doable against a jihadist enemy operating under the cover of a neighboring country’s government. The most recent rocket attack on Eilat’s civilian population (the only kind that it has) was an especially worrying one in August 2012; those which came before it are detailed in this Wikipedia entry.

Visit This Ongoing War.

The Israeli National Security Council’s counterterrorism bureau has warned Israelis and other tourists and businessmen to stay away from the terror-infested Sinai Peninsula, especially during Passover.

The Counter Terrorism Bureau has posted 33 warnings that terrorists, including those who take orders from Hizbullah, are roaming the world on the prowl for victims, especially Israelis.

Warnings also were posted against traveling to tourist sites, and terrorist hotspots’, such as Indonesia and Malaysia as well as the more popularly known terrorist favorites of Yemen, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Algeria.

“According to our information, there continues to exist threats of revenge against Israelis abroad, especially businessmen and former government officials,” according to the Bureau.

It added that terrorists want to kidnap victims as well as murder them. “There have been multiple kidnappings in the Sinai of U.S. citizens over the past four years, and kidnappings of foreign tourists in the Sinai have increased since January 2012.

“Overland travel from Israel to the Sinai in particular is strongly discouraged.”

It added, “Hizbullah blames Israel publicly for the death of Imad Mughniyeh,” the Hizbullah mastermind terroroist who was assassinated in 2008, presumably by Mossad agents.

The Bureau reminded travelers that Iran has accused Israel of being responsible for the deaths of eight nuclear scientists.

Recently, we wrote here about the great landmass on Israel’s southwestern border that “given its physical proximity to Israel, Sinai is not only an Egyptian challenge. That it gets such a small degree of media attention is a puzzle.” [See "Egypt's Sinai problem and ours"]

Since then, there has been a new set of Sinai developments to absorb. Under the headline “Islamist gunmen kill three Egyptian policemen in the Sinai | Assailants ambush cops in El-Arish, shout ‘God is great,’ then flee“, a Times of Israel report says “suspected Islamic militants” carried out an ambush in the northern Sinai today, Saturday, murdering three Egyptian policemen.

The gunmen pulled in front of a police vehicle in an unmarked truck in the area’s main city of El-Arish, before standing up on the truck bed and opening fire, the officials said. They then raised a black flag associated with jihadis and shouted “God is great.” Intelligence officials said the suspects then sped off. The head of security in northern Sinai, Ahmed Bakr, confirmed that three policemen were killed in the Saturday attack. The incident was the most serious since terror cells killed 16 Egyptian security personnel in an attack near the Egypt-Israel-Gaza border in August. Since then, the government of President Mohammed Morsi has moved to try to quash the cells in the unstable Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel. [More]

Even before that terror attack, Britain’s Foreign Office had issued an elevated terror threat level warning for the Sinai on Friday. The British are advising against all but essential travel to the peninsula. They say [according to Daily News Egypt] that ”the terror threat level has risen from ‘general’ to ‘high’ in response to a number of incidents in the Sinai.  There are also reports that police in the Sinai thwarted a terrorist plot organised by Al-Qaeda last week.”

The Wall Street Journal happens to have run a serious investigative article on Friday dealing with events behind the scenes in Sinai, and focusing on El-Arish, scene of today’s shootings. WSJ’s Matt Bradley writes

["Makeshift Islamic Courts Fill Void in the Sinai"] about the Sinai phenomenon of “a fast-expanding network of unofficial courts meting out Islamic law” in Egyptian Sinai.

“The rise of such Shariah courts is one measure of just how far the remote Sinai Peninsula has drifted from Cairo’s orbit and into the hands of fundamentalists intent on imposing a strict form of religious order.

The revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak and his secular-leaning regime early last year emptied this vast desert region of police and most normal government services, leaving a rush of kidnappings, smuggling and terrorism in its wake.

Partly filling the justice void are judges such as Sheikh Abu Faisal, who punish offenders with fasting periods instead of prison sentences and levy fines paid in camels rather than cash…

Shariah courts have a centuries-long presence in Sinai as arbitrators over small disputes in which contesting parties agree to follow the judges’ verdicts, say legal experts and local politicians.

But since the revolution, and with the election of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, that system of mixed tribal and religious justice has begun to expand its role…

The Shariah judges’ expanding ambitions threatened state sovereignty in the mostly rural Sinai Peninsula, a regional flash point bordering Israel and the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip…

The government tolerates but doesn’t monitor the Shariah courts, said Ministry of Judiciary spokesman Ibrahim Abdel Khaleq. While Cairo hasn’t acted to tamp them down, Mr. Khaleq said their expansion “could be dangerous” if they challenge state authority…

Some legal activists in Cairo said they were concerned about the proliferation of Shariah courts in Sinai because of their radical outlook.

They offer no appeals, women’s testimony holds half the weight of men’s and some Shariah judges, including Sheik Beek, say they hope one day to impose Islamic hudud – punishments such as stoning for adultery and cutting off the hands of thieves.”

Al Arabiya’s coverage of today’s El-Arish terrorist killings points out what all of this implies for Israel’s security and safety:

“On September 8, an Egyptian official said there were about 225 tunnels in Sinai, 31 of which were destroyed. The tunnels are used to smuggle various kinds of products into the besieged Gaza Strip and the Egyptian authorities have often turned a blind eye to the cross border activity. Efforts to impose central authority in the lawless desert region are complicated by the indigenous Bedouin population’s ingrained hostility to the government in Cairo.”

Israel’s security establishment does not need much reminding of how easily and quickly the south can heat up and cause very serious problems.

Visit This Ongoing War.

(((CLICK BELOW TO HEAR AUDIO)))

Dr. Tawfik Hamid, an alternative Arab thinker and former Egyptian extremist, joins Yishai.  Retired US Army Lt. Gen. and former Pentagon inspector general Mick Kicklighter, described Hamid to Wired Magazine’s Danger Room, by saying “Hamid is a great scholar whose knowledge of terrorism is extremely valuable.”  And that “There is no doubt about his first-hand experience and depth of knowledge. He is truly a treasure.”  Do not miss this segment as it truly provides an insider’s insight into the mindset of those that want Israel destroyed.

Yishai Fleisher on Twitter: @YishaiFleisher
Yishai on Facebook

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The IDF has prevented more than 10 terror attacks emanating from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Director of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi revealed in remarks before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday.

In a wide-ranging briefing on the Middle Eastern theater, Kochavi said that the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as President of Egypt has brought political Islam to the forefront of politics in the Arab world, but predicted that the Egyptian military would continue to serve as a strong restraint. As a result, he doubted that Egypt would drift into Iran’s orbit.

On the Palestinian front, Kochavi said that the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power has inured to Hamas’ benefit and the Palestinian Authority’s detriment: “Hamas gained an opening, and a wall grew for the PA.”

Kochavi also reported that the IDF is currently tracking potential terror cells in Sinai, and that the chaos that reigns in the area is likely to continue. In response to recent terror attacks originating from the Sinai – including an attack in August 2011 near Eilat that left eight Israelis dead – Israel has sped up the construction of the Israel-Egypt border fence.

Turning to Syria, the Intelligence Chief said that it is highly unlikely that embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad would survive what is now being called a civil war. “It may take more time, I can’t give you an exact number, but it will happen.” Although it could take anywhere between two months and two years, he insisted that it was only a matter of time before the regime falls.

Kochavi went into detail about the extent of the Syrian government’s brutality, displaying satellite imagery of Syrian forces firing indiscriminately into populated urban areas. He said the fighting is only intensifying, and estimated between 500 to 700 Syrians were being killed every week.

Most disconcerting for Kochavi was the possibility that security issues on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights region could parallel those in the Sinai – whereby the Islamic Jihad and even al Qaeda will fill a chaotic power vacuum in the area, and use it as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israel. Kochavi was noticeably less concerned about the possibility that Assad would try to initiate a conflict with Israel in an effort to divert attention from the domestic upheaval. He revealed that Assad has shifted many of his forces from the Golan to Damascus.

Nevertheless, he warned, Israel must remain vigilant and prepared, as Iran and Hezbollah are already preparing contingency plans for the day after Assad’s demise. ”The smuggling of rockets from Iran to Lebanon continues…In Lebanon today, there are between 70,000 and 80,000 rockets that could hit Israel,” Kochavi said.

(((CLICK BELOW TO HEAR AUDIO)))

Yishai is joined by Yaakov Katz, military correspondent for the Jerusalem Post along with Israel correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly. They discuss tension that has been created since the Arab Spring between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai and how the region has become a hotbed for terror activity, along with drug and weapon smuggling. Specific problems between the Sinai and Israel are discussed along with potential solutions for these problems. The segment and this week’s show wraps up with Yishai talking about a faux sovereignty controlling in the Sinai and how we should ‘take off the masks’ in the Middle East in order to see the truth.

Yishai Fleisher on Twitter: @YishaiFleisher
Yishai on Facebook

Podcast: Play in new window | Download