Islamic terrorists in the Sinai bombed a bus carrying Egyptian army soldiers Thursday and injured 25 people near el-Arish.

The jihadist group linked with the Islamic State (ISIS) and which calls itself the “Sinai Province” is one of the leading terrorist groups in northern Sinai, but it has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

It carried out last week’s deadly bombings at 15 police and army positions, killing dozens of soldiers and policemen. Egypt responded with fierce bombing raids and artillery fire that it claimed killed nearly 100 jihadists.

President Reuven Rivlin hosted Arab media at his official residence Sunday night to break the daily fast in the Muslim month of Ramadan, which he said “is based on the values of compassion, mercy, and grace.”

President Rivlin added:

Unfortunately, there are those who seek to exploit the sanctity of Ramadan, and distort its meaning in favor of criminal and murderous terrorism.

I join in the concern of those countries around us, about the increase in terrorism, and I send my condolences to the President of Egypt, and the Egyptian people, following the horrific terrorist attacks in the Sinai.

In the face of these bloody events, we have the duty, all the children of Abraham, to condemn strongly, loud and clear, these atrocities committed ‘in the name of God’, or ‘in the name of Islam’.

He declined to specifically remind his guests of last week’s Palestinian Authority terrorist attack that killed Malachi  Rosenfeld and wounded two others . He only referred to it vaguely while balancing the murder with Jewish “price tag” attacks of vandalism, by stating:

These have not been easy weeks for anyone who loves this country; for those who believe we have the ability and the duty – as Arabs and Jews – to live together. At this time, in the face of those on both sides who seek to fan the flames, we cannot and must not remain silent.

He finally made one explicit reference to Palestinian Authority terror, saying that the Abbas regime “has  a responsibility to act decisively against terrorists seeking to sabotage our daily lives here.”

The President reminded the Arab media that while Muslims were breaking the fast, Jews also were ending their fast of the 17th of Tammuz, which was postponed until Sunday because of the Sabbath.

President Rivlin also said he is working with the Netanyahu administration on the issues of “distress and pain of the Israeli Arab society” and “violence in the Arab community, shortages in housing and employment.”

“The citizenship of the Arab residents of the State of Israel is not a goodwill gesture, President Rivlin said. ” It is the citizenship of individuals and of a society which is part and parcel of this land; this land is their homeland, the State of Israel is their home.”

Wouldn’t  it be nice if Arab Knesset Members would agree?

A third Grad rocket was found in the Eshkol region on Saturday.

ISIS/Sinai branch (Wilayat Sinai) took credit for launching multiple rockets into Israel on Friday afternoon.

No damage or injuries were reported from the attack.

The Islamic State (ISIS) finally is going to be brought its knees in its attempt to take use the Sinai as a step to expand its terrorist empire to include Gaza, Egypt and even Israel.

The war in the Sinai is not over, but the ISIS attacks on Egyptian army checkpoints and police stations Wednesday were met with a fierce response that eventually will show the world that the Islamic State cannot succeed where a country is unified. ISIS, like Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, survive on anarchy.

Wherever there is a power vacuum, the terrorists can step in, bankroll schools and welfare program, and take over the area business infrastructure to control the economy and government.

That is what Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon and Hamas did in Gaza.

ISIS also is succeeding in Libya, a semi-anarchic state since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.

It has frightened the world by beheading men, women and children, and it has recruited butcher knife-wielding agents in Western countries

But beheading victim does not mean it can take over a country unless it totally demoralizes its citizens into surrender.

The ISIS is not invincible, and its incursion into Egypt will prove it.

Egypt, unlike Iraq and Syria, is bordered by open waters on two sides, the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the east. The Sinai Peninsula’s tiny land border to the northeast is with Israel, where Cairo has no fear of ISIS terrorists infiltrating the country

That leaves only Libya to the east and Sudan to the south, and both of them indeed are dangerous sources of jihadists and weapons.

But Egypt has one other factor running in its favor, and that is a fierce nationalism that worship and despite its dictators but always survives them by finding another.

ISIS was able to exploit a civil war in Syria and a total breakdown of sanity in Iraq to gain power.

Egypt is a different story. The country was divided between secularist and Islamists after the fall of Mubarak, but with only two sides fighting each other, the victor took the spoils. The Muslim Brotherhood swept into power, and then fell a year later, succeeded by a military regime until an election placed General Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in power last year.

The Sinai Peninsula is prime territory for ISIS. It is steeped in anarchy, neglected by Cairo for years, and its Bedouin tribes have carved out their own little fiefdoms.

Hamas and other terrorist organizations have exploited the vacuum of power over the past several years to carry out attacks in the Red Sea resort area and more recently on the army, but they always have been hit-and-run operations.

Geography and demography in the Sinai make it a wrong choice for ISIS. The Sinai is a desert. There are no major cities except for the Red Sea resort of El-Arish. The Egyptian air force Wednesday had no trouble in carrying out massive bombing raids on jihadist positions.

There was no worry of killing hundreds or even dozens of civilians, if there is such a creation in the criminal and terror-infested Sinai.

ISIS organized in the Sinai with the help of foreign intelligence, according to Egyptian military officials. It had no trouble smuggling weapons by sea from Sudan or from Gaza, but it would take a massive undercover infiltration outside of the Sinai and closer to Cairo for ISIS to be able to undermine the Egyptian regime.

Al-Sisi Wednesday night pre-empted a subversive Muslim Brotherhood-ISIS underground by approving drastic measures to expedite judicial proceedings against jihadists and their fund-raisers, with the death penalty hanging over their heads.

Egypt said it is in total control of the Sinai the day after massive and well-coordinated attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) on army and police posts.

Israel’s Channel 2 television reported that Israel has given the green light to Egypt to bring in heavy weapons into the Sinai, as required under the 1979 peace treaty that paved the way for Israel to surrender the Sinai a decade after the Yom Kippur War.

Positioning heavy weapons in the Sinai always carries the risk they can be used against Israel, but for the time being, Israel is the last enemy on Egypt’s mind.

Egypt may have done Israel a big favor by demanding the Sinai, which for years has become a fiefdom of Bedouin criminals and graduated into a no man’s land open for grabs by Bedouin, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and now ISIS terrorists.

Israel remains on high alert while Egypt said it will not stop its counter-offensive against Sinai jihadists until all of them are “eliminated.”

The ISIS attacks yesterday killed between a dozen and nearly 100 Egyptian army officers, soldiers and policemen, depending on whom you want to believe.

The numbers do not matter because the attacks on 15 different posts proved that ISIS is a very organized army.

Egyptian bombing raids continued into the night following the wave of attacks that were aimed at cutting off Rafah and El-Arish, which would have created a critical threat to Israel.

The IDF immediately shut down border crossings at Egypt and Gaza after the ISIS offensive, but re-opened the Kerem HaShalom crossing Thursday morning to allow trucks into Gaza with foods and merchandise..

Egypt will “exterminate” every jihadist in the northern Sinai, said its military spokesman.

Brigadier General Mohamed Samir said:

We control the situation in Sinai 100%.

The army claimed it killed more than 100 jihadists.

The cabinet of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Wednesday night approved urgent measures that call for “swift justice,” which can be translated as “don’t let democracy get in the way of survival.”

Four years after the rebellion against Hosni Mubarak, ostensibly because of his autocratic rule, his regime has been reincarnated.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Transitional Justice Ibrahim Al-Heneidy said that In the absence of the parliament, Al-Sisi has legislative powers.

Coincidentally or not, ISIS attacked the day after terrorists killed Egypt’s state prosecutor Hisham Barakat, who was riding in a motorcade. Barakat had said that if former Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi is sentenced to death, the execution will be carried out.

Heneidy said that terrorists will face harsher punishment, meaning execution or life in prison.

The death penalty also will apply to anyone who funds terror, a classification that puts Muslim Brotherhood officials on notice that Al-Sisi is bent on destroying the organization that ruled Egypt only one year ago.

The process of appeal also will be shorted. “Under the current law, defendants are allowed to appeal verdicts twice, but under the amended draft, this process will be shortened to give defendants the right to appeal the verdict just one time,” said Heneidy. Furthermore, if a higher court accepts an appeal, the regime will be able to call for a retrial in the Court of Cassation, whose decisions are final.

So what did the Arab Spring rebellion and the Obama administration achieve by getting rid of Mubarak?

If the State Dept. has learned that transplanting American democracy in the Muslim Middle East is like feeding Muslims ham and eggs during Ramadan, it was worth everything to teach Washington a lesson.

The odd are heavy that the State Dept. has not yet learned.

The northern Sinai Peninsula south of the border with Israel is engulfed in an all-out war.

Egyptian F-16 warplanes attacked Islamic State (ISIS) and other jihadists’ positions for several hours Wednesday afternoon and killed more than 90 jihadists following massive ISIS attacks.

Most of the 70 Egyptian casualties were soldiers and policemen, and the death toll is not final.

Egypt retaliated immediately and fiercely, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said:

Terrorism is knocking on our borders. ISIS is not only across from the Golan Heights, it is also in Egypt, across from Rafah…And we are together with Egypt and other states in the Middle East and the world in the struggle against extreme Islamic terror.

Together or not, Israel immediately closed crossings to Egypt and Gaza.

ISIS declared yesterday that it will wipe out both Hamas and Israel.

Egypt still is counting the bodies of those killed today while its jets bombed jihadi posts near Rafah and at Sheikh Zuweid, where ISIS had set siege to a police station earlier in the day.

The ISIS attacks may have finally woken up the regime of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to the fact that ISIS is no less a threat to Cairo than it is to Damascus and Baghdad.

ISIS assassinated Egypt’s state prosecutor two days ago.

The terrorist machine gave the world a hint Wednesday morning just how powerful and well-armed it is.

Terrorists used anti-tank rockets, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the assault on 15 different army and police positions in a well-planned and calculated war on the regime that faces Al-Sisi with a bigger threat than even the Muslim Brotherhood, whose party he replaced in a de facto military coup last year.

ISIS also has anti-aircraft guns, some of which were destroyed n the Egyptian retaliation this afternoon.

Egypt has been in turmoil ever since the Arab Spring protests against Hosni Mubarak, who ousted was hastened by President Barack Obama, who in turn praised the Muslim Brotherhood and its leader Mohammed Morsi following his election.

A year later, Obama found himself once again encouraging the ouster of the president and praising Al-Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi , whose regime has been no less ruthless than Mubarak’s and Morsi’s.

With the alternative being anarchy, the United States and other powers have backed al-Sisi, but the Sinai has been virtually a province of anarchy for four years.

Hamas has been a serious threat to Egyptian control in the Sinai, next to the border with Israel, and the Gaza terrorist party and army have executed dozens of attacks against Egyptian forces.

ISIS making Hamas look like small potatoes.

An earthquake that measured 5.5 on the Richter scale according to the Israel Geological Survey (other sources say 5.1 or 5.2), with its epicenter in the northern Sinai, 90 kilometers south of Eilat, sent slight tremors through Israel on Saturday around 6:34 PM.

No damage was reported. The quake occurred on the East African rift.

Ben-Gurion airport shut down for the duration of the tremors.

Residents in Ashkelon said their furniture shook. Yediot Acharonot reported that cows in the Arava, north of Eilat, apparently sensed the earthquake was on its way and started mooing several minutes before the tremors were felt.

In Egypt, the earthquake shook buildings in Cairo, more than 200 miles away from the epicenter in the Sinai.

Tremors caused dust storms nears the Red Sea, and strong winds whipped sand through the air in Cairo, forcing people to remain indoors.