This is the Tale of Two Cities: Old Rafah, and New Rafah – that is, the Egyptian half of the Gaza city that currently straddles the border with Egypt, and the one soon to be on the drawing boards of /Egyptian engineers.

North Sinai District Governor Abd al-Fattah Harour told journalists at a news briefing Wednesday that Egypt has decided to raze Rafah to the ground – at least, the part that exists on Egypt’s side of the border.

“A new Rafah city is being established with residential zones appropriate to the nature and traditions of the residents of Rafah,” Harour said, according to the Ma’an news agency.

He confirmed that engineering units have already been authorized to begin work on the project.

Egypt is currently evacuating some 2,044 families from 1,220 homes located on a stretch of land along the border with Gaza. The families are to be compensated for the loss of their homes and also will receive additional funds with which to rent new accommodations until they can find new places to live.

The evacuation is being carried out in preparation for creation of a wider buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza. Original plans a year ago called for a buffer of 500 meters; the current buffer zone is to measure at least a kilometer wide.

However, this latest development has come about because the existence of the city of Rafah still constitutes a military weak point for Egypt vis a vis Gaza and Hamas, as it does for Israel.

Rafah is also the sole international crossing which is not under Israel’s control and which remains vulnerable to seizure by international terrorists. (In Jordan, the sole crossing with Iraq was shut down last year after the Iraq side was seized by terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). European monitors in Rafah who were supposed to remain at the site to “keep the peace” and maintain its neutrality abandoned their posts at the first sign of danger years ago.

On January 23, 2008 Hamas blew a hole in the security barrier built in 2003 near the Rafah crossing, destroying a significant part of the wall. The United Nations estimated that as many as 750,000 Gazans flooded through that hole into Egypt from that day forward until the breach was repaired, 11 days later. Many came to shop for food and supplies, but several thousand were also wanted terrorists; Israel Police raised the alert in the Jewish State knowing it was likely these “shoppers” were also purchasing “supplies.”

Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization was spawned by Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization. The group has sparked endless anti-government attacks in Egypt, and developed alliances with other groups, leading to further problems.

During the recent brief reign of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s predecessor, Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist-majority parliament, Sinai became saturated with radical Islamist terrorists.

Terror groups such as the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which recently swore allegiance to ISIS, grew there exponentially. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda-linked Army of Islam Salafis also planted bases in Sinai as well.

In particular, Hamas honeycombed the area under the border in Rafah with tunnels which they used for smuggling military supplies and luxury items into Gaza – and terrorists out, in to Sinai and elsewhere.

It is this activity the Cairo government is determined to end. Egypt’s security personnel have destroyed hundreds of terrorist tunnels over the past 18 months, but they are often rebuilt when Hamas obtains new supplies.

As international aid organizations bring concrete and other building materials into the enclave to “help” the poverty stricken Palestinian Authority residents rebuild their homes, Hamas confiscates the items to reconstruct their terror tunnel network. It’s an expensive project: each tunnel costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build.

An elderly French Jew born in Tunisia was among those slaughtered Wednesday in a terror attack in Paris.

Jewish caricature artist Georges Wolinski, 81, was one of 12 people shot and killed in the attack at the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ satiric magazine offices.

Wolinsky was the son of Siegried Wolinski, a Polish Jew, and Lola Bembaron, a Tunisian Jewish woman. He moved with his parents to France at the age of 13.

Although he began his college life as a student of architecture, he eventually switched to cartooning and by 1960 had co-founded a satirical magazine with a friend. The well-known cartoonist went on to work with leading French publications such as Paris Match, Le Nouvel Observateur, and L’Humanite, as well as Charlie Hebdo.

Jewish leaders in Europe were among the first to condemn the attack. They pointed out the event was a sign of what may soon become a potential tsunami of terror on the continent.

European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said in a statement that the slaughter was “the beginning of a wave of terror” in Europe. He called the attack part of a “war against freedom of speech and the European way of life, which has already seen Jewish children gunned down at school and people murdered in cold blood while visiting a museum in Brussels.”

The president of the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, Sammy Ghozlan, warned the attack constituted a “wake up” call.

“France must wake up to the danger of Islamism and the terror it brings all over the world: In Paris, Toulouse, Sarcelles, Brussels, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, jihadists are acting on the same radical Islamist ideology that is used to manipulate them,” he said.

French police are on a nationwide manhunt for two of the three terrorists who attacked journalists in the Paris office of the French satiric ‘Charlie Hebdo‘ weekly magazine on Wednesday. A third has surrendered.

An earlier unconfirmed report had stated that one of the terrorists had been killed and that two had been captured.

Police tracked the terrorists to a location in northeastern France, about 90 miles from Paris. Two of the killers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, are 34 and 32-year-old brothers of Algerian descent who live in Paris. An unrelated third terrorist, 18-year-old Hamid Mourad, surrendered.

All three are French nationals and speak fluent, colloquial French. They were reportedly trained in Syria at a radical Islamist terror base and possibly in Iraq as well.

One of the three told a female employee they were linked to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as they entered the building to begin their targeted assassinations aimed at killing those who had published cartoons of the founder of Islam, the prophet Muhammed.

When it was over, 11 people were wounded and 12 were dead, including the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Stephan Chardonnier, 81-year-old Jewish caricature artist Georges Wolinsky and two police officers who responded to the attack.

Chardonnier, who was listed on Al Qaeda’s “Most Wanted” list, told friends he would “rather die standing than be slaughtered on my knees.”

The official WAFA Palestinian Authority news agency has honored the murderers with the supreme Islamic status of “Shahids” who were “escorted… to the place of their final rest.”

Palestinian Media Watch translated and published on Tuesday the WAFA report from last Friday  in which it stated in the Arabic language newspaper  Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, “Yesterday [Dec. 25, 2014], the citizens of Jerusalem escorted the bodies of Martyrs (Shahids) Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal, from the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood of south-east Jerusalem, to the place of their final rest in the Al-Sawahreh Al-Sharqiyeh cemetery, after they were held by the occupation for 37 days, and transferred to their relatives after midnight.”

The Facebook page of the Fatah movement, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, posted a picture last Thursday of the graves of the two terrorists and praised them:

    This is the place of eternal rest of Martyrs (Shahids) Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal of Jabel Mukaber [neighborhood] in occupied Jerusalem, who ascended [to heaven] a month and a half ago during an operation (i.e., terror attack) at an occupation synagogue in occupied Jerusalem. Early morning today, they were escorted to their graves at Al-Sawahreh Al- Sharqiyeh.”

Fatah called the terror attack “an operation at an occupation synagogue in occupied Jerusalem.”

Two Arab terrorists from eastern Jerusalem entered a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of western Jerusalem on November 18 and massacred worshippers with guns, knives and axes, killing four Jews and a Druze police officer, and wounding seven other Jews who were praying.

The terrorists were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli police that arrived on the scene.

Earlier this month, Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA Mufti likewise called them Shahids, when he demanded that Israel return the bodies of the killers because “it is the Shahids’ right for us to pray for them, and this is a right according to Shari’ah. Their relatives, friends and loved ones also have the right to see them one last time.”

Palestinian Media Watch also showed that Abbas’ condemnation of the synagogue massacre was later explained away by Fatah officials as a condemnation for diplomatic reasons only.

The Paris suburb of Aubervilliers has honored jailed Palestinian terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison for murder, as an honorary citizen of the city.

Barghouti “symbolizes the Palestinian cause” and is a “man of peace and dialogue,” the Aubervilliers city council said in a statement.

In a letter to Aubervilliers Mayor Pascal Beaudet, Roger Cukierman—president of CRIF, an umbrella group representing the French Jewish community—said he is “shocked” by the decision, noting that Barghouti is a convicted terrorist serving several life sentences.

“Your resolution fails to mention that the Palestinian terrorist was indicted by a civil court for murder and attempted murder in a terrorist organization under his command. He was sentenced May 20, 2004 to five life imprisonment sentences for five murders and 40 years for attempted murder by a suicide bomber,” Cukierman wrote.

Located in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, Aubervilliers is home to a large immigrant population, comprising more than 41 percent of the city’s population, mainly from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

The move by Aubervilliers came as a French court ordered the city of Bezons, a northwestern suburb of Paris, to cancel the decision to give the honorary citizen designation to another Palestinian terrorist, Majdi Rahima al-Rimawi, who assassinated Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 200

Israel is extending the land barrier on the northern border  to reach undersea, west of Rosh HaNIkra to stop Hezbollah terrorist divers from trying to infiltrate into Israel

The censor has barred publishing the length of the barrier, designed to stop Hezbollah divers, submarines and swimmers.

Israel also has built an undersea barrier off the coast of the Gaza Belt to prevent the infiltration of Hamas terrorists.

Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorists received a blizzard of grim warnings Wednesday after a sniper attack launched a major battle with IDF soldiers guarding those working on the security fence near Kibbutz Nirim and Nir Oz.

Despite a blustery response, the terror group was also not entirely stupid: its commanders have once again begun to head underground into hiding, anticipating Israeli retaliation for their actions and forcing Gaza’s civilian human shields to live with the consequences.

Speaking at the Calcalist Conference, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said Israeli forces “responded appropriately and we will act in an appropriate and powerful manner as any incident demands.”

Gantz added there is a possibility “events will deteriorate and develop into a significant incident.”

Referencing links between Iranian-backed Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda-linked Salafi Army of Islam in Gaza and the Jabhat al Nusra terror group in Syria, and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorist organization, Gantz also noted a “strong possibility of a connection between fronts – that an incident in the north will influence an incident in the south.”

“We will respond with force every time there is an attempt to disturb the quiet that was attained in the south after Operation Protective Edge,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in a statement following the battle.

His statement was backed up by a similar warning from Strategic Affairs and Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz. “Hamas needs to understand that if it continues to undermine the security situation on the Gaza border, it risks a harsh Israeli response, which could turn into a comprehensive military campaign to demolish its government and military infrastructure,” Steinitz said.

The Hamas Izz a-Din al-Qassam military wing later issued its own statement from Gaza, accusing Israel of a “dangerous violation and a crossing of all red lines, as well as playing with fire… The enemy alone bears the responsibility of the repercussions of its uncalculated actions.

“It seems that this murderous enemy has not learned the hard lessons it was dealt by the resistance in the past. The enemy thinks that our people and the resistance are tired or exhausted after the last war,” the terror group added.

An allied terrorist organization, the Popular Resistance Movement, warned Israel would pay a ‘heavy price’ for killing one of its top commanders.

The clash began with a Hamas sniper’s bullet fired into the chest of an Israeli soldier on patrol. It led to an intense battle that included shelling from IDF tanks and Israeli air strikes as well.

Taysir al-Samiri 33, commander of the Hamas al-Qassam Brigades surveillance unit was killed in the battle, the terror group confirmed. Two other Gazans were also wounded, according to local medics.

But, “As a result of the attack, an IDF combat soldier from the Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion suffered a severe chest injury,” the IDF said in a statement. The soldier was airlifted to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva and his family was notified. He is listed in critical condition.

United Nations deputy Mideast envoy James Rawley has meanwhile expressed “concern” over the deteriorating situation on the Gaza border.

Carefully walking a tightrope of “neutrality” Rawley’s statement urged all parties to maintain and reinforce the August 26 “cease-fire” that ended Operation Protective Edge – but has already been broken by Hamas numerous times since then.

Rawley said in his statement that he is “deeply concerned by reports of exchange of fire between Palestinian militants and the IDF in the southern Gaza Strip today, which resulted in casualties on both sides.

“This follows a series of armed incidents since the end of November,” he noted – without pointing out that the “armed incidents” were actually unprovoked attacks launched solely by Gaza terrorists at Israelis.