The creation of the so-called Rafah buffer ‐ a strip 14 kilometers long and about half a kilometer wide ‐ came in response to last week's attack in the Sinai that killed 33 Egyptian soldiers.
| Egypt military operations succeeded in destroying 1,500 smuggling tunnels, but the satellite photos have revealed hundreds of tunnels, inside mosques in Rafah, inside bedrooms and inside stores. |
Egypt military operations succeeded in destroying 1,500 smuggling tunnels, but the satellite photos have revealed hundreds of tunnels, inside mosques in Rafah, inside bedrooms and inside stores. Initial action led to the establishment the buffer zone and the speedy evacuation and demolition of 800 homes, with local residents compensated for their removal.
The move sparked criticism from al-Sisi's opponents, and Al-Jazeera
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means the Peninsula,as in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years it has settled in to become slightly less biased than MSNBC, in about the same category as BBC or CBS...
described it as "expulsion". The Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates...
i network, which is affiliated with the Moslem Brüderbund, even quoted Egyptian civilians and political activists who claimed that this was the Egyptian version of the "1948 Nakba". The Egyptian state media, on the other hand, emphasized civilian understanding for the action, and the newspaper "Al-Ahram" quoted the evacuated residents as saying that they "stand by the state after the snuffies made their lives hell."
Rocket fire from Gazook territory is defined by Israel as the first gross violation by Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, since the end of Operation Protective Edge. It also led to the decision to close the two crossings into Gazoo - Kerem Shalom for goods into southern Gazoo and Erez for people in the northern Strip ‐ both to pressure Hamas and to clearly demonstrate to Gazoo's residents the price of the rocket fire.
| The Israeli response comes at the height of movement of goods, funds and building materials for the rehabilitation of the thousands of homes and buildings damaged or destroyed during the summer fighting. |
| Still working on the concept of consequences, guys? |
The organization itself has recently returned to experimenting with rockets inside the Gazoo Strip, and in the last two weeks at least eight rockets were launched, most of the sea, and even restored its ability to produce rockets. Its activities are being conducted in a kind of political void, given that Hamas' negotiations with Israel have been frozen by Egypt