Israeli sources say there is evidence Egypt’s north Sinai region is becoming not only a rallying point for jihadist gunmen but a firing range for Gaza’s indefatigable rocket builders, seeking ever greater range and accuracy for mainly homemade weapons.
It was soon after the 2011 revolt in Egypt toppled President Hosni Mubarak that Israeli rocket radars began to spot unusual launches from the Palestinian territory, which Israel keeps under a land, sea and air cordon.
Normally they streaked towards Israeli border towns, or north towards coastal cities. But now some were aimed at the empty desert wastes of Sinai.
The purpose seemed clear: to test rockets made or smuggled in by Palestinian groups who do not have space for a practice range.
“They have a Bedouin collaborator in Sinai who finds the crater and marks it by GPS,” an Israeli official told Reuters on condition of anonymity, describing a low-tech but effective method of tracking test-firings from Gaza.
A sheik from a Sinai village around 60 km (40 miles) from Gaza described how in June he heard several explosions and went to investigate. He found a spent rocket. It had gouged a basketball-size hole in the ground.
“The remaining parts did not include any writings that could tell where the rocket came from,” he said.
GOOGLE RANGE-FINDER
Gaza’s Hamas government and its smaller Islamist factions deny conducting any military operations in Sinai.
But security officials from Egypt, which is now hunting armed Islamists in Sinai in its biggest military operation there in 40 years, privately admit it has become a playground of bandits, smugglers and jihadis exploiting the free-for-all.
The Israelis who spoke about the rocket tests did so before an Aug. 5 attack on a Sinai police post shocked Cairo, raising the stakes overnight in what Israel said it hoped would be “a wake-up call”.
Gunmen killed 16 policemen. Seven militants were then killed by Israeli forces after they stormed the border in a stolen armoured car, some wearing explosive belts.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Hamas said it was arresting radical Salafi Islamists, one of several groups who try to fire rockets into Israel in defiance of de facto Palestinian truces.
Reuters
