Bombshell: Egypt can freely arm PLO after pullout
Jerusalem News Wire
August 9th, 2005
Following Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip this month, Egypt will be free to arm the Palestinian Arabs with tanks, armored personnel carriers and other heavy weaponry, warned Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuval Steinitz.
When the committee convened Monday to discuss Israel's plan to
surrender control of the Gaza-Sinai border, Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz said
Egypt would be under no legal obligation to prevent the influx of advanced arms
into the strip.
Steinitz described this revelation as a “bomb,” according to Arutz
7.
He reminded the committee that Israel was already engaged in diplomatic efforts to prevent the sale of 100 Egyptian light armored personnel carriers to the Palestinian Authority. With no Israeli presence on the border, Jerusalem would have little ability to prevent such transfers.
Defense Ministry adviser General (Res.) Amos Gilad told the committee the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expected to reach a final agreement with Cairo in the coming weeks that would see the deployment of some 750 Egyptian troops charged with taking over control of the border.
Steinitz said the agreement would “erode and seriously damage
the most significant achievement of the peace treaty with Egypt: the demilitarization
of the Sinai.”
Egypt has on three occasions launched full-scale wars aimed at annihilating
the Jewish state. The Egyptian government also founded the PLO in 1964 in an
effort to undermine Israeli resolve through more localized acts of terror.
Ha’aretz defense affairs expert Amir Oren wrote in April, “The prediction [among military officials] is that by next January to March, after Palestinian terror has increased and become more sophisticated, the IDF will return to Gaza.”
Israeli casualties are expected to be severe in any post-pullout
incursion or invasion should the Palestinian Arabs obtain heavy and advanced
weaponry.
“The mind-boggling thing,” wrote HaTzofeh military correspondent
Haggai Huberman, “is that the State of Israel is advancing, knowingly
and with its eyes open, towards this death trap.”
“The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 was a surprise, but the war of October 2005 is totally known in advance.”