09-Jul-20: Jordanian laborer admitted to work in Israel sought to be a martyr; convicted today as a terrorist

Jordanian laborer Taher Halef, convicted today in Israel on murder and
terrorism charges arising from a 2018 attack [Image Source: Times of Israel]

In today's news -

A Jordanian man previously employed in Eilat was convicted Thursday on terrorism charges over a 2018 assault on two Israeli men in the Red Sea coastal city. The Beersheba District Court found Taher Halef guilty on two counts of attempted murder and for a “terrorist conspiracy.”
The conviction was handed down as part of a plea deal, as part of which Halef admitted to the crime and will be sentenced to 19 years in prison. According to the plea arrangement, Halef acknowledged that he used his entry permit to carry out a terror attack in Israel and die as a “martyr”... Halef began working in Israel days before the attack, after receiving a daily work permit from the Population and Immigration Authority. He succeeded in passing the screening process despite being flagged as a potential terrorist by the Jordanian manpower agency that first interviewed him. According to state prosecutors, Halef had been planning to attack Israelis for over a decade. They said he received help from cousins in Jordan on previous occasions when he sought to carry out attacks. [Times of Israel, July 9, 2020]

A year and a half ago, we posted here in our blog ["01-Dec-18: Suspected Eilat terror attack: Jordanian wielding hammer seriously injures two Israeli dock-workers"] that while Palestinian Arabs with Israeli work permits were generally barred from entering Eilat, the Israeli government started in June 2014 to issue permits for up to 1,500 Jordanian citizens to work in Eilat hotels. This Jordanian, as we noted then and as reported today too, came into the program with years of lusting for Jewish blood already behind him.

A Xinhua news agency report in December 2018 said the Jordanian was charged with attempted murder of two Israelis in addition to offenses under the Anti-Terror Law,

We noted back in December 2018 that there was no Jordan media coverage of the attack or the arrest or the terrorism backgroud of the suspect. We have checked just now. Almayadeen, naming him as Taher Khalaf, quotes Israeli reports tonight that the attacker was convicted. Other Arab reports give his name as Thaer Al-Louzi.

The Arab48 news site, based in Israel and addressing Arabic-speaking markets, offers some glimpses we haven't seen elsewhere.

• The indictment says Khalaf identified as a Palestinian; that he was "raised in a national home and saw the importance of carrying out jihadist actions". He was "affected by the scenes he saw on TV during the Israeli aggression on Gaza at the end of 2008".
• Planning to somehow get a gun and to mount a shooting attack at the Jordanian-Israeli border, Khalaf purchased 200 bullets from a market in Amman, Jordan's capital and hid them with his cousin who knew about the plan. 
• In November 2018, the accused returned to Aqaba, Jordan, soon after starting to work in nearby Eilat. There he met with his cousins, telling them of his plan to execute an "operation against Jews" and asking that they videotap him making a statement to his family from a hotel room in Aqaba. We assume this was a form of suicide note.
• The next morning, Khalaf entered Israel along with the other Jordanian laborers leaving Aqaba. arriving in Eilat some minutes later, he saw Israeli divers and "decided to kill them" using a hammer. 
• Another Jordanian laborer tried to stop the attack. Khalaf continued - we assume that other Jordanian was one of those injured.

A Jordan news report refers to this photo as a view
of "Occupied Eilat" [Image Source]

This 2018 Jordanian Arab news article reports the Israeli program for creating jobs for Jordanian day laborers, referring caustically throughout the story to Eilat as being part of "the Occupation". It explains the reason for Jordanians taking work there this way:

It is worth noting that the workers in the occupied Eilat justify their work there due to the lack of job opportunities for them in their homeland, which compels them to work to improve the level of income, while they face severe criticism from the trade union resistance committees, because the matter is rejected by the people.

But bustling, modern, world-class holiday resort Eilat didn't exist before the State of Israel was established in 1948. It has certainly never been under the control of Jordan. Or of any Palestinian Arab authority, entity or rule.

While it's early in the news cycle, we can see no other mention in any of the Jordan news channels we monitor. We will keep tracking.

01-Dec-18: Suspected Eilat terror attack: Jordanian wielding hammer seriously injures two Israeli dock-workers

After crossing the border from Jordan into Israel, Jordanian workers wait
for their transport to pick them up, outside the Yitzhak Rabin Border Terminal
in Eilat, southern Israel, on March 15, 2018 [Image Source: David Vaknin]

There were reports Friday morning that two people had been injured in Israel's southern port city of Eilat after they were attacked by a Jordanian national. The details we have seen so far seem incomplete and raise additional questions.

From Israel National News, we understand that an attack happened at about 8:30 Friday morning on board a vessel docked in Eilat's port. It quotes the Magen David Adom ambulance service as a source for a police assessment that "the incident appeared to have been a brawl between the workers" and that "all possible motives were being examined". It says the attacker "has been identified as a Jordanian national who is employed as a dock worker in the port, while the victims are also believed to be dock workers." One of the victims, described as a 24-year-old male, is reported to be in moderate condition with contusions to his upper torso and hospitalized in Eilat's Yoseftal Medical Center. A second person is said to be in "light condition.” A JTA report says both were then transferred to Beer Sheba's Soroka Medical Center.

Arab News however says both victims were hospitalized with serious injuries and adds the detail that the Jordanian "beat them with a hammer". From Haaretz:

Tamir Gross, one of the two victims, said he had been among the workers conducting drilling from the deck of a ship. "Out of nowhere, I suddenly got three blows of a hammer on my head," he said. "I fell into the water and immediately the guy jumped in after me and began swimming toward me." Gross said he swam away and managed to ascend a ladder to a dock. "One of the Jordanian workers helped me," he said.

IsraelHayom says

the Jordanian, who was employed as a repairman at the port, used a heavy-duty hammer weighing over 2 pounds to hit both Israelis in the head, fracturing their skulls.

From Times of Israel, we learn that Israel Police suspect the attack is a terrorist incident; that the attacker was, as of Friday, going to be interrogated by the Shin Bet; that a second Jordanian male was injured, lightly, trying to restrain the attacker. And this: the suspected attacker, who is not yet named, began working in Israel on Thursday after being issued a daily work permit from the Population and Immigration Authority.

About Jordanians and work permits: While Palestinian Arabs with Israeli work permits are generally barred from entering Eilat, Israel, in June 2014, started issuing permits for up to 1,500 Jordanian citizens to work in Eilat hotels. Jordan and Israel would be jointly monitoring the implementation of the plan, it was said at the time. [See "In a first, Israel lets Jordanian workers cross border for jobs", Washington Post, May 16, 2016: Quote - "So far, nothing bad has happened. “The Jordanians need work, and we need workers,” said the head of the Eilat Hotel Association, Shabtai Shay."] A Tourism Ministry press release said the Jordanians would be performing cleaning, dish-washing and room service jobs. Conditions included that they would return each night to Jordan at the end of the day. It appears the program was then extended to cover labor in the port.

None of the Jordanian media sites we regularly scan have reported any of this so far. We will check again on Sunday morning.

UPDATE Saturday December 22, 2018 at 5:45 pm:

• The Jerusalem Post reports that a 28-year-old Jordanian citizen was indicted Friday on charges relating to an attack on two Israelis in Eilat last month (as we reported above) without giving his full name. The Southern District Attorney's Office in its indictment calls the incident "nationalist" which in this part of the world is synonymous with terror. The accused is charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. 
• Over at Israel National News, they give his name as Taher Halef and say he intended "to murder Israelis and Jews due to his identification with the Palestinian people, for Palestine and God, and as revenge for the occupation, with the intention of harming state security". As part of dock renovation work at the port of Eilat, divers were engaged to perform underwater work. The Jordanian was sent to bring equipment from a storage shed; he came back with a hammer and launched his assault on the divers. A day before, he was videotaped by his family reading them his last will along with inspirational quotes from the Koran (including "Do not think of someone who died for the sake of the dead, but lives and breathes with God") and asking his parents to protect his wife and children. 
• Times of Israel says the suspected attacker, who had just gotten a daily work permit from Israel's Population and Immigration Authority, had commenced work in Israel only a few days before the attack. It appears he had been plotting an assault on Israelis for years. Disturbingly, the indictment says he passed the Israeli screening process even though the Jordanian manpower agency that originally interviewed him flagged him as a potential terrorist. 

09-Feb-17: Islamists claim credit for today's Arab-on-Israeli rockets, shootings, stabbings:

Eilat by night [Image Source]

Two very different Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attacks today are major talking points within Israel - and almost entirely unreported and unanalyzed beyond our borders.

Around 11 o'clock Wednesday night, a barrage of missiles were fired at nearby Eilat from a site in the Sinai desert. The Jerusalem Post, quoting the IDF's Southern Command, reported that four rockets were fired, three of them being safely intercepted in mid-air by its Iron Dome defense system. (Click for a video of one such intercept.) Several people were treated for shock in Eilat's Yoseftal Medical Center hospital.

Haaretz reported during Thursday afternoon that ISIS is claiming to be behind the attack:

The Islamic State group's affiliate in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the barrage of rockets fired at the southern city of Eilat Wednesday night. The ISIS-aligned Amaq news agency announced that the affiliate, which calls itself the Sinai Province, fired several Grad rockets toward the Red Sea resort city. The report stated that the war against "the infidels" will continue and that the war against ISIS will not help the unbelievers. It added that future attacks would be much more severe.

Then this evening (Thursday), between five and eight people (accounts vary) were injured in a shooting/stabbing attack on Baron Hirsch Street, Petah Tikva near the city's outdoor market during it busiest hours of the week. The attacker, armed with what Ynet calls a makeshift rifle, opened fire on unsuspecting civilians standing at a bus stop and walking around the market. His weapon jammed as he got to a sewing-machine shop and at that point he began attacking people with a screwdriver. Someone threw (yes) a sewing machine at him, causing him to fall to the ground. Eye witnesses say he screamed "help, help" and was then helped by being arrested.

He turns out to be a 19-year-old male from a village near Nablus. (Ma'an News Agency names it as Beita.) Tonight he is under arrest and in an Israeli hospital where his injuries are being treated. Several of the people he attacked were rushed to nearby Rabin Medical Center at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. No one's life is in danger, fortunately.

He was still in possession of the gun used in the attack when arrested, according to a police spokesperson quoted by Times of Israel.

The Islamist terror regime in Gaza, Hamas, praised the attack as a “natural result” of Israeli crimes, according to a Times of Israel report but stopped short of claiming credit - though, in traditional manner, it urged other Palestinian Arabs to follow the attacker's example.

16-Feb-14: As the Sinai turmoil escalates, Israel-bound tour bus explodes in terror attack

The Taba Hilton Hotel [Image Source: Wikipedia]

The jihadist chaos and carnage that plague Egypt's Sinai Peninsula exacted fresh lives this afternoon. 

A tour bus carrying some 32 Korean Christian pilgrims, having started its journey in Cairo, passed through the ancient Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine in central Sinai (we know it better in Israel as Santa Katarina) and then the coastal town of Nuweiba and was on its way to Eilat when an on-board bomb exploded just before the travelers reached Taba and the border crossover point to Israel. (Reuters has video footage.)

According to Times of Israel - 

Initial investigation indicated that the bomb was planted under the driver’s seat of the tourist bus... The bomb was detonated by remote control, as the bus waited near the Taba Hilton hotel to obtain permission to cross into Israel. Security arrangements at the crossing are such that the terrorists would not have been able to carry out the attack at the Israeli side of the border or inside Israel, security sources said Sunday night without elaboration.

The destroyed tour bus [Image Source]

In the minutes after the explosion, the Israeli news media showed photos of a long line of Magen David Adom ambulances waiting on Israel's side of the border. Now we know that there were some two dozen of them, but their services were rebuffed. As the Times of Israel reported

Egypt refused Israeli offers of medical assistance for the tourists... Three Korean tourists and the Egyptian bus driver were killed in the bombing, and at least eight passengers were seriously injured. The bomb was placed under the driver’s seat and detonated by remote control as the vehicle neared the crossing into Israel.

Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, a terrorist organization said to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, took credit right away. These are the same Salafi jihadists who have already "conducted dozens of attacks in North Sinai, as well as a handful in the Egyptian mainland" ["The Strategy of Egypt's Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis", David Barnet, February 10, 2014] and claimed to be behind the rocket attacks on the Israeli resort city of Eilat two weeks ago. There's little reason to expect the mayhem they are causing to come to an end soon, even as the Egyptian military's counter-terrorism measures remain in full force. 


Nor is there much reason to expect certain mainstream news channels to use the word "terror" in its coverage of the death and destruction the terrorists sow. The closest they get in tonight's BBC report ["Sinai attacks: Deadly bombing hits Egypt tour bus"] of the lethal Taba attack is in their repeated resort to the word "militants". The story's more or less the same at the New York Times ["Bombing of Tourist Bus Kills at Least Three in Sinai"].

Israeli emergency vehicles and crews lined up at border, but
Egyptian authoritiss refused to allow them in [Image Source]

At The Guardian, they're considerably less coy. An analytic piece there, "Egypt faces new threat in al-Qaida-linked group Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis" two weeks ago says the Sinai jihadist group

displays an affinity for al-Qaida, and the proficiency of its attacks suggest some level of external training. But until Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaida's leader, mentioned "our people in the Sinai" in an audio message on 24 January, there had been no confirmation that al-Qaida recognised Sinai jihadists. "It really caught my attention," said Barnett. "It supports the view that there are foreign fighters in the Sinai, and it's a message from al-Qaida that your cause is being recognised by us and foreigners are likely coming to aid you."

We wonder how South Korea's public opinion is dealing with the way its victims could have been treated by some of the most experienced and effective first responders anywhere... but weren't because of the decision by the Egyptian authorities to prevent Israeli ambulances and crews,  ready at the border within minutes of the terror attack, from crossing into Egypt. No doubt there will be some lofty political explanations, but the families of seriously injured loved ones now being transported to who-knows-which desert town clinics might not find them terribly persuasive.

1-Feb-14: Friday night rocket attack on Eilat

Eilat's north beach area [Image Source]

With the Sabbath just ended, we wish a Good Week (Shavua Tov) to all, and renewed prayers for a week of more good sense and fewer opportunities for the crazies and the jihadists.

Israel's cutting-edge Iron Dome defense system intercepted a rocket heading for Eilat around 9:30 on Friday night, the Jewish Sabbath. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit, quoted by Ynet, says the Tzeva Adom ("Color Red") incoming missile alert siren was heard throughout Israel's southern-most city after security forces detected an Israel-bound launch in the Sinai Peninsula. A Jerusalem Post report says there was a mid-air intercept by the Israeli system and two separate explosions were heard on the ground. A remarkably laconic Reuters report from Friday night echoes the part about the terrorist rocket being stopped.

Tonight, there's a report that the Salafi terrorists of Ansar Bait al-Maqdis have claimed credit for the thwarted attack. AFP reported that the jihadists, who executed the same sort of attack in the same area on January 20, 2014 [see "21-Jan-14: Eilat under rocket attack tonight"], "threatened to follow Friday's foiled rocket fire with further attacks". Untroubled by the need to adopt Western-style pretence at painting their evil in quasi-political language, the Ansar statement quoted by AFP says in blunt terrorist terms:

"Jews, you have to know that nothing will stop us from fighting you, even if the entire world's armies move on your instructions. If they create a barrier between us and you, with God's help and strength, we will get you and kill you."

These are the same people who are behind the mass attacks on Egyptians that we looked at here last week: 26-Jan-14: Sinai's terror problems are now Cairo's nightmares. 

There's more in-depth coverage of those terrorists from David Barnett on the Threat Matrix/Long War Journal site where he follows Ansar's activities closely.

And a slightly bizarre background note to the mid-air intercept aspect of this report. On Thursday, a day before this latest rocket attack on Eilat, that same Iron Dome installation was the target of a strange assault. According to Israel National News, an Arab male ran at the soldier guarding the anti-missile battery, screaming “Allahu Akbar” (“G-d is great” in Arabic).

Fearing a terrorist attack, the soldiers shot at the man’s legs in order to stop him. The man was hit and injured. He was taken to Eilat’s Yoseftal Hospital. It is not yet clear whether the man is armed and was attempting a terrorist attack, or is mentally ill. [Israel National News]

21-Jan-14: Eilat under rocket attack tonight

There has been a rocket attack on the Israeli resort city of Eilat tonight (Monday).

AFP is reporting that "at least one rocket struck the outskirts" of Eilat; authorities found their remains on the city's outskirts. Searches are continuing for signs of more rockets. Residents reported hearing several explosions during the evening, but at this stage (it's just after midnight) both the Israel Police and the IDF are still unable to confirm that there was rocket fire. At various points in the past five hours, it was suggested that rockets had crashed to earth near one of Eilat's best-known hotels; those reports are almost certainly wrong and may simply reflect the reality that people hearing sudden loud explosions are not always well-placed to judge how close the source of the noise is.

Over at Haaretz, they say that what was heard in Eilat was a series of explosions, indicating incoming rockets from the Sinai Peninsula. The blasts were around 7:00 pm, Monday. A police search will get underway at dawn.

Times of Israel says there were two GRAD rockets and that they struck an open area close to the city. (GRADs have been deployed by Sinai-based terrorists in their attacks on Eilat in the past - in April 2013 for instance.) Egyptian military forces are carrying out anti-terrorism operations in the north of the Sinai peninsula - with Israel’s blessing, according to a military source referenced in the Times of Israel piece tonight.

UPDATE Tuesday January 21, 2014: Credit for the attack on Eilat has been claimed by the terror group Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, which Times of Israel describes as having close ties to Egypt’s Salafi movement. Their motivations are not so complicated: "Our war with the enemy in Egypt will not distract us from the war with the nation’s first enemy, Israel. With Allah’s help, from us the Jews will see only injury.”

13-Aug-13: Oh and by the way, a rocket fired by terrorist forces was shot down in the skies over Eilat during the night

Eilat [Image Source]

The lead story on the BBC News website at this hour, Tuesday morning 8:30 am Israel summer time, is "Kerry hopeful on Mid-East talks despite settlement move", a basically upbeat story based on an interview with the US foreign minister who is visiting Colombia and who took time out to "underscore" the importance of "getting to the table quickly".

Happily underscoring, the BBC's editors quote multiple voices from the Palestinian side - including those of Hanan Ashrawi speaking in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Abbas regime "chief negotiator" Saeb Erekat "reacting" "angrily" for some twenty paragraphs of reporting critical of one Israeli move or another. Magnanimously, the Secretary State is said to have urged the Palestinian Arab side "not to react adversely". A man of generous spirit.

Then in paragraph 21, at the very tail end of the Kerry story, the BBC's editors mention this:

In a separate development on Monday, Israeli police said a missile fired towards the Red Sea resort of Eilat had been successfully intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system. Residents had reported hearing a loud explosion and a siren. [BBC]

leaving its readers to infer, quite reasonably, that a rocket attack worthy of Israel firing off one of its super-expensive high-tech anti-missile missiles might or might not have happened, depending on how willing you are to believe what the Israeli police say about this "separate development".

BBC's report: Home page entirely free
of pesky missile-attack-on-Eilat stories

Naturally, given the doubtful nature of whether anyone really and truly would have fired something at Eilat, there's not a mention of it anywhere on the BBC News home page or in the news flash section. Because, you know, perhaps it's real, and perhaps because it's just a Zionist invention (though, as the BBC's even-handed editors are so fond of saying, "Israel disputes this").

Back in our world, where this morning's attack is far from being what the BBC calls a "separate event" but just the latest stage of an ongoing war, the reports are more sober. Ynet says

Iron Dome intercepts Eilat-bound rocket | The Iron Dome defense system, deployed last month in Eilat, intercepted a rocket aimed at an inhabited area in the region on early morning Wednesday. Magen David Adom reported two persons were treated for anxiety attacks. Shortly before 1 am a siren was heard in Israel's southernmost city and residents reported they heard echoes of two explosions in the area. The IDF and the police are canvassing the area and so far no further landing sites were found.

And at Haaretz:

Iron Dome battery successfully intercepts rocket targeting | The incident marks the first time the Iron Dome system has intercepted a rocket over the southern resort city, and comes two days after Egyptian reports of an Israeli drone strike which killed five militants at a rocket-launching site in northern Sinai. The apparent attack comes at the height of the tourist season... Last week, Eilat's airport was closed by order of the military, apparently due to security threats in the neighboring Sinai Peninsula... 

And the Jerusalem Post, quoting Channel 10 News (Israel) is saying the Sinai-based jihadists of something called Ansar Bait al-Maqdis took credit for the Eilat attack in an announcement some hours ago.

Screenshot from i24news.tv video coverage of attack

This is the same terrorist unit that Aljazeera said had claimed

four of its members were killed in an Israeli drone attack in Egypt's North Sinai region. Egyptian security sources said earlier that four people were killed by a missile strike on Friday as they prepared to launch rockets at Israel. "Our heroes became martyrs during their jihadi duties against the Jews in a rocket attack on occupied lands," Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, the group, said in a posting on a website. [Aljazeera]

(For the record, this Arab news source says Egypt's military refutes the claims that Israel was involved in liquidating the four rocket men.)

Because we know that today's barely-averted mass-casualty attack is far from a "separate event", it's worth observing that actually things are getting steadily worse down in the lawless, rocket-infested Sinai. (See some of our previous reports here.)

As for the BBC and its editorial policies, not much sign of change there.

UPDATE 10:20am Tuesday: Ynet says 'credit' for the thwarted overnight missile attack on Eilat is being claimed by a second terrorist grouplet called "Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem". These jihadists issued a statement that in part says "Eilat and other Jewish towns will not be enjoying security, tourism or economy. Jews will pay for the blood of the jihad fighters". An Egyptian source quoted by Ynet says the rocket was launched from close to Israel's Egypt border.

5-Jul-13: Out in the desert, things are heating up again

Not so effective: Egyptian forces demonstrate their presence in Sinai
[Image Source: Reuters]

As we have written here numerous times in the past, the Sinai desert that separates Israel from the power and control center of Egypt is a kind of danger-early-warning mechanism that highlights in generally brutal ways what's ahead.

The peninsula has become more and more an outlaw domain where the long arm of Cairo's law and order fails to reach. The result is chaos when it's not too serious; death and destruction when more so.

For the moment, the events in Cairo are on the minds of news reporters and analysts, but Sinai is where the complicated shades of Egypt's grey become blacker and whiter. This morning, there are (largely ignored) reports from multiple Sinai locations of

coordinated rocket and machine gun attacks by militants on army checkpoints and a police base in the restive Sinai... Hardcore militants have used the sparsely populated north of the peninsula as a launching pad for attacks on security forces and neighbouring Israel.

This, according to AFP. Over at the Jerusalem Post, they have some additional details:

• Islamist gunmen staged multiple attacks on security forces in Egypt's troubled Sinai Peninsula early on Friday, two days after the army overthrew elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, security sources and state television reported.
• The security sources said a soldier was killed and two were wounded when a police station in Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip came under rocket fire. The police post is close to the local headquarters of military intelligence.
• Earlier, attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at army checkpoints guarding El-Arish airport, close to the border with the Gaza Strip and Israel, in the latest of a string of security incidents in the lawless region, the sources said. [Jerusalem Post]

It may be even worse. Al-Jazeera is reporting that gunmen attacked no fewer than five military checkpoints in el-Arish and Sheik Zweid in the early hours of this morning. 

Israeli alarm bells are, of course, ringing. Around 9:30 last night (Thursday) there were reports here in Israel (as far as we can tell, nowhere else) of explosions heard in Eilat, the Israeli city closest to Sinai and Egypt. While there is no evidence at this point of a rocket attack (and although some second-tier news sources claimed to know that is what it was), the police have still not identified either the source or any evidence of incoming rockets.

Two blasts were heard at around 9:30 p.m. throughout the southern city, according to witnesses, but the red alert rocket warning siren was not triggered nor were there any reports of injuries or damage. Security forces launched a search of the area but said they could not confirm what caused the blast.... Former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi said earlier on Thursday that while he does not envision Morsi's ouster posing a security threat to Israel, risk could come from Sinai, where decreased presence of the Egyptian army could present an opportunity for Islamist militants to act from the peninsula against Israel. [Jerusalem Post]

As we wrote last night, a hot summer appears to be ahead.

17-Apr-13: Israeli children are back at school after yesterday's Independence Day celebrations; hence yet another terrorist rocket attack this morning

Eilat: Occasionally attacked, generally relaxed, almost always sunny

The terrorists who are building up men and material resources in the chaos of today's Egyptian Sinai struck again this morning. Two GRAD rockets were fired into - and struck - the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

Memo to those lacking historical, geographic or political background: Eilat is not and never has been claimed by Palestinian Arab terror apologists as 'occupied territory'... other than by the many extremists who see all of Israel as the territory that is occupied. The readers of the Lebanese Al Manar news website for instance, are seeing a report at this moment headlined "Rockets Hit Occupied Town of Eilat"; Al Manar is a mouthpiece of Hezbollah. The semi-respectable Palestinian Maan News Agency has called Eilat occupied too, though never in the English language.

Times of Israel is reporting that one of the two missiles crashed into a residential neighborhood; the other in an open area on Eilat's outskirts. Reuters says both hit open areas. Ynet says there were three rockets, and two landed in residential areas. Israel's Army Radio, which is broadcast throughout the country, is quoted saying that a rocket

had also hit the nearby Jordanian city of Aqaba, but a spokesman for the Jordanian Civil Defence denied the suggestion.

Fortunately, and this is a matter of divine intervention and human failure, no injuries are reported, at least  not so far. Damage is said to be light.

The IDF's assessment, hardly surprising and certainly not for the first time, is that the attack on Eilat was made from the nearby Sinai Peninsula. The situation there is chaotic and dangerous, and growing steadily worse; we have written numerous times about Sinai's spiral downwards into terrorist-driven anarchy [here, here, here and here among numerous other posts]. As a matter of consistent policy, the Egyptian authorities always respond to media enquiries with firm denials that rockets were fired from Egyptian territory; this morning they did the same again.

Israel's security authorities saw today's attack coming. An Iron Dome anti-missile defense battery has been stationed near Eilat for the past two weeks; there are ongoing intelligence assessments that warned of an act of terrorism like this morning's. The system however was not utilized today, presumably because the Iron Dome controller knows to compute the expected damage in real time and to avoid firing if it is reasonable to do that.

The IDF created the Eilat Regional Brigade this past December to provide military protection, to the extent such a thing is doable against a jihadist enemy operating under the cover of a neighbouring country's government. The most recent rocket attack on Eilat's civilian population (the only kind that it has) was an especially worrying one in August 2012; those which came before it are detailed in this Wikipedia entry.

16-Jun-12: Behind Friday's rocket attacks on the Negev

Sinai Bedouin: Playing a growing role in terrorist attacks
on Israel as Egypt sinks into chaos

The security threat posed to Israel by the terror-group build up and increasing chaos in Sinai moved to a new plateau this weekend. 

It was discovered during Saturday that two powerful Grad rockets were fired into southern Israel on Friday. Israeli sources say they originated in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. One rocket landed north of Eilat in an open area of the desolate Elot region. The second landed near Mitzpeh Ramon in Israel's Negev region. No damage or injuries were reported in either explosion. Terrorist rockets have previously been fired into Israel's Red Sea resort Eilat from Sinai: five rockets were fired at Eilat in 2010, with several overshooting Israeli territory. A Jordanian was killed in the neighboring city of Aqaba in one such attack.

Haaretz, quoting Israeli security officials, says Friday's attacks were carried out by Bedouin terrorists directed by Hamas and following a Muslim Brotherhood request. A Times of Israel report says the Grad rocket that landed in the Elot region traveled at least 25 kilometers, Israeli officials said Saturday, making it the deepest incursion yet made by a rocket originating in Sinai. Israel conveyed concerns over the rocket fire to Egyptian authorities, but - according to the Times of Israel report - played down the incident because it coincides with Egypt’s sensitive presidential election vote this weekend. A senior Egyptian security official, speaking to Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm on Saturday, denied that the rocket fire had originated in the Sinai. He said “the Israeli claims are intended to hurt the security situation in the Sinai and to influence the presidential elections.”

It's a response we have heard before. See this post of ours [5-Oct-11: Quote of the day: Sinai is 100% safe] which highlights a statement by the head of Egypt's then-ruling military regime: "The security situation in Sinai is 100% safe" [Source]. 

Time to also recall the words we quoted in our August 30, 2011 blog based on an incisive piece by one of Australia's leading foreign affairs commentators (Greg Sheridan, "Freedom for extremists could make Sinai the new Somalia"): 

"Although, with Israel's agreement, Egypt has sent more troops into Sinai to try to restore order, it has essentially lost control of Sinai, where non-integrated Bedouin tribes are happy to co-operate with Islamist terrorists." 

The laconic Egyptian responses are sharply at odds with what we Israelis remember only too well. On August 18 2011, eight Israelis died and at least 40 were wounded in a multi-pronged terror attack near the southern-most Israeli city, Eilat. The attackers infiltrated from Sinai.