Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

Following a meeting Sunday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to publicly support the Israeli leader’s Judea and Samaria evacuation plan.

Neither leader mentioned the proposed withdrawal during a joint press conference, until a reporter asked Olmert whether Mubarak expressed support for the plan during their meeting. Olmert evaded the question, saying the Egyptian leader expressed a preference for “all sides to meet in negotiations.”

A senior Egyptian official said that Mubarak told Olmert during their private talks that he views the Israeli unilateral retreat as a possible threat to the security of Egypt and to Jordan. The official said Mubarak pushed Olmert to conduct negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Egypt is continually threatened by the anarchy in the Gaza Strip,” the official said. “Elements in Gaza have aided and abetted plotters of terror attacks against our land and sovereignty. A unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank could bring similar anarchy on a larger scale there and spill over into [neighboring] Jordan.”

Egyptian and Israeli security officials accuse Gaza-based militants and terror groups of smuggling large quantities of weapons from the Sinai desert into the Gaza Strip. Egypt recently announced that the terrorists who carried out April’s deadly triple-bomb blasts in the Sinai resort town of Dahab trained for the operation in the Gaza Strip with local Palestinians. They said Gaza-based terrorists helped finance the attack.

Egypt is said to be very closely monitoring Hamas’s relationship with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to create an Islamic theocracy in place of the current Mubarak regime, considered a regional ally to the U.S. Hamas is an offshoot of the Brotherhood, which won an unprecedented 20 percent of parliamentary seats in the latest Egyptian elections.

Brotherhood leaders in Egypt have repeatedly stated that their group has been strengthened by Israel’s Gaza withdrawal and Hamas’s ascension to power. They have said they wish to stage a similar takeover of Egypt.

“Gaza is a clear threat now to Egypt,” declared the Egyptian official. “What reason is there to believe things will result otherwise from any West Bank withdrawal?” The Jewish state is headed toward a major, violent confrontation with the Palestinians, while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan to withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria will “not help” to decrease the terrorism – this according to an Israeli army assessment to be published next month.

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The leaders of every major Palestinian terror organization have said during a recent series of interviews with WorldNetDaily that events here are leading them to launch what they call a third intifada against Israel. The terrorists warned of suicide bombings, rocket attacks against Jewish communities and “a few new surprises in our arsenal.”

The IDF report outlines the army’s plan for the next five years. It states that in order to prepare for the expected upcoming conflict, military resources should be shifted more toward counter-terrorism units and away from traditional fors of warfare, such as armor, artillery and the engineering corps.

There has already been an increasing level of violence each week. Security officials say Iran and Syria are directing large sums of money to Palestinian terror groups in order to spur local cells to further attacks, hoping to inflame regional violence.

Some officials tie the expected increase in violence to Olmert’s Judea and Samaria evacuation plan.

“The new intifada is only a question of time and this will be the hardest and the most dangerous one. It’s just about timing until the order to blow up a new wave of attacks will be given,” Abu Nasser, a senior Al Aksa Brigades leader from the Balata refugee camp in northern Samaria told WorldNetDaily.

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Hamas is developing a new, electronically guided missile that will place most major Israeli population centers within firing range, said Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas’s so-called military wing.

Abdullah is considered one of the most important operational members of the Izzedine al-Kassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas’s declared “resistance” department. He said his group would not immediately carry out rocket attacks but that Hamas is acquiring new weapons and is preparing for the possibility of resuming anti-Israel operations should a truce the group claims to abide by fall apart.

Israel has noted regular improvements in Palestinian rockets, although it has not released information about Palestinian groups developing missiles with guidance systems. A senior Palestinian intelligence officer said there is evidence that groups in Gaza are developing guided missiles.

Abdullah claims Israel has been deliberately minimizing his group’s rocket capabilities, and said Hamas would eventually break the cease-fire to which it agreed last February.

“It is normal that the Israelis will underestimate the capabilities of Palestinian resistance, such as not admitting we are working on these new missiles,” he said. “The people who made the (Gaza) withdrawal don’t want to talk now about the so-called risks.

“In the last fifteen months, even though the fighters of Hamas kept the cease-fire, we did not stop making important advancements and professional training on the military level. In the future, after Hamas is obliged to stop the cease-fire, the world shall see our new military capabilities.”