Bedouin threaten to attack gas pipeline to Israel

June 28, 2010

Egyptian police beefed up security around a Sinai peninsula pipeline that supplies Israel with natural gas after a group of wanted Bedouin threatened to sabotage it, security officials said on Monday.

The Bedouin group, which consists of at least a dozen armed fugitives, has clashed with police since its leader Salim Lafi escaped from a prison truck in an ambush that killed a policeman in February.

Security officials said police had received warnings the group threatened to attack the pipeline, which since 2008 has supplied Israel with 1.7 billion cubic metres (60 billion cubic feet) of gas a year despite angry opposition to the supply deal within Egypt.

An Israeli infrastructure ministry spokeswoman said Egypt provides about a third of Israel's natural gas.

Police relations with Sinai Bedouin are usually tense, with Bedouin complaining of routine harassment and discrimination.

Security officials said police were also increasing their presence around El-Arish airport and the Al-Ouja crossing with Israel.

A Bedouin activist in central Sinai, where Lafi is believed to be hiding, said police were exploiting the threat to crack down on the Bedouin.

"There were threats about the pipeline. But the Bedouin have not reached this point of escalation," said Mussa el-Daleh.

"We are Bedouin. The police don't distinguish between outlaws and others," he said, adding that the threats were in response to a security crackdown after Lafi's escape.

Lafi was jailed after Bedouin tribesman briefly held dozens of policemen in response to the killing of three Bedouin in a protest in November 2008.

Police have denied allegations that they arrested Lafi's relatives to pressure him to surrender.

Rights groups have criticised Egypt's policies towards the Bedouin, who were subjected to harsh police treatment after a series of bombings in Sinai resorts between 2004 and 2006, which killed dozens of Egyptians and foreign tourists.

Source: AFP Global Edition

Egypt to strip men married to Israelis of citizenship

By Jailan Zayan (AFP) – Jun 5, 2010

CAIRO —

A Cairo court on Saturday upheld a ruling to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women of their citizenship in a case that has highlighted national sentiment towards Israel.
Judge Mohammed al-Husseini, sitting on the Supreme Administrative Court, said the interior ministry must ask the cabinet to take the necessary steps to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, of their citizenship.
The court said that each case should be considered separately, in a ruling that cannot be appealed.
The ruling reflects Egyptian sentiment towards Israel, more than 30 years after Egypt signed an unpopular peace deal with the Jewish state.
Before reading the verdict, Husseini said the case would not apply to Egyptian men married to Arab Israeli women.
"The case for (Egyptian) men married to Israeli Arab women is different to those married to Israeli women of Jewish origin because (Israeli Arabs) have lived under Israeli occupation," Husseini told the court.
"The court's decision is taking into account Egypt's national security," the judge said.
Lawyer Nabil al-Wahsh said he originally brought the case to court in order to prevent the creation of a generation "disloyal to Egypt and the Arab world."
Children of such marriages "should not be allowed to perform their military service," he said.
The number of Egyptian men married to Israeli women is thought to be around 30,000, according to Wahsh. Only 10 percent of them are married to Arab Israelis.
"This ruling is for the benefit of Egypt, a nation of leadership, history and civilisation," Wahsh said. "It is for the protection of Egypt and Egypt's youth and its national security."
"The decision comes as Israel continues its assault on those who love peace. The latest example is the aggression against the aid boat which was heading towards the blockaded Gaza Strip," he added.
On Monday, Israeli naval commandos raided a humanitarian flotilla carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, in a bungled operation that left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead and scores injured.
A lower court ruled last year that the interior minister must look into the cases of Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, in order to "take the necessary steps to strip them of their nationality."
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El Nakba

Israel: Black History of Human Rights

Israel, the main opponent for Goldstone report is a brutal country. It has no human ethics since its establishment. It has massacred hundreds of thousands in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Israel never respected UN resolution nor any Humanitarian conventions like Geneva and other agreements.

The establishment of the State of Israel involved the destruction of over 530 Palestinian towns and villages and the expulsion of about two-thirds of the indigenous Palestinian Arab population from their homes and lands to pave the way for the establishment of a Jewish State, with a Jewish majority

Contrary to Israeli claims that they declared statehood in response to an Arab war against them, in actual fact, Zionist leaders launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the largely defenseless Palestinian population in April of 1948. A month and a half into this campaign, 380,000 Palestinians had faced expulsion, accounting for half of the total Palestinians made refugees in 1948, spawning an era in Palestinian history known as the Nakba (catastrophe).

This major offensive was Plan Dalet (Dalet – Hebrew for letter D). The Zionist leaders waged this campaign to control and ethnically cleanse territories beyond that allocated to the Jewish state by the UN Partition Plan (UNPP). By 1949, the Zionist leadership/Israeli government controlled 78% of Mandatory Palestine, having seized an additional 23% of the land allocated to Palestinian State under the UNPP.

According to Plan Dalet, the brigade commanders were given full "discretion" in what to do with the villages they occupied – that is to destroy them or leave them standing. On numerous occasions, Zionist forces expelled residents from their towns and villages, committed rape and other acts of violence, massacred civilians, and executed prisoners of war. These acts have been widely documented, most forcefully by Israeli historians using military and State archives. Here is one of many testimonies from Zionist soldiers:

"The first [wave] of conquerors killed about 80 to 100 [male] Arabs, women and children. The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead." He added that a soldier had bragged of raping and shooting a woman, two old women had been blown up in a house, and another woman with her baby were shot.*
New Jewish settlers migrated from across the world to inhabit the very same homes from which their rightful Palestinian owners had been expelled. Today these rightful owners are still denied the right to return to their homes.
The campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its population entailed a brutal attempt to eliminate Palestinian identity, culture and heritage.

60 years on, Palestinians continue to be denied their internationally sanctioned rights to return to their homes, to self-determination and to live in full equality in their homeland.
A recent UN report condemned Israel’s on-going policies in the Occupied Territories as forms of foreign occupation, colonialism and apartheid – all in violation of international law.

No other "democracy" has so flagrantly breached international laws and UN resolutions as Israel has.
60 years on, Israel's practices of ethnic cleansing continue.

* Sources: Abu-Lughod, Lila & Sa’di Ahmad, 2007, Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, ed, New York: Columbia University Press; Morris, Benny, 2004, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

http://www.goldstone-report.org/the-report/critics/99-israel-black-history-of-human-rights#addcomments

Oyun Musa Fortified Firing Position Sinai

For anyone wondering what lies up on that hill, and what is beyond the huge camouflaged helmet on your right as you drive South towards Ras Sidr, it is well worth a visit.

On 5th -10th June 1967 when the Israeli Army invaded yet another one of it's many neighbours namely Egypt and occupying the Sinai, few people would have guessed that the constant aggression shown by the Israeli's to it's middle eastern neighbours, and in particular the cruel and inhumane treatment shown to the original owners of occupied Palestine, the Palestinian refugees would today have escalated into International terrorism on such an unimaginable scale, with suicide bombing now rife in the region and beyond.

Zionist aggression with the help the of the US military war machine, completely destroyed in a surprise attack on the undefended Egyptian people, the Egyptian Air Force in a raid that led to the invasion of Sinai and it's occupation for 6 years by the Israeli Army.

Oyun Musa Fortified Firing Position was a military stronghold used by the invading Israeli's to launch attacks on the civilian population of Suez, it's oil wells and the Sinai infrastructure. The railroad in Sinai was destroyed by being lifted and used to reinforce the Israeli bunkers of which you can see in some of the photographs leaving Sinai with no railway lines.


















The bunkers were heavily fortified and have sliding metal doors which were swung closed after every rocket launch to avoid detection by the Egyptian army at Suez ( also seen in the photographs ).



























1973 saw the retaking of the Egyptian land again from the aggressors and Egypt's Sinai was once again returned to it's rightful owners.

The Oyun Musa Fortified Firing Position remains as a reminder of the Egyptian victory against the invader, and today Egyptian soldiers act as guides, showing visitors around the site for a very small entrance fee.






















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There is a visitor centre with Israeli soldier artifacts, an observation deck with high powered binoculars which reach to Suez, bunkers and military hardware on show.