Of particular note, U.S. Central Command has a satellite location in Qatar. Qatar is the location of the Taliban 5 released in exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl and Qatar is the ‘go-to’ country that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton launched as the official Middle East diplomacy interlocutor. Corruption reigns in Qatar. The United States policy under Barack Obama is dealing with the devil.
From Reuters:
Israel says Islamic State’s Sinai assault aimed to help Hamas get arms
Israel accused Hamas on Tuesday of supporting last week’s assaults by Islamic State affiliates on Egyptian forces in the Sinai in hope of freeing up arms smuggling to the Gaza Strip.
The remarks followed Israeli allegations that Hamas members provided training and medical treatment for the Sinai insurgents – charges dismissed by the Palestinian Islamist group as a bid to further fray its troubled ties with Cairo.
Egypt said more than 100 insurgents and 17 of its soldiers were killed in Wednesday’s simultaneous assaults, carried out against military checkpoints around the North Sinai towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah. Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate, Sinai Province, took credit for the attacks.
Rafah straddles the border between Egypt and Gaza and had long seen smuggling to the Hamas-controlled enclave. But Cairo has been cracking down on such activity and deems Hamas a threat to Egyptian interests.
An Israeli intelligence colonel responsible for monitoring the borders with Egypt and Gaza said on Tuesday that Hamas, short of weaponry after its war against Israel last year, supported the Sinai assaults with the “objective of opening up a conduit” for renewed smuggling. More here.
Reports Prove Qatar is a sponsor of terror.
From the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
On July 2, the Egyptian El Balad channel reported statements by Egyptian security experts that the explosives used to assassinate Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat were delivered to Egypt through the Qatari embassy’s diplomatic mail. Meanwhile, the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab al-Youm openly accused Qatar of being behind the attack. In a July 5 report, the newspaper claimed Qatar had funded the terror attack by the Islamic State’s Ansar Beit al-Maqdis against Egyptian army units in Sinai; it also allegedly had brought terror operatives from Syria, Iraq, and Libya to Sinai, where they had undergone training for the attack.
The report also claimed that Qatar had coordinated the media coverage of the Sinai onslaught in the Arab and international media. For example, Al Jazeera, which broadcasts from Doha and is funded by the Qatari government, provided direct coverage of the offensive against the Egyptian army from the moment it began that day at seven in the morning, and highlighted the raising of the black flags of Islamic State in the town of Sheikh Zuweid.
These reports are substantiated by the rising tension between Egypt and Qatar in recent days. Two days after last week’s attacks in Egypt, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry appointed Mohamed Awad — previously its ambassador to Qatar — to the post of Egyptian consul-general in Mumbai while leaving the Egyptian embassy in Doha without an ambassador. The Egyptian ambassador to Qatar was recalled in January 2014 to protest “Qatar’s interference in Egypt’s internal affairs” and since then had waited in Cairo to be reassigned. Egyptian commentators view this step as Egypt signaling its displeasure to Qatar, as well as the fact that Egyptian security officials are aware of Qatar’s involvement in the recent terror incidents. Although Qatar issued a condemnation of the Egyptian prosecutor-general’s assassination, Egyptians have dismissed Qatar’s statement as a standard denunciation and no more than lip service.
