Sabbath 24/05/35/120

Dear Friends,

Since the ouster of the former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak the Northern Sinai has become a hotbed of Islamic Militants. They are working in conjunction with Islamic militants in North Africa, including Egypt, and also with Hamas and those in Gaza and the Militants in Lebanon and Palestine and supported by terrorists in Iran and Syria.  Israel has been monitoring the situation very closely and was aware that the attack of this last Sunday 29 July 2012 on the Egyptian Border Post joining Israel and the Gaza Strip, killing 16 border police, was to occur and warned the Chief of Egyptian Intelligence.

The Egyptian Armed forces were also aware of the increasing terrorism by Muslim fanatics in the Northern Sinai and ordered a bombing raid killing 20 Sinai militants there.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has made a series of changes to his key structure as a result.  He has fired his intelligence chief and the governor of Northern Sinai following the deadly weekend attack on troops by suspected militants in Sinai.

President Morsi also asked Defence Minister Hussein Tantawi to replace the commander of the military police. That force has been heavily used since the ouster 18 months ago of Hosni Mubarak.

He also fired the commander of the presidential guards and named new chiefs for security in Cairo and the police's large central security, a paramilitary force often deployed to deal with riots.

All of these changes followed the killing on Sunday of the 16 soldiers, and wounding of seven others, at the post in Sinai along the border with Israel and the Gaza Strip.

It is thought that the attack raised questions about the readiness of Egyptian forces in the area, particularly after Israel warned the country several days earlier of an imminent attack. They simply ignored Israeli intelligence.

The attackers killed the soldiers as they were breaking their daily fast for the holy month of Ramadan with a sunset meal.

Their attackers then commandeered an armoured vehicle, which they then used to move across the border into Israel. They were immediately targeted by an Israeli air strike. Fortunately the Israelis did not ignore their own intelligence of the attack and invasion.

The intelligence chief that Morsi fired, Murad Muwafi, was quoted in Wednesday's newspapers as saying his agency was aware of the Israeli warning but did not think that Muslims would attack Muslims while breaking their fast during Ramadan. What a lame insane excuse for allowing a force of their own people to be executed. What do these fools think is happening in Syria? The answer is; they wanted it to happen.

The confusion there in Sinai is exemplified by the Bedouin and other reactions. During the reactions the Military who should have protected the locals themselves had to rely on the locals for rescue from attack.

The failure to prevent an attack on a military checkpoint, carried out by unknown militants, and the slow response of both forces on the ground and officials is held to stand as a staggering demonstration of the ongoing security vacuum in Sinai, Egypt’s strategic eastern gate.
 
While local media and politicians alike are busy mourning the deceased soldiers, and sounding alarms about the rise of terrorism in the Sinai, there is little attention to the broader failure of the state on the peninsula. The locals are increasingly concerned about the lack of action.
 
The military checkpoint was situated two miles away from the Karam Abu Salem border crossing.
 
Witnesses said the attackers came in three cars, shooting the soldiers and stealing a military tank. The tank headed toward the Israeli border and was destroyed by Israeli aircraft seconds after crossing into its territory.
 
Those residing near the attack site who rushed to the scene to help the injured soldiers said they had to act on their own, and faced a lack of cooperation from military forces stationed at checkpoints set up every few miles inside Rafah.
 
Bassam Ouda, who was among the locals who transported the bodies to Rafah Hospital in their personal cars, said the military forces in nearby checkpoints refused to help them.
 
“We told the officers to come [and] secure us while we got the injured soldiers. They refused, saying that they hadn’t received such orders and couldn’t desert their posts,” Ouda said.
 
Witnesses are reported as saying that ambulances arrived after locals had already transported most of the bodies and the injured soldiers to Rafah Hospital, and that military forces arrived at the site after the attack had finished and the perpetrators had escaped. Given the warning was six days previously this was a either a deliberate set up or the grossest incompetence or cowardice.
 
Mohamed al-Moattar, a shop owner who lives near the site, said that members of different tribes were still chasing the attackers on the loose. He said this has always been Sinai’s version of law enforcement, which lacks any reliance on the police.
 
Slow action on the ground was mirrored by similarly slow reactions on the official level. President Mohamed Morsi only issued standard statements following the attack and failed to show up to the soldiers’ military funeral on Tuesday.
 
Local witnesses are saddened by the difference between the slow reaction on the Egyptian side and the swift response on the Israeli side, especially with reports in the Israeli paper Haaretz that Israeli officials had warned the Egyptian government of possible attacks. There are reports that Israel evacuated its citizens from the area two days in advance. Which is exactly what they all should have done.
 
Saleh Abu Lefeita, a car dealer and a Rafah community leader, said the government had evacuated some residents on the border 20 days prior to the attack. So the Egyptians knew some three weeks in advance and a week before they received the Israeli Intelligence. It is thus to be concluded that it was indeed a set up to justify a more powerful military presence at Sinai for future operations.
 
Many locals complained this is not the first time military forces have failed to take the necessary action. Note that it is reported that locals said the many Rafah checkpoints are only for show, as extremist groups train out in the open and goods smuggled into Gaza through illegal tunnels pass right through the checkpoints.
 
Last month, two soldiers were shot at another Rafah checkpoint, and in August last year, Israeli forces killed five Egyptian security officers on the border, triggering a temporary diplomatic crisis. In another demonstration of loose security in Sinai, the pipelines delivering gas to Israel have been bombed 15 times in the last year and a half.
 
Sunday’s attack escalated security fears for Sinai residents. Sawsan al-Ayesh, who lives next to the attack site, left her home and took her children to her mother’s. When the attackers threw what seems to have been a smoke bomb, Ayesh thought her house was going to be blown up with her and her children in it.
 
As was probably the intention, the incident has caused renewed calls for the modification of the three-decades-old peace treaty with Israel, which allows Egypt only a limited number of soldiers on the border, with meagre arms.
 

Locals vehemently denied early reports that the operation was a joint effort between Palestinian factions and Sinai Bedouins, saying that while Bedouins could have been hired by the perpetrators to help them, they couldn’t have been involved in planning the attack.
 
“People here may get involved in individual acts of violence related to revenge, but this kind of organized operation doesn't happen in this area,” Abu Lefeita is reported as saying.
 
The incident has also triggered anti-Palestinian sentiment among Bedouins in Sinai who blame Palestinian factions.
 
Many witnesses said they recognized the perpetrators’ Palestinian dialect and that they were repeating jihadist chants as they carried out the operation.
 
Morsi has been criticized for opening up the Rafah crossing, a decision that was reversed following the attack.
 
Saeed Hamad, an elderly Bedouin whose house is across from the attacked site, cried as he recounted how the locals were unable to come to the rescue of the soldiers after they were shot.
 
“These are our children that died. This is an Israeli plot, we would be fools to think otherwise,” said Hammad as we would expect all the blame to be levelled at Israel by these locals in spite of the eyewitness identification of the attacker as Palestinians.  The violence will escalate. 

It is now common knowledge throughout the area that large swathes of Northern Sinai have plunged into lawlessness following Mubarak's ouster. Despite the NATO assistance to Libya in their struggle, a massive flow of arms has been smuggled from Libya into the Northern Sinai and has found their way into the hands of disgruntled Bedouins. The end result will be wholesale bloodshed before it is brought under control.

The lawlessness is coupled with the rise in the area of al-Qaeda-inspired militant groups that are waging a campaign of violence against Egyptian security forces. They have also staged several cross-border attacks on Israel.

The Islamic Militants will continue to raise the levels of concern in the Middle East. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will continue to show concern over the levels of violence in the area because it has to do so to avoid a civil war in Egypt. The Egyptian army has long been aware of the potential for all out war with Israel and the Egyptian system has proven repeatedly it is no match for Israel and the prophecies show that in these last days they will be and are terrified of Israel.

It is clear from Daniel chapter 11 that the King of the North will invade the Middle East and take control of Egypt and all of its resources.  The wars of the Middle East to North Africa from Libya westward and down to the Ethiopian area will see them doing the bidding of NATO forces and ultimately news from the East and North alarms the king of the North and he will go forth to utterly exterminate many (cf Dan. 11:40-45).

The King of the North who are the NATO Forces will be forced to invade the Middle East because of these fanatics and we will be faced with Global Chemical and then Thermo Nuclear War.

These conflicts will expand into the War of Hamon-Gog (see the paper War of Hamon-Gog (No. 294)).

In order to save Egypt the Egyptian forces will be forced to shut down the terrorists and control the arms flow from Libya and also from Iran and Russia into Lebanon.

The other serious flash points are seen among the Kurds in Syria and the Turks now see the Syrian Civil War as a direct threat to their own national integrity with the Kurdish forces spread over the area of their ancestors, the Ancient Medes, both sides of the Euphrates and into Turkey itself and on into northern Iraq and into Iran. The Syrians were equipped by Russia with chemical weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). These fundamentalists will continue to escalate the conflict but because they do not study the Bible they are blind to the effects of what is to happen as a result of this conflict.

The end result of the conflict is that the nation of Israel will extend from the River of Egypt north to the Euphrates and from Gaza to Lebanon and across to Syria and into the Arabian Desert and incorporate Jordan and Edom down into the Arabah; and to the Red Sea. These people will be spared out of the hands of the King of the North and will not be destroyed. However, they will be consolidated into the Federation of Israel which will be bordered on the North by the Assyrians and the South by the Egyptians and they will be a tri-national trading block with Israel as a central federation under messiah and the Church of God at Jerusalem. It is written that we are to be Gods or elohim. There is no negotiation and Scripture cannot be broken (Jn 10:34-36).

Both Judah and Ishmael and the sons of Keturah will be converted in order for that to happen and the sons of Israel will be brought from the North hand in hand with Assyria. No amount of wilful ignorance on the part of Islam or Judah or Trinitarian Christianity can stop that from happening.

From 2027 all people on earth will keep the Sabbaths and the New Moons (Isa. 66:23) and the Feasts (Zech 14:16-19) or they will die, either of drought and starvation or the plagues of Egypt and they will do so for one thousand one hundred years (Isa. 65:17-25; Rev. 20:1-15).  These aspects are explained in the papers Resurrection of the Dead Part. I; Part II and Part III.  And also the paper Outline Timetable of the Age (No. 272).

At the end of that period the City of God will come to the earth and we will all rule the universe from the earth and we will be equal to the angels in control of the universe (see the paper The City of God (No. 180)).

Pray that God sends the Witnesses and the Messiah soon.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General