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Israel's military intelligence chief said on Monday that foreign militants suspected of having Al Qaida links have slipped into Gaza to recruit Palestinians. Israeli troops completed their pullout on September 12 after 38 years of occupation, handing over control of Gaza's southern border to neighbouring Egypt. Traffic across the frontier went largely unchecked for days before Egyptian police sealed it. "We know of around 10 global jihad operatives who infiltrated into Gaza from the Sinai during the Philadelphi episode," Major-General Aharon Zeevi-Farkash told Maariv newspaper, using Israel's name for the Gaza-Egypt border. "There is a potential here for the beginning of an Al Qaida infrastructure in Gaza," he said.
"Global jihad" is a term Israeli officials use for foreign militants affiliated with or inspired by, Osama Bin Laden's international Al Qaida network. "The Palestinian National Authority, which is scrambling to rein in rival factions and turn Gaza into a model for future statehood, has denied any Al Qaida presence in the territory. A spate of suicide bombings earlier this year in Sinai and Israel, stirred Israeli concern about possible Al Qaida involvement. But Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nasif said probes showed no links between the bombers and outside groups. While militants in Gaza and the occupied West Bank share Al Qaida's hatred of the Jewish state and use suicide tactics to kill and maim in the same way, experts say doctrinal differences preclude cooperation between the groups.
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