Yesterday, some of the media reported on the evidence suggesting that the PLO Arab terrorists who perpetrated the Ashdod bombing arrived in a sea container.
Debka believe that Al Qaeda devised this new method of hiding in shipping containers.
Israeli security expertsí initial conclusion is that al Qaeda devised the Palestiniansí clever Trojan horse use of a shipping container to smuggle the two the suicide bombers into the heavily secured strategic Ashdod Port area on Sunday.
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Al Qaeda has used lavishly appointed secret containers in the past to smuggle terrorists into and out of ports around the world. The Ashdod container had transited another port before arriving in Israel, raising the possibility that al Qaeda experts had carried out the conversion before it reached the Gaza Strip.
However, I am inclined to agree with blogger Roger L. Simon when he says:
Reading DEBKAfile is rather like taking drugs–you know it’s not good for you, but you can’t stay away. Many have asked me, because I write mysteries, if I know who they really are. I don’t. But since John LeCarrÈ lost his mojo after the Cold War, they’re the best thing going when it comes to spy stories. Unfortunately, however, they don’t pretend to be fiction and much of what they publish is.
This is especially true considering Debka’s previous account of how the terrorists entered Ashdod.
On the Israeli side of the Gaza fence, the two terrorists from Jebaliya were picked up by a waiting car whose driver, the fifth team member, had their bomb belts waiting. The vehicle fitted with real or forged Israeli plates made good time to Ashdod on the empty roads of early Saturday. Israeli investigators have not discovered where the three-man terror team hid up for the 22 hours until they struck on Sunday at 4.30 pm. Local Bedouin may have sheltered them somewhere nearby. When it was time, they headed to the port unnoticed.
What really perplexes Israeli security authorities is: how did one of the terrorists penetrate the fenced port area and its well-secured gate wearing a bomb belt? With this impediment he could hardly have scaled the almost three-meter fence, even with the help of his two team partners, and jumped down inside the port area without detonating the bombs strapped round his waist. Anyway it was broad daylight and an armed patrol would have spotted him. The fact that he got through unseen suggests he must have mingled with the portís bustling comings and goings, on foot or hidden in a truck.
Now there is talk that all round bad guy and former Hizbullah hostage, Elhanan Tennenbaum, may be linked to the attack.
Did Elhanan Tennenbaum advise Hezbollah on how to smuggle weapons into
Israel? That is one of the questions the former prisoner’s interrogators are
closely looking into.
The Serious & International Crimes Unit investigators still do not believe
Tennenbaum’s version – that the purpose of his fateful trip to the Gulf was
only to advise Lebanese drug lords on how to smuggle tankers full of cocaine
into Israel through the seaports. Tennenbaum was interrogated several times
on the tanker issue. Following information that was received from a
Hezbollah operative in Gaza who was sentenced to 14 years in prison,
Tennenbaum was asked whether the tankers were actually intended to carry
weapons to the Palestinian Authority….
The plot thickens. Stay tuned.
