al-Qaeda Flourishing in Gaza

Prior to the Gaza pullout, I predicted that the territory would flourish as a Taliban-style hub of international terror now that Islamists had taken control. The evidence continues to mount:

I am sitting somewhere in Gaza City - I'm not allowed to know where - and opposite me is a huge beaming picture of Osama bin Laden, with the smoke from a burning World Trade Center forming a black halo around his head. He is surrounded by a gaggle of jihadi angels: some Chechen fighters, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Britain's own Tube bomber, Mohammed Sidique Khan. "Would you like to see our weapons?" a masked jihadi says cheerfully, before thrusting a grenade into my hand.

"I want to kill and kill and kill again. I want to be a killing machine until, inshallah [God willing], I become a martyr," said Abu Ahmad, 27. He has just described how he slashed the throats of four female Israeli soldiers in 2002. "All the Jews have to be killed," he says. The Holocaust did not happen, he says, "but it should have." "I love Osama bin Laden," he said to me as we parted, slapping me on the back.

Meanwhile, Gaza Weapons Smuggling Flourishes, and they are talking about the anti-tank weapons that humiliated the IDF in Lebanon, not guns. Of course the key line in the story is:

The Palestinians have done nothing, despite a promise by President Mahmoud Abbas to shut down the weapons pipeline as part of a Gaza cease-fire reached last month, said Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin.

The Israeli leaders from Chelm are not powerless, however. They still have the ability to threaten dire consequences:

The smuggling, Eisin added, could easily bring down the truce. "We don't build a cease-fire on luck," she said.

Elder of Ziyon has more on the story.