Libya’s missing weapons being smuggled into Gaza
Israel’s military intelligence is increasingly concerned about the quantity of Libyan arms flowing into the Gaza strip through its increasingly volatile southern border.
Egypt has a northwestern border point with Israel, at the top of the Sinai desert, and a long eastern boundary with Libya. The fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s Tripoli represents a new source for weaponry, and has opened up a new land route, enabling smugglers to bring “thousands” of weapons into Gaza by way of tunnels that run from Rafah, in northern Egypt, into the Hamas-run territory, according to numerous Israeli military sources.
Before the influx of Libyan contraband, Israeli assessments have been that most of the weapons coming into Gaza, albeit also illegally, have been from Iran, transported by ships crossing the Mediterranean Sea or over land via Sudan.
A September report by Israeli military intelligence, widely quoted in public, stated that the weapons smuggled in from Libya constitute an increase in Gaza stockpiles, but not necessarily a qualitative enhancement of Hamas’s military capacities. Mostly, SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) have been detected.
The Soviet-era SA-7 is a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missile that Israel says has already infiltrated Gaza. Rocket-propelled grenades, designed to penetrate armor, are also fairly common in the strip. While Libya is known to possess a stockpile of antiquated chemical weapons, Israeli officials say there is no indication Hamas has been seeking them out.
Victoria Nuland, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said at a briefing Friday in Washington that the United States was actively scouring Libya in search of conventional weapons that may have gone missing since the conflict in Libya began earlier this year…
Several hoards of weaponry incoming from Libya were caught and confiscated during the late summer…