NOVANEWS
Jason Ditz,
antiwar.com
In a press conference in the wake of the southern Israel attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the military and the nation’s spy agency Shin Bet for keeping the death toll from being higher.
The attacks, which saw eight Israeli soldiers killed by infiltrators from the Sinai Peninsula, sparked immediate calls for action across Israel, and Netanyahu was quick to promise “full force retaliation.”Other officials were keen to blame Hamas for the attacks.
Hamas, for its part, denied any role in the killings, and pointed to Egyptian officials who blamed the strike on militant factions operating within the Sinai Peninsula, not the Gaza Strip.
And indeed, while Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip in “retaliation,” Egyptian forces were hard at work arresting people involved in the plot. Though those arrested included some Palestinians, early reports from Egypt’s state media suggest the majority were Egyptians recruited nationwide to set up shop in Sinai
