Hamas and Al Qaeda Incursions into My Negev Travel Paths!
January 27, 2008
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
The explosion of terrorist leaders and groups out of the chaotic Gaza Strip, through the security wall between Gaza and Egypt (Sinai), has created a very real threat for terror attack incursions across the long border fence between Egypt (Sinai) and Israel. Such a threat has long been there, but the destruction of the wall, separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt (Sinai), will surely cause a steady acceleration in the number of attacks carried out with the passage of time.
I have traveled all the roads in the Negev for many years, including the ones mentioned as being closed by the IDF in the DEBKAfile article, which follows. The last time I traveled in Israel, when headed north on HWY 10 from the southern Negev along the Egyptian border to the Gaza Strip border, I planned to stop at traditional Kadesh Barnea, but was stopped by Israeli border guards at Nitsana Border Crossing. The Palestinians were digging tunnels from the Egyptian side under the border fence, and they would not let me proceed unless I was armed. So I took HWY 211 east across the Negev to Tlalim Junction and HWY 40 north to Beersheba.
I had seen Israeli Merkava-3 tanks backed into mountain crevices to the east of HWY 10, with their cannons pointed to the west as I traveled north from Eilat to the Nitsana Border Crossing. The group I took with me was deliberately all male.
We called ourselves a “rough and ready” group of preachers, and I wanted them to see the Israeli site identified as tradition Kadesh Barnea, but the IDF would not let us progress void of weapons. We traveled from one end of Israel to the other, from the top of Mount Herman at the extreme northern tip of Israel to the wild depths and highs of the rugged southern Negev. If I ever completely recover from my 5-by pass heart surgery, I would like to do it again before 2010.
Every nation has a war contingency plan. And, the smaller the country, the more imperative is the requirement for a detailed war contingency evacuation plan. Israel began to formulate, plan, and build her evacuation area in the early fifties.
She chose the only reasonable zone, the Negev wilderness. The Negev comprises more than one-third of the total land area of Israel, beginning just north of Beersheba, and extending all the way southward to the Gulf of Aqaba. Why was the Negev the only reasonable area? From the historical prospective, the majority of Israel’s major conquerors have come down from the north. Even Nebuchadnezzar, whose great empire began to the east of Israel in Babylonia, first went northwest through southern Syria to eventually attack Israel from the north.
Once Israel had signed a peace treaty with Egypt, and then with Jordan, it became evident to her political and military leaders, that they had been correct in selecting the Negev. At present, it appears very unlikely that an attack will be made against Israel from any zone other than the Syria-Lebanon area. Some minister, no one knows who, during the early part of the last century, visited Petra in Jordan, and formed an erroneous opinion, which has become very popular among many teachers of prophecy. Whoever he was, hi s military
training was sadly lacking, for he looked Petra over, and decided it would make a great defensive position for Israel to occupy, that is, if she ever had to flee her homeland. As a graduate of a military academy, and a retiree from the USAF-NSA, I can assure you, Petra is the worst possible place to evacuate the survivors of a successful Arab attack against Israel. I doubt if the one who first advanced this idea actually walked all the way through Petra’s narrow northern entrance and then continued to walk out on the vast open plain to the southwest. Petra may have been a great place to defend in biblical times with the weaponry of those days, but it would be impossible to defend today.
But there are other compelling reasons that Israel would never flee to Petra.
There are no natural water sources in that area, and
water collection by its ingenious ancient inhabitants from desert thunderstorms was never able to support a population of more than 20,000. And food production in the soil horizons of this area could never support the evacuation of one-third of Israel’s population. It is also a certainty that the modern day occupants of Jordan would not offer to help Israel escape the Antichrist. But the belief that Israel will flee to Petra has become so popularized by many prominent ministers, it makes it very difficult to dissuade most followers of prophetic events.
However, the fact that Israel has spent billions and billions of dollars turning the Negev into the most fortified, best camouflaged, zone on the earth, gives me the assurance that this is the place the woman Israel, who is described as going into the wilderness in the 12th Chapter of Revelation, will soon end up for the last three and one-half years of the tribulation period.
Revelation 12:6 – And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
Prophetic years in scripture are based on a year of 360 days, hence this represents a period of three and one-half years.
So Israel will be kept trapped in the Negev wilderness for the last 3 and ½ years of the tribulation period.
Israelis have spent billions of dollars to prepare the Negev for the possibility of such an evacuation of their population in the event of a sudden attack from the north. The Negev has been the central focus of Israel’s war contingency plan from the beginning, as Israel’s God put this thinking in the minds of her political and military leaders in the late forties, and active preparation of the area began in the early fifties. Today, the Negev is the most cleverly camouflaged zone on the surface of the earth, and unless sky satellites had watched it being prepared, one would not suspect that numerous military installations were implanted in it.
Even knowing where certain defense mechanisms were originally placed, it is now extremely difficult to spot them, even driving by them at ground level. Thousands of tourists pass through the bleak Negev and admire the naked beauty of its terrain from widely spaced roads, but its military capabilities are cleverly camouflaged on the surface, hidden out of sight beneath the surface, and concealed inside and between its hills and mountains.
Active preparation of the Negev began in the early fifties.
After the Six Day War of June, 1967, Israel poured her finances and efforts into the creation of a hidden fortress in the Negev wilderness. The Yom Kippur War of 1973 was followed by Israel quadrupling her military forces by 1980, and the bulk of this increase was placed in
the vast Sinai. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt led to the evacuation of this increase in men and equipment from the Sinai into the much smaller Negev. This turned the already heavily fortified Negev into an impenetrable fortress. By 1983 the Sinai IDF and equipment had been withdrawn into the Negev. The IDF packed up about 80 thousand tons of military equipment, same 3800 military vehicles, and 3 airfields, and moved it into the Negev. The Negev is about 20 percent the size of the Sinai. By 1988 about 40 new military camps had been set up in the Negev.
By 1990 the Negev had been topographically transformed, at a fantastic expense, into an area no enemy would dare to attempt to penetrate. When Syria, assisted by troops from Iraq and Iran, secretly and very slowly smuggled in across her southern and western borders, attacks Israel from the north, then Israel will get to use her Negev wilderness for about 3 and ½ years. These three nations, because of the sharing of satellite information received from the Russians about the Negev, know all about the military strength there and, because of this, will stop their southward push into Israel just north of Beersheva.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will be able to hold the Negev, and the woman Israel will stay there for the last 3 and ½ years of the tribulation period.
I Thessalonians 5:3,4 – For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. [4] But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Zechariah 13:8 – And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.
Revelation 12:6 – And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
Begin DEBKAfile Article
DEBKAfile: Much of southern Israel closed to civilian traffic, US and Israeli bases on high alert for Hamas incursions from Sinai
January 26, 2008, 10:33 PM (GMT+02:00)
Most highways of the southern Negev – which adjoins the Egyptian Sinai frontier – were ordered shut to civilian traffic early Saturday, Jan.
26, until further notice. This is Israel’s most extensive terror alert ever, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. The big Israeli and American air and military bases in the region are on high terror alert and officers’ families are being removed to central Israel, following intelligence warnings that Hamas, Jihad Islami and al Qaeda are preparing to launch suicide operations across the porous Egyptian border from N.
Sinai.
Israeli military forces have spread out across the southern region, checkpoints set up on the highways, lookout positions posted, and helicopters and drones are on constant surveillance.
DEBKAfile’s sources in the south report that Eilat, Israel’s southernmost town and Red Sea port, is not entirely cut off; the eastern Highway 90 is open to traffic although Highway 10 which follows the Egyptian Sinai frontier is closed.
So too are 221 and 222 and parts of Routes 40 and 12. Israeli units have been deployed to block off to terrorist access the southern towns of Eilat, Mitzpeh Ramon, Kfar Yeruham, Beersheba, Arad and the villages and military installations located in the Negev and Aravah regions. Popular tourist nature reserves and beauty spots are closed.
The latest intelligence input speaks of an ingathering in Sinai of al Qaeda cells from Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. They are heading for the Egyptian-Israel frontier, which Egyptian border forces have abandoned to focus on the anarchy on the Gaza-Egyptian border Hamas generated by knocking down the border wall. One-third of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants has flooded into N. Sinai in a disorderly exodus.
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources disclose another ominous symptom: Al Qaeda has appointed an “emir” for the Gaza Strip, the customary military commander assigned when the jihadist group goes into operational mode.
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