JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Smugglers of arms into the Gaza Strip are operating almost freely after a change of leadership in Egypt, Israel's Shin Bet security agency said.
A report by the domestic spy agency said with Egypt's new leaders preoccupied with stabilizing their country, "governance in Sinai is not high and this allows smugglers to operate almost without hindrance.
"Today the Egyptian regime's attention is focused on stabilizing the new government and this eases the Sinai smugglers' task," the report said.
The Sinai forms a huge desert buffer zone between Egypt and Israel, which sealed an historic peace treaty in 1979 after fighting two wars in less than a decade.
The Bedouin people of the Sinai, for whom smuggling is a major source of income, were mostly involved in getting weapons into Gaza to supply the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which controls the enclave and other smaller militant groups, it said.
It also reaffirmed Israel's belief that Iran, in seeking to strengthen its influence in the region, was supplying Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants with "choice military-grade weaponry."
It said hundreds of rockets with a range of 20-40 kilometers (12-25 miles), at least 1,000 mortar bombs, some anti-tank missiles and tones of high explosives and raw material to make high explosives had entered Gaza since the start of 2010.
Outgoing Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, who hands over to his successor Monday, said in a rare speech earlier this week: "In Egypt it is very hard to assess what will happen in the elections expected in the summer ... it's not a good idea to rest on our laurels."
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