organization:general intelligence

Who’s buying Israeli gas? A company owned by the General Intelligence Service (Egypt) | MadaMasr

▻https://madamasr.com/en/2018/10/23/feature/politics/whos-buying-israeli-gas-a-company-owned-by-the-general-intelligence-servic

When news broke in February that an Egyptian firm named Dolphinus Holdings had signed a US$15 billion deal to purchase Israeli natural gas for supply to Egypt, the Egyptian government refused to comment, portraying it as a private market transaction.

“The Ministry of Petroleum has no comment on private-sector negotiations or agreements regarding the import or sale of natural gas to Israel,” the ministry spokesperson said in a brief statement at the time.

That same day, Reuters quoted an anonymous Egyptian government official who said that the deal did not mean the government itself would import gas from Israel. “International private companies will import gas from abroad in the framework of their own needs,” the official said.

Similar claims were made in September after a preliminary agreement was struck for the acquisition of a stake in a pipeline between Ashkelon and Arish that would allow the transport of natural gas from Israel to Egypt.

Again, the Petroleum Ministry spokesperson issued a swift response: “The ministry welcomes this new step taken by the private companies involved in the imminent commercial venture.” This time, the Egyptian company involved was called East Gas.

Last week, CEO and managing director of East Gas Mohamed Shoeib boasted in several interviews that in exchange for the deal, his company had managed to get a handful of arbitration fines and cases against Egypt dropped after 18 months of negotiations. Shoeib attributed the success of the deal to a decision “from the beginning to think outside the government framework.”

Hamas in message to Israel: Willing to negotiate long-term truce -

According to intelligence assessments, the organization is still in dire distress and is currently more open to discussing options it rejected in the past

Amos Harel May 07, 2018

Israel News - Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-hamas-in-message-to-israel-willing-to-negotiate-long-term-truce-1.

Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip have recently conveyed messages to Israel indicating their willingness to negotiate a long term cease-fire in the enclave. These messages were passed through different channels on several occasions over the last few months. Hamas wants to tie the cease-fire with an easing of the siege on Gaza, permission to embark on large-scale infrastructure projects and a prisoner and body exchange deal.
As far as is known, Israel has not responded clearly to the messages.
Reports presented to senior defense establishment officials and the political echelons say that tensions in Gaza will remain high even after the massive Nakba Day demonstration Hamas has planned for May 15, when Palestinians mark the expulsion of Arabs from their homes during the 1947-49 Israeli War of Independence. According to intelligence assessments, Hamas is still in dire and unprecedented strategic distress and is currently more open to discussing options it rejected in the past.
The Hamas leadership is engaged in a lively debate regarding the negotiation of a cease-fire and the exchange of prisoners and bodies. The daily Israel Hayom reported two weeks ago that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, is in favor, while the overall Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh is opposed. The paper claimed that Sinwar accused Haniyeh of yielding to Iranian pressure in forming his positions.
At the same time, reconciliation efforts between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are still on hold after the assassination attempt on the PA’s Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah during his visit to Gaza in March. The PA blamed Hamas for detonating explosives close to Hamdallah’s convoy while Hamas blamed internal rivalry within the PA and attributed the attempt to the head of the General Intelligence Service in Ramallah, Majid Faraj, who was also in the convoy.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY : WE WIN | The UB Post
▻http://theubpost.mn/2017/07/08/democratic-party-we-win

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The run-off voting for the 2017 presidential election has taken place throughout Mongolia on July 7.

At 1:00 a.m. on June 8, the General Election Commission (GEC) made an announcement about voter turnout of the run-off election. Head of GEC Ch.Sodnomtseren noted that 1,119,723 (60.4 percent) of 1,982,733 registered took part in the election, with 1,983 poll stations collecting votes across Mongolia.

According to the preliminary ballot count at 2:40 a.m. on Saturday, Democratic Party (DP) candidate Kh.Battulga had won 609,950 votes (50.6 percent), M.Enkhbold received 496,185 votes (41.2 percent) of all votes, and 99,350 voters (8.2 percent) had cast blank ballots.

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… et pour la couleur locale…

During the run-off election, voting machines in a number of poll stations of Tuv Province stopped working because the bar codes on some ballots had printing errors and a task force from the General Intelligence Agency, Information Technology Center, and Communications and Information Technology Authority was put in charge of addressing the issue.

The task force reprogrammed the machines to read the ballots with printing errors to resolve the issue, reported GEC. On Friday, GEC issued a resolution to conduct a hand counting of all the ballots from all poll stations in Tuv Province to verify the ballots counted through voting machines.

Iranian Al Qods chief on landmark visit to Amman as guest of Jordan’s national intelligence director
▻http://www.debka.com/article/24449/Iranian-Al-Qods-chief-on-landmark-visit-to-Amman-as-guest-of-Jordan’s-nationa

debkafile’s military and intelligence sources reveal exclusively that Gen. Qassem Soleiman, commander of the Revolutionary Guards elite Al Qods Brigades, paid a groundbreaking visit last Thursday, March 5, to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as guest of Gen. Faisal Al-Shoulbaki, director of General Intelligence and a close adviser to King Abdullah II.

The visit, encouraged by Obama administration policy, showed one of America’s oldest Sunni Arab allies, recognizing the direction of the trending regional reality to jump the lines over to Tehran. Iran’s grab for Middle East influence is now reaching from four capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Sanaa, Beirut to a fifth, Amman.
Our sources report that Royal Jordanian Air Force fighter jets escorted the Iranian general’s armored motorcade as it drove from Baghdad to Amman through the main highway connecting the two Arab capitals.

It is not known whether the king gave Soleimani an audience, but the possibility is not ruled out.

Debka est un site... hum, comment dire... proche des services isréaliens... Mais si la nouvelle est vraie, c’est du très très gros !

Relire: Patrick Cockburn en juillet 2014, Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country
►http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-how-saudi-arabia-helped-isis-take-over-the-north-of-the-c

There is no doubt about the accuracy of the quote by Prince Bandar, secretary-general of the Saudi National Security Council from 2005 and head of General Intelligence between 2012 and 2014, the crucial two years when al-Qa’ida-type jihadis took over the Sunni-armed opposition in Iraq and Syria. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute last week, Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004, emphasised the significance of Prince Bandar’s words, saying that they constituted “a chilling comment that I remember very well indeed”.

He does not doubt that substantial and sustained funding from private donors in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to which the authorities may have turned a blind eye, has played a central role in the Isis surge into Sunni areas of Iraq. He said: “Such things simply do not happen spontaneously.” This sounds realistic since the tribal and communal leadership in Sunni majority provinces is much beholden to Saudi and Gulf paymasters, and would be unlikely to cooperate with Isis without their consent.

Dearlove’s explosive revelation about the prediction of a day of reckoning for the Shia by Prince Bandar, and the former head of MI6’s view that Saudi Arabia is involved in the Isis-led Sunni rebellion, has attracted surprisingly little attention. Coverage of Dearlove’s speech focused instead on his main theme that the threat from Isis to the West is being exaggerated because, unlike Bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida, it is absorbed in a new conflict that “is essentially Muslim on Muslim”. Unfortunately, Christians in areas captured by Isis are finding this is not true, as their churches are desecrated and they are forced to flee. A difference between al-Qa’ida and Isis is that the latter is much better organised; if it does attack Western targets the results are likely to be devastating.

Two security service giants in running for presidency of new party | Mada Masr

▻http://www.madamasr.com/content/two-security-service-giants-running-presidency-new-party

Former head of General Intelligence Murad Muwafy and former Interior Minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin are being considered by the leadership of the Masr Belady front as it prepares to establish a political party.

The front has a number of figures from cabinets during the administration of former President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, was also considering joining the front, according to a December report in Al-Watan, quoting a spokesperson for Shafiq’s organization, the National Movement.