Media reports revealed that the American billionaire and founder of the Blackwater mercenaries, Erik Prince, visited Israel and met with its leaders to convince them of the plan to flood the Gaza tunnels, and also provided Tel Aviv with pumps for this purpose.
On December 13, the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal published a report announcing that Israel had already begun flooding Palestinian resistance tunnels in Gaza. It quoted American officials familiar with the operations of the Israeli occupation army, saying that this measure aims to destroy the infrastructure used by the resistance in its work.
Before that, on December 4, the same American newspaper said that the occupation army had assembled a huge system of pumps in order to flood the network of Palestinian resistance tunnels.
On the other hand, other media reports say that the American billionaire and founder of Blackwater mercenaries, Erik Prince, was the one who convinced the Israeli military leadership of the plan to flood the tunnels, and even supplied them with these pumps that are usually used in mining work. Israel's relationship with the American military contractor is not new today, but extends over many years of financial, intelligence, and military partnership.
Tunnel sinking engineer
In a report published by the British newspaper The Times, on December 5, it said that the American private military contractor Erik Prince had visited Israel a few days after the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack on October 7, and met there with a number of Israeli leaders.
The British newspaper added that Prince convinced Israel to buy advanced pumps that are used as mining equipment in order to flood Hamas's 300-mile-long tunnels in Gaza.
Prince's proposal received positive reactions in Israel, and Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said that flooding the tunnels is a good idea, because the Palestinian resistance “has a large underground structure in Gaza, and we knew that it would have many tunnels there. And part of the goal ( "This process) is destroying this infrastructure."
In early November, it was the first time that the Israeli leadership informed its counterparts in the United States of the option of flooding the tunnels, according to the Wall Street Journal. American officials at the time denied knowledge of Israel's progress in implementing this option, but the process as a whole was criticized from within the Biden administration.
According to the Times, the Biden administration warned that Prince's involvement was a red flag, and requested further study into the impact flooding could have on Gaza's groundwater and sanitation facilities. It quoted an American source as saying, "Eric is a Republican, so there are clear political differences."
Who is Erik Prince?
Erik Prince is known as an American businessman who works in the field of defense and security contracting. He is the youngest son of businessman Edgar Prince, from whom Eric inherited part of his wealth, which he later used in his businesses.
Erik Prince entered the field of defense contracting, after receiving his education at the US Naval Academy, after which he worked in the army as commander of the air and ground combat division of the US Navy. In 1997, he founded the first security contractor called Blackwater, which fought alongside American forces in a number of areas they invaded, and was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in cross-border assassinations.
Blackwater mercenaries were famous for performing brutal acts and war crimes against civilians. Among the most prominent of these crimes was what was known as the “ Nisour Square massacre ” in the capital, Baghdad, in 2007, when the company’s mercenaries killed 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded dozens of others. Among the victims was a man, his wife, and their young nine-year-old son.
After news of these crimes spread, Blackwater changed its name to XE Services. It returned in 2011 and changed its name again to “Academy” after it was acquired by a competing group of companies, and then joined the “Constlis Holding” group, but Prince had resigned from the presidency of the company in 2009.
Since leaving Blackwater, Prince has sold or promoted his war supply chain in at least 15 countries. Prince founded the Frontier Service group for security services and the transfer of wealth and funds.
But Prince resigned from the presidency of the group after talk about suspicious financial and political relations between him and former President Donald Trump. According to the New York Times , Prince worked to interfere in the US presidential elections on behalf of the Trump campaign, and succeeded in hiring an intelligence agent to infiltrate the Democratic primary conference.
What is Prince's relationship with Israel?
American contractor Erik Prince's relations with Israel extend back to before the last war, and his intervention to persuade the Israeli government to flood the Gaza tunnels. These relationships vary between financial relationships, brokerage, and intelligence and security mediations.
In 2014, Prince worked to promote intelligence surveillance products and services, as he showed some of his colleagues at Frontier Service the geolocation software for mobile phones, which he said he had obtained a license for from an Israeli company.
Prince played the role of an intermediary for the Israeli intelligence company "Psy-Group", which specialized in manipulating elections using social media accounts, and which worked to support the campaign of US presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016.
Prince worked for the American intelligence company "Carbyne", which brought together an elite of power brokers and intelligence figures from many regions around the world, including Russia, China and the United States, according to a previous report by TRT World.
According to the same report, Carbyne provided high-tech solutions to emergency centers, and had unprecedented access to the personal information of users of its applications.
Networking around the company brought together Prince, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Both Barak and Prince are founding members of the company, and the Israeli Prime Minister acted as the company's outlet to Israeli intelligence.
An investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that American security contractor Erik Prince has close relations with Ari Harow, the former director of the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the two participated in a number of businesses in Israel.
The newspaper added that Prince also has long-standing relations with Israeli financier Dorian Barak, Harrow's former business partner. According to her, Barak tried to interest Prince in investing in a railway project in Africa, and in a joint investment with the Jewish billionaire Vincent Tchenguiz, and they were also partners in a mining company called “Alover.”
Sudan Doctors Syndicate: All health facilities in Wad Madani are out of service
The Sudan Doctors Syndicate has warned that all health facilities in the city of Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira State, have become “out of service” as a result of the ongoing conflict in the state between the army forces and the “Rapid Support”, as 22 government and private hospitals and treatment centers in the city have stopped providing treatment.
The Sudan Doctors Syndicate said, on Friday, that all health facilities in the city of Wad Madani, the capital of Al-Jazira State (central), are “out of service” as a result of the ongoing conflict in the state between the army forces and the Rapid Support Forces.
The Non-Governmental Medical Syndicate said in a statement that “all governmental and private health facilities in the city of Wad Madani are out of service.”
The statement stated that "22 government and private hospitals and treatment centers in the city have stopped providing treatment, including Wad Madani Teaching Hospital," the largest government hospital in the city.
The union pointed to “extensive looting and vandalism” of the city’s hospitals, explaining that this leads to “a complete and dangerous collapse of the health system.”
The statement also spoke about "the martyrdom of two medical personnel, following an attack on the Rifa'a Teaching Hospital, in the city of Rifa'a, east of the state of Al-Jazira."
He explained, "The city of Wad Madani formed a major center for health services throughout the country, after most of the hospitals in the capital, Khartoum, went out of service."
On Thursday evening, the head of the Sovereignty Council in Sudan, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, vowed to “hold accountable every negligent person,” following the announcement by the Rapid Support Forces on December 18 of this month that they had taken control of the city of Wad Madani, after battles with the Sudanese army that lasted about 4 days. .
On December 19, the army announced the withdrawal of its forces from the city, and the launch of an investigation into the reasons and circumstances of the forces’ withdrawal from their positions.
Since mid-April, the army, led by the head of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by Muhammad Hamdan Daglo (Hemedti), have been waging a war that has left more than 12,000 dead and more than 6 million displaced and refugees, according to the United Nations.
As the battles moved to Gezira State, the scope of fighting expanded, as the state joined 9 states that have witnessed ongoing clashes since mid-April, including the capital, Khartoum, and the states of Darfur and Kordofan, out of 18 states in Sudan.
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