As U.S. operations in Iraq wind down, Islamic terrorists previously devoted to violence against U.S. forces are bringing their destruction into the Gaza Strip.

Haaretz reports that dozens of terrorists who have entered Gaza during the last year are extremist Sunni Muslims. They are identified with even more extremist tenets than Hamas, which occupies the Strip.

These terrorists are suspected of recent violence designed to incite another clash between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Strip. For example, an extremist splinter group recently sent booby-trapped horses toward Israeli soldiers stationed at Gaza’s Erez border crossing point. The Israeli Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service successfully thwarted the attack, but it illustrates the increasing activity of these foreign terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

President Barack Obama has announced plans to withdraw American combat forces from Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010. Israeli defense officials forecast an increase in the flow of foreign terrorists entering Gaza as altercations between U.S. forces and Sunni groups in Iraq decrease in anticipation of this slated American withdrawal.

Hamas has denied the reports. Ehab Al-Ghussein, a spokesman for the Gazan de facto government’s Interior Ministry, said that all organizations in the Strip are Palestinians working toward the common goal of resisting Israeli occupation. He acknowledged the possibility of “individual cases” of foreign elements, but denied any foreign groups in the area.

Whether acting alone or as part of an organized group, these vagabond terrorists are symptomatic of the West’s fundamental problem in its approach to terrorism. As one terror expert said, the U.S. is swatting mosquitoes instead of draining the swamp.

TheTrumpet.com has repeatedly detailed how Iran is the head of the terrorist snake. We have identified America’s failure to confront it directly as the greatest strategic flaw in the war on terror. To learn the Trumpet’s prediction on how the war on terrorism will end, read “The Head of the Snake.”