As the Egyptian military began to flex its muscle in the northern Sinai on Sunday, Bedouin trial leaders said the cross-border attack on Israel that killed eight people had included Bedouins as well as Palestinians.
“It is very likely that the attack on Israel was not a fully Palestinian operation and it did not originate in Gaza,” a Bedouin tribal leader told The Media Line on condition he not be identified due for security reasons. “What we are seeing in the increase in violence as a result of the ongoing tension with Israel following the Egyptian revolution and many are taking it as an opportunity to put pressure on the Egyptian military to change its tactics with Israel.”
At least a dozen gunmen ambushed Israeli buses and vehicles last Thursday along the Egyptian-Israeli border killed eight people and wounding over 40. Israeli forces said they killed at least seven of the gunmen, and the rest succeeded in escaping back into the Sinai.
A senior Israeli military officer told The Media Line that the attackers were “Palestinians from the Gaza Strip,” who had slipped into Egyptian Sinai via tunnels. But the officer could only confirm that there were between 10 and 15 and didn’t have the full identities.
But the Bedouin leader, who was speaking from Cairo, but said he was in close contact with Bedouin leaders in the Sinai, said the gunmen had come from Egypt. He cautioned against blaming the Palestinians entirely for the strike, saying that the Bedouin had in the past been behind previous attacks against Israelis in the Sinai. A jihadist cell among the Bedouin tribesmen had been responsible for the 2004 06 bombings along the Red Sea coast that killed over 100 people.
“It looks a lot like it did years ago, so you should be careful about what Bedouin communities can do,” he said.
Marginalized and impoverished at the expense of Egyptians from the Nile Valley who have colonized the choice lands and tourist sites, the Sinai Bedouin have steadily returned to their ancient pastime of smuggling. Their strained relations with Egypt’s central government, now in the hands of the interim Supreme Military Council, have surfaced in the past months as armed bands blow up the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline five times in as many months and an attack Egyptian police headquarters in July.
Israeli security sources have labeled the Sinai Peninsula a “terror incubator” that is acting as a way station for huge quantities of arms, rockets and contraband originating in Iran headed for Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Israel agreed just last week to allow another 1,000 Egyptian security forces into the highly demilitarized zone in order to crack down on the Bedouin and terrorist cells there. Under the tow countries’ peace agreement, Egypt can only deploy limited forces in the Sinai.
At least one Israeli legislator, MK Michael Ben-Ari from the ultra-right National Union, warned Monday that allowing more Egyptian troops into Sinai poses a threat to Israel.
“Bringing Egyptian soldiers into Sinai is an attempt to fix a short-term problem by creating a long-term security disaster,” Ben-Ari said in a statement. “Egypt is a dangerous, hostile country.”
The peace treaty calls for limited force presence since even the slightest spark has the risk of damaging the 32-year-old peace treaty, particularly during this volatile time in Egypt. A diplomatic crisis erupted over the weekend after Israel mistakenly killed as many as five Egyptian security personnel during the attack and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted Egypt was to blame for losing control.
According to the peace treaty, there is an element of “hot pursuit” that allows forces of one country to pursue an armed threat across the border if the second state fails to halt the threat. In this incident, Israeli forces, including an attack helicopter, crossed briefly into Egyptian territory and pulled back when the shooting was over. The Egyptian officers who were killed were shot by the helicopter gunship by mistake, a senior Israeli officer told The Media Line.
The Multinational Force and Observer, an organization of peace keepers who monitor the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, confirmed that Israeli troops entered Egyptian territory and opened fire on the Egyptian side of the border.
A joint investigation was being held which would not only examine those deaths, but more importantly for Israel, the fact that the terrorist slipped by an Egyptian outpost without being stopped.
Barak later went out of his way to express regret at the deaths of the Egyptian security forces and highlight the “great importance and strategic value for the stability of the Middle East" that the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty held.
But the damage was done. Egyptians gathered in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo demanding the expulsion of the ambassador and pulling down the Israeli flag. The Egyptian daily Al-Masry el-Yom ran a banner headline: “The People Want Revenge.”
Mohamed Kadry Said, a retired general, told The Media Line that there was a strong demand by the public for a sincere Israeli apology and compensation for the deaths of the Egyptian officers.
“The public needs to hear that,” he said, but added that said he did not believe Israel would operate its forces inside Sinai. “The Sinai is a place that many elements are operating there at the moment and the Military Council will relook at the situation and take some actions there.”
The Egyptians have been highly sensitive to any criticism. Nevertheless, a senior Israeli military commander told The Media Line that the cooperation and communications with the Egyptian forces both at the senior level and on the ground was “very good.”
His sentiments were echoed by an Egyptian officer who said they were working with the Israelis to foil terror.
“The Egyptian and Israeli militaries are in discussions on issues of military operations currently and while we demand information on what happened with the [killed] Egyptian troops and the raid on Egyptian territory, we want to ensure security and this means dealing with the Israeli defense forces,” he told The Media Line.
Yossi Alpher, an Israeli expert on strategic affairs, said that introducing more Egyptian troops into Sinai was a “slippery slope,” but it was clear that the current regime in Cairo was not happy with the situation in Sinai and was prepared to make an effort to solve it.
Egyptians are fearful that it is the Israelis who wanted to move troops into Sinai. Former Egyptian Major General Sameh Seif El-Yezel, an expert on national security and intelligence, was quoted in ABNA news agency as saying that Israel was planning on crossing Egyptian borders and occupying somewhere between five and seven kilometers of the Sinai Peninsula in order to secure its borders. Egyptian newspaper Al-Masri Al-Yawm quoted Egyptian security sources as saying that Israel has intent to move into the peninsula.
Ron Ben-Yishai, a long-time Israeli defense analyst, wrote on the Ynet website that Israel “should seriously consider that Egypt let the IDF occasionally send forces into central Sinai… in order to foil attacks and pursue terrorists.”
“We let them send their forces in, now it’s there turn to show some flexibility,” Ben-Yishai wrote. “If they refuse it may be necessary to recruit American pressure on the Egyptian Supreme Military Council to accept the demand.”
“This is a highly irresponsible suggestion.” Alpher countered. “Talking about slippery slopes that is absolutely the last option that Israel should consider. We have to look beyond this chain of incidents to the wider issue of the security of southern Israel and our future relationship with Egypt. Sending Israeli troops into Sinai would severely damage both.
Egypt is full of conspiracy theories and that is part of the reality there. We don’t do a lot about most of them, but at least we don’t have to feed them,” Alpher said.
Front Page Features