One Israeli was killed and several others wounded in a terrorist ambush Monday on their way to work on Israel's border fence with Egypt, in an attack that bodes ill for future bilateral relations.
Militants crossed into Israel from Egypt and carried out a combined shooting, bombing and rocket-propelled grenade attack against two vehicles carrying the Israeli workers. Israeli troops were dispatched to the area and killed two of the three gunmen.
The Israeli casualty was a 36-year-old Israeli Arab from Haifa, who had been working on the 240-km-long project, due for completion by the end of the year, since its inception.
The attack was the second of such incident along the border in almost a year. In August 2011, a group of militants crossed into Israel and killed eight motorists traveling along a border road in a combined shooting and bombing attack.
Monday was also the second day of the second round of voting in Egypt's presidential election. The Muslim Brotherhood proclaimed their candidate as winner, although no official results have been reported.
"The situation is complicated indeed and the Israelis are very sensitive about anything that comes from Egypt, even if it the casualties are low," Prof. Uri Bar-Joseph, of the University of Haifa, told Xinhua on Tuesday.
Following the incident last August, Egypt threatened to recall its ambassador to Israel and demanded an official apology for the Egyptian soldiers accidentally killed by Israeli forces pursuing the attackers.
Bar-Joseph said the initiative for the attack on Monday did not come from the Palestinians or Hamas, but from Bedouins in Sinai and it was motivated by financial interests because they are going to lose a major source of income when the fence is completed.
The smuggling of people and goods into Israel is a major source of income for the Bedouins, which have been able to establish a semi-autonomous rule in Sinai.
"Once the fence project is over, they won't be able to do it so it seems that they are behind the attack and that their aim to delay the completion of the fence," Bar-Joseph added.
The peninsula was declared a demilitarized zone following the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979 to ensure that neither side used it as a staging area for attacks on the other.
However, the deployment of troops lightly armed with small weapons means that much of the peninsula is beyond Cairo's control. That lawlessness has only increased since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced out of office in February 2011, and the country set out to establish a new political system, of which the elections are an integral part.
"The next year or so the situation will be the same: they won't gain control over the Bedouins, and it's a low priority for the Egyptians," Bar-Joseph said.
INTERNAL EGYPTIAN SITUATION
Prof. Eli Podeh, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that the attack and the elections are two separate issues which are connected: the insecurity along the border is a result of the instability in Egypt.
"The vacuum that has been created in Sinai helped the Bedouins to carry out this terrorist activity, and as long as this situation in Egypt continues -- and it will continue in the short run, at least -- then it will be of much concern to Israel, because what is going on along the border is of utmost importance, " Podeh said.
Podeh described the situation in Egypt as a power struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Interim Military Council, which took over when Mubarak stepped down.
The focus of the struggle at the moment is the process of establishing a new constitution, which will define the powers of the president and the parliament.
The decision to hold elections before the constitution was defined has been criticized by some of the groups that were part of the demonstrations against Mubarak. But the Muslim Brotherhood was keen to use its strong organizational advantage, and pushed for elections to be held sooner rather than later, a decision that now appears to have backfired.
"There is no constitution, and therefore the military council is in a position to determine which powers the president will have. For example, the power to declare war was part of the privileges of the president and now it was transferred to the army," Podeh said.
"Obviously in a situation where the Muslim Brotherhood is taking over the role of the president, they would want as much as possible of the executive powers," he added.
ISRAELI RESPONSE
Podeh said that the Israeli government should remain silent in the face of the internal power struggle.
"This is a domestic Egyptian affair which obviously will affect Israeli-Egyptian relations, but Israel should stay as much as possible out of it," Podeh said.
"And whenever its connected to security issues with the Egyptian which is in power, now for the time being it's the military council -- so it's very convenient to talk to them," he added.
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