Israel Quietly Acquiesces to Egyptian Storming of Sinai

August 14, 2011

With Israel’s nod, Egyptian armored vehicles, special forces and hundreds of police have flooded into the northern Sinai to beef up security against marauding Bedouins who have directly challenged Egyptian control in the area.

The forces came in over the weekend, a long two weeks following highly visible attacks by bands of gunmen who staged bloody raids on a police headquarters in El Arish that left six people dead including two officers, while others blew up the pipeline supplying gas to Israel and Jordan.

“The security reinforcement is aimed at protecting people, possessions, as well as the security headquarters,” North Sinai Governor Maj. Gen. Abdul Wahab Mabrouk told the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper.

The troop movement was reportedly dubbed Operation Eagle and is said to be aimed at restoring order. Tanks and armored vehicles were stationed in El-Arish, just some 40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. Officials declined to give the precise number of Egyptian forces involved in the operation.

The deployment of troops has been done in close coordination with Israel, Israeli security sources told The Media Line. Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, the director of policy and military affairs at the Israel Defense Ministry, was in Cairo in recent days to finalize the maneuver, sources said. Defense Ministry officials declined to comment on this officially or to give details about the new troop arrangements.

This is the largest deployment of Egyptian troops so close to the Israeli border since the two nations signed a peace treaty in 1979 that strictly demilitarized the peninsula into three zones. Israel and Egypt fought four wars across the Sinai, but the border has been relatively peaceful for the past three decades.

With Egypt was preoccupied with domestic turmoil during the Arab Spring, its grasp on the Sinai Peninsula slackened. Many of the 300,000 Bedouins there, already bearing a grudge for what they claim has been to be marginalized by the Egyptians, had thrived on smuggling, which quickly picked up during the security vacuum in the wake of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

“Because of the turmoil in Egypt, the Bedouin were becoming overly self-confident and independent. But now it looks as though this is an attempt to show that there is a boss in Cairo now,” Amb. Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to Israel’s foreign ministry, told The Media Line.

Last month, head of Israel military intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi warned that the Egyptian security forces “are losing control over the Sinai region.” In May, Israel’s General Security Service issued a report saying that terrorist organizations were exploiting the chaos in the Sinai to smuggle large quantities of weapons into the Hamas-run Gaza strip and that the border was wide open in Rafah.

According to Israeli security estimates, Hamas has been able to double the number of rockets in its possession from 5,000 to 10,000 and in the first six months of 2011, they have smuggled in more than three times the amount of explosives than in all of 2010, the GSS report said.

Israel has periodically allowed the Egyptians to increase their troop presence in the Sinai. According to the peace treaty, one mechanized division is allowed to be stationed along the Suez Canal in the so-called Zone A. Along Zone C, adjacent to the 250-kilometer long border with Israel, the Egyptians are allowed to deploy only police. But in 2007, an agreement was reached to allow 750 security forces along the border town of Rafah, ostensibly to fight smuggling, but also to ensure the Palestinians from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip did not seep into Egyptian territory.

Zone B, where El Arish is located and where the new forces deployed, had been allowed to have four battalions and no more than 4,000 personnel. The eastern Sinai is patrolled by the 1,900-man Multinational Force and Observer (MFO) organization of peace keepers who monitor the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, but stay out of any domestic spats.

“The Egyptians have been very careful to observe the peace treaty to the letter and I can’t see them violating it now,” said Amb. Baker, now director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, a pro-Israel think tank in Jerusalem.

Since the ouster of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, Israel has grown concerned that its relationship with the border nation could change.

“The Sinai is likely to become a ‘no man’s land’ from a security point of view, where terrorist organizations will be able to maneuver more easily,” Yoram Schweitzer, a senior research fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, told The Media Line.

He added that the opportunity raised the possibility of a strategic shift between Israel and Egypt and required new military and security arrangements on the border.

We don’t know where Egypt is going and we don’t want to change the agreement, but Sinai has become more problematic not just for Egypt, but for Israel as well. The Egyptians used to control it better. I don’t know if it is too late, but it is better late than never,” Schweitzer said.

The deployment of Egyptian forces with Israel’s blessing could be the beginning of these new such arrangements and a sign that the situation is about to change dramatically.

Source: All Headline News (AHN).
Link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90057100?Israel_Quietly_Acquiesces_to_Egyptian_Storming_of_Sinai.