The New Triangle of Egypt, Israel and Hamas

Real Clear World ^ | January 18, 2014 | By Ehud Yaari

[DeaconBenjamin]

Over the past year, Israel and Egypt have used a little-known, legally permissible understanding -- the Agreed Activities Mechanism -- to bypass restrictions on the number and type of Egyptian forces permitted in much of the Sinai. In doing so, they have made de facto modifications to their 1979 peace treaty without resorting to the diplomatically risky procedure of "reviewing" the treaty itself. As a result, considerable Egyptian army forces are now constantly deployed in central and eastern Sinai (Areas B and C of the peninsula, respectively), in a manner and scope never envisaged by the teams that negotiated the treaty more than three decades ago. Going forward, this new reality on the ground is unlikely to be reversed and is bound to have profound consequences for Egyptian-Israeli security cooperation, Cairo's ongoing counterterrorism campaign, and the fate of Hamas in the neighboring Gaza Strip.

[SunkenCiv]

Over the past few months, the Egyptian army's new configuration in the peninsula has helped it gain the upper hand in the battle... After isolating and largely clearing the populated northeastern Sinai -- sometimes using brutal scorched-earth tactics against Bedouin villages, encampments, and neighborhoods -- the army put many terrorist factions on the defensive, most notably Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. Around twenty top terrorist commanders have been killed thus far, though Ansar leader Abdullah al-Ashqar has escaped capture. The next move is expected to be a spring offensive against the main terrorist stronghold in Jabal Halal, also known as "Sinai's Tora Bora," ...A secondary objective would be the Jabal Amer area close to the Israeli border. In both cases, Egyptian forces will most likely resort to aerial bombardment and artillery shelling rather than storming with infantry. Some terrorists have already left the Sinai for fear of the coming attack... suspicions that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and other factions operate across the Suez Canal have been substantiated. These groups have already claimed responsibility for attacks such as the December 24 car bombing in front of central security headquarters in the delta city of Mansoura, which killed sixteen security personnel. Terrorists have also attempted to disrupt shipping through the Suez using rocket-propelled grenades, spurring Cairo to implement special security measures around the canal, including installation of a new reconnaissance system with American advice.

When the pro-Iranian Morsi regime was in power, no terrorist attacks on Egyptian Moslems, or against the regime.

[faithhopecharity]

Sounds good but with the next obsma- sponsored overthrow of the Egyptian government, those Egyptian soldiers may very well attack the dirty joooos again. ( would have been far wiser for Idf to handle the border terrorism problem )