The attack by gunmen on an Egyptian army post in the Sinai and subsequent attempt to infiltrate into Israel, could prove a turning point in the fight against growing lawlessness in the Sinai peninsula, Israel analysts said Monday. Israel Defence Minister Ehud Barak voiced hope that the attack on the Egyptian base Sunday night, in which 16 Egyptian soldiers were killed, would serve as a "wake up call" for Cairo to begin cracking down on armed bands in the Sinai.
The gunmen stole two vehicles from the base, and made their way to the nearby Kerem Shalom/Karm Abu Salem crossing point on the Egypt-Israel-Gaza border. There one vehicle exploded, while the other was hit in an Israeli air-strike. At least six gunmen were killed.
It was the latest, and biggest, in a series of violent incidents along the Israeli-Sinai border Israel has been warning for years that the Sinai peninsula is becoming a launching pad for attacks against Israel, with Islamist extremists, aided by Bedouin tribes, becoming entrenched there.
The Israelis complain the Egyptians are not taking the warnings seriously enough. "For a long time they tried to push it under the rug," says Dan Harel, the former head of the Israeli army's southern command. "There's a heel under the rug today." Sunday's large death toll of Egyptians may however prove to be a watershed. "Until now, likely because the attacks were aimed only against Israel, the Egyptians have done hardly anything about this. Now, that might begin to change," analyst Yakov Katz wrote in the Jerusalem Post daily.
He noted, however, that "it will take weeks, if not months, to determine if there is such a change. What is likely is that Cairo will ask Israel for permission to bring in new troops and station them in what, according to the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, is supposed to be a demilitarised zone. Israel will probably give permission - the two countries have "a joint interest in a quiet border," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he toured the site of the attempted infiltration Monday.
But, he added - in what is becoming a mantra of his - Israel "can and must rely only on itself" with respect to the security of its citizens. Such rhetoric may sound fine when said into a microphone, but the reality along the Sinai border is different. As commentators Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff pointed out in the Ha'aretz daily, Sunday's attempted infiltration "was another attack with no return address," meaning there is no clear identifiable target for Israel to retaliate against.
And even if Israel did manage to find the Sinai base of the gunmen - six to eight of whom were killed, according to the Israeli army - behind Sunday's incident, attacking it is another matter. To do so, would require Egyptian permission. And if permission is not forthcoming, Israel is faced with the dilemma of going ahead anyway, and worsening, if not destroying outright, an already rocky relationship with the new Egyptian government.
Or Israel could not do anything, and face the possibly of more attacks, deadlier and extracting a high price. A third alternative would be for Israel to apply pressure on Cairo via the United States. "The Egyptians have to understand they have to take control over the Sinai," Harel stresses. "It is in their interest. It is an Egyptian problem and we expect them to deal with it as such."
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