It’s now Passover week in Israel, and it’s natural for Egypt to
be in the air. The holiday celebrates the Israelites’ liberation
from serfdom to Pharaoh over three thousand years ago, which
launched the trouble-fraught but ultimately successful forty-year
trek to freedom in the Promised Land.
But Egypt keeps being intertwined with Israel’s current affairs,
too; and, just like back then, in ways that are generally
difficult. As in the rocket
fired last Thursday morning from Egyptian Sinai at Eilat,
Israel’s port and tourist center on the Red Sea. As in the
explosion that hit Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan on
Monday — the fourteenth to do so, all of them sabotage, in about a
year. The pipeline, too, is in Sinai, and has been closed since a
previous explosion on February 5.
It’s no accident, of course, that both violent events were
associated with Sinai. Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime
last year and the partial implosion of the Egyptian state, the
peninsula has become a badlands dominated by global-jihad groups
and local Bedouin gangs, some of them also ideologically jihadist.
Last August a terror cell
crossed into Israel from Sinai and killed eight.
In that case Israel struck back and killed the cell’s leaders —
in Gaza, where they were based. But despite the growing incidents
and danger, Israel — in a somewhat Orwellian bind — is loath to
act in Sinai itself and so far has not. The reason is a fear of
endangering peace — that is, the
Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty signed in 1979, long considered a
bedrock of stability in the region.
That treaty, too, entailed a kind of exodus from Egypt — the
evacuation of all the settlements Israel had built in Sinai since
wresting it from Egypt in the 1967 Six-Day War. This time, the
recompense for leaving Egypt was supposed to be peace — along with
a guaranteed, continued supply of natural gas. The latter has now
lapsed. As for the former, peace, it endured but only in the
coldest of forms; and now, with Islamists dominating the parliament
and presidential elections set for May and June, it may be hanging
by only the slenderest of threads.
Meanwhile Egypt’s currently ruling military council — which
says it will step down after the elections — has
announced that it’s beefing up forces in Sinai in an attempt to
put a lid on the terror, which is seen as endangering Egypt as
well. The move is with Israel’s consent, and is supposed to amount
eventually to seven battalions. That’s more than was allowed by the
1979 treaty, which was supposed to keep Sinai demilitarized. In
agreeing to these terms and bending the treaty, Israel —
especially if the Islamists take power — may be indulging a hope
that is close to desperate.
One veteran Israeli military commentator urges realism, saying
that when it comes to holding down terror from Sinai, “it’s clear
that the Egyptians won’t be doing the job for us.” Instead, if the
policy of retaliating against Gaza targets doesn’t work, he says
Israel “will have to mull the option of allowing [its forces] to
operate in the Sinai” — especially if the alternative is “grave
economic damage to tourism and port activity in Eilat and vicinity
as a result of rocket fire.” To which he could have added, of
course, the endangerment of life and limb.
In any case, how this situation plays out will affect Israel’s
evolving view of its position in the region, especially the
viability of peace treaties and the wisdom of territorial
concessions. But what is already clear is that — as long as
jihadist and xenophobic themes hold sway — Egypt cannot just be
left, and will have to be coped with.
