The Meaning of the Egypt-Israel Cross-Border Attack
A 35-man seemingly bedouin terrorist team invaded an Egyptian army base in eastern Sinai, stole a truck and armored personnel carrier, and tried to crash the Israel border gate. They killed about 16 Egyptian soldiers but those who tried to cross the border — at least five — were quickly wiped out by Israeli forces.
You will be reading a lot of accounts of this event mostly saying the same things. But what’s really important?
● The incompetence of the Egyptian military. That a whole platoon size unit of terrorists — one of the largest such forces every assembled for such an attack — could plan, organize, and come together without warning for the Egyptian army speaks poorly for its intelligence capability. That they could break into a base doesn’t bode well for the Egyptian military’s competence. Presumably one reason why they wanted Egyptian vehicles — as happened with uniforms on a previous occasion — is to make Israeli soldiers hesitate to shoot or to end up getting Israelis to mistakenly kill Egyptians and set off a wider conflict.
● The attack was probably carried out by an al-Qaida type group allied with counterparts in the Gaza Strip. These organizations don’t care about the well-being of Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood. By hitting Israel they seek to promote their image to carry out their goals. Yet the more they make enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood branches the more incentive those forces have to suppress them.
● To what extent, however, do these groups have backing from Egyptian Salafist forces or the Palestinian equivalent, Islamic Jihad? Such an alliance could greatly raise the level of violence and internal conflict, especially within Egypt. Is there a chance for the Brotherhood and Salafists to work together or will they clash?
● The Brotherhood immediately blamed Israel for engineering the attack. This means something quite different when the Brotherhood was just an opposition group in Egypt. It is now the government. Consider what this means: the organization governing Egypt has accused Israel of launching an attack on Egyptian soil and killing a lot of Egyptian soldiers. Isn’t that a just cause for war? That’s not going to happen but situations like this will arise repeatedly in future and one day can lead to war.
‘Egypt indicated it would crack down from its side after mostly ignoring the underground passages for years.’
Under Mubarak, Egypt ignored all the Iranian missiles, Islamic terrorists and weapons being smuggled into Gaza for years and Israel did nothing but target a few tunnels and empty fields only when the Israeli public demanded that the loser’s Olmert, Barak, Netanyahu do something.
It is evident that the losers in Jerusalem do not have a green light from their Plantation Masters in Washington to do anything that might upset the status quo of the rising caliphate in Israel’s front yard.
Restrained Israel,snared by a false peace of the false god they serve,with both hands tied and only permitted to do limited operations that never end the present untenable situation.
Amos 3:7
There is coming an all out war in the Middle East as the neighboring Arab nations will come against Israel with a sudden missile attack starting from the north with Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Syria. Other Arab nations will join. Israel will be hit from all sides at once and there will be deaths and partial destruction of settlements, smaller cities to the north, and some damage to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as well. Israel will respond with great force, and limited nuclear weapons will release devastation upon the neighboring countries, particularly Lebanon, Damascus, which will be destroyed completely, and the rest of Syria as well as military strikes into Iran, Gaza, and even northern Egypt/Sinai region.
http://www.mauricesklar.com/Teachings/Prophecy/prophecy.html
This day Egyptian forces moved heavy equipment to seal off the tunnels they already knew about. They also closed crossing points. These are easy things to do. They will try to pressure Hamas to finish the job inside Gaza.
Hamas will try to keep its little fiefdom so they will do lots of things we will never read about to regain operational control. They have very big problems now. I think they have no real opposition they cannot deal with for control of Gaza locally.
This is more important than many will admit openly, and too many in our current “administration” are too murky-minded to see it thus:
“The U.S. government response is to offer to help train and assist Egypt’s army and government. But the government is not part of the solution but rather part of the problem.”
The Egyptian-”brotherhood” is a literal thing in that both factions of Government and Army, simply by being Muslim they must in time turn on us Americans. After, of course, pocketing billions of US Dollars. A Muslim Army cannot operate separately from a Muslim government…one or the other will be excoriated as being “apostate”, and at the very minimum as being on the wrong side of their imams/mullahs.
hence I keep advocating isolation and quarantine of the Muslim portions of Central/West Asia, and let the internal and cross-border sectarian tensions slowly increase due to their isolation and forced unnatural co-dependence. They’re simply unable to co-exist in a confined area, as feral cats-in-a-box.
We Americans can then stand of and stand alert to intervene with drones and off-shore naval ops as needed to back up Israel.
Why haven’t we Americans learned after a bloody decade in that vast absorbent sponge of Asia that we simply don’t have the required resources to man the whole continental mass of Muslim/Islam.
Quarantine, sure. Also, overwhelming response to outrages.
Barry – You wrote: “That a whole platoon size unit of terrorists — one of the largest such forces every assembled for such an attack — could plan, organize, and come together without warning for the Egyptian army speaks poorly for its intelligence capability.” It’s worse than that. Israel warmed them of a possible attack, and they blew it off. As I once mentioned to you, I think that in my lifetime, Israel will have to retake the Sinai because peace with Egypt looks to have an expiration date on it.
As always: Refuah Shlemah
If the Egyptian army is that incompetent, Israel should be able to retake the Sinai at the cost of a sprained ankle and a few flat tires. So what are you waiting for?
Thanks, Prof Rubin for yet another informative column. A couple of commentators on Israeli t.v. have said that the Egyptian people are not buying the story that the Mossad is behind this. I sure hope so, but certainly some must be blaming Israel for the deaths of 17 Egyptian soldiers. It should be interesting to see whether Salafis and MB will fight each other or unite.
The Middle East is a Gordian knot of hatred and unending revenge. When all side acquire nuclear weapons nothing will change but the body count.
there is also the possibility that Egypt has a grand design of short term sacrifice as part of a bigger design to create new facts on the ground viz., the creeping militarization of Sinai with American “understanding”.
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Very interesting information! Perfect just what I was looking for!