Two Toyota Land Cruisers filled with about
15 well-built gunmen in ski masks and all-black
outfits appear seemingly out of nowhere. Behind
them is vast, open desert. They approach a group
of soldiers huddled around a simple meal as they
prepare to break their Ramadan fast. The gunmen
open fire, leaving the soldiers with no chance of
retrieving their weapons.
This is not an
opening scene of a Hollywood action movie. The
massacre actually took place at an Egyptian
military post in northern Sinai on August 5. The
description above was conveyed by a witness, Eissa
Mohamed Salama, in a statement made to The
Associated Press (AP; Aug 8). The gunmen were well
trained. Their overt confidence can only be
explained by the fact that "one militant got out a
camera and filmed the bodies of the soldiers".
One is immediately baffled by this. Why
would the masked
militants wish to
document the killings if they were about to embark
on what can be considered a suicide mission in
Israel? "The gunmen then approached the Israeli
border," with two vehicles, one reportedly a
stolen Egyptian armored personnel carrier. The
British Broadcasting Corp, citing Israeli
officials, reported that one of the vehicles
"exploded on the frontier", while the other broke
through the Israeli border, "travelled about 2
kilometers into Israel before being disabled by
the Israeli air force" (BBC News Online, Aug 7).
According to the BBC report, citing Israeli
sources, there were about 35 gunmen in total, all
clad in traditional Bedouin attire.
Their
mission into Israel was suicidal, since, unlike in
Sinai, they had nowhere to escape. But who would
embark on such a logistically complex mission,
document it on camera, and then fail to take
responsibility for it? The brazen attack seemed to
have little military wisdom, but it did possess a
sinister political logic.
Only 48 hours
before the attack, the media were awash with
reports about the return of electricity in the
Gaza Strip. The impoverished Strip's generators
have not run at full capacity for about six years,
since Hamas was elected. The Israeli siege and
subsequent wars killed and wounded thousands, but
they failed to bend Gaza's political will. For
Gazans, the keyword to their survival in the face
of Israel's blockade was "Egypt".
The
Egyptian revolution on January 25, 2011, carried a
multitude of meanings for all sectors of Egyptian
society, and the Middle East at large. For
Palestinians in Gaza, it heralded the possibility
of a lifeline. The nearly 1,000 tunnels dug to
assist in Gaza's survival would amount to nothing
compared with a decisive Egyptian decision to end
the siege by opening the Rafah border.
In
fact, a decision was taking place in stages.
Hamas, which governs Gaza, was a branch of Egypt's
Muslim Brotherhood. The latter is now the leading
political force in the country and, despite the
military's obduracy, it has managed to claim the
country's presidency as well.
In late
July, a high-level Hamas delegation met in Cairo.
All the stress and trepidation of the last 16
months seemed to have come to an end, as Hamas
chief Khaled Mashaal, his deputy Musa Abu Marzouq
and other members of the group's politburo met
with President Mohammed Morsi. Egypt's official
news agency reported Morsi's declarations of full
support "for the Palestinian nation's struggle to
achieve its legitimate rights". According to
Reuters, Morsi's top priority was achieving unity
"between Hamas and Fatah, supplying Gaza with fuel
and electricity and easing the restrictions on the
border crossing between Gaza and Egypt".
Juxtapose that scene - where a historical
milestone has finally been reached - with an
Agence France-Presse photo of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense
minister, Ehud Barak, standing triumphantly next
to a burned Egyptian vehicle that was reportedly
stolen by the Sinai gunmen. The message here is
that only Israel is serious about fighting terror.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz' accompanying article
started with this revelation: "Israel shared some
of the intelligence it received with the Egyptian
army prior to the incident, but there is no
evidence Egypt acted on the information." This was
meant to humiliate Egypt's military further.
Naturally, Israel blamed Gaza, even though
there is no material evidence to back such
accusations. Some in Egypt's media jumped on the
opportunity to blame Gaza for Egypt's security
problems in Sinai as well. The loudest among them
were completely silent when, on August 18, 2011,
Israel killed six Egyptian soldiers in Sinai.
Then, Israel carried out a series of
strikes against Gaza, killing and wounding many,
while claiming that Gaza was a source of attacks
against Israeli civilians. Later the Israeli media
dismissed the connection as flawed. No apologies
for the Gaza deaths, of course, and AP, Reuters
and others are still blaming Palestinians for the
attack near Eilat last year. Then, Palestinian
factions opted not to escalate to spare Egypt an
unwanted conflict with Israel during a most
sensitive transition.
None of that seems
relevant now. Egypt is busy destroying the
tunnels, continuing efforts that were funded by
the US a few years ago. It also closed the
Gaza-Egypt crossing, and is being "permitted" by
Israel to use attack helicopters in Sinai to hunt
for elusive terrorists. Within days, Gaza's
misfortunes were multiplied and once more
Palestinians are pleading their case.
Israeli officials and analysts are, of
course, beside themselves with anticipation. The
opportunity is simply too great not to be utilized
fully. Commenting in Egypt-based OnIslam,
Abdelrahman Rashdan wrote that according to the
Israeli intelligence scenario, "Iranians,
Palestinians, Egyptians, and al-Qaeda operatives
all moved from Lebanon to attack Egypt [and]
Israel and defend Syria."
In Western
mainstream media, few asked who benefits from all
of this - from once more isolating Gaza, shutting
down the tunnels, severing Egyptian-Palestinian
ties, embroiling the Egyptian military in a
security nightmare in Sinai, and much more.
The Muslim Brotherhood website had an
answer. It suggested that the incident "can be
attributed to the Mossad". True, some Western
media reported the statement, but not with any
degree of seriousness or due analysis. The BBC
even offered its own context: "Conspiracy theories
are popular across the Arab world," ending the
discussion with an Israeli dismissal of the
accusation as "nonsense". Case closed. But it
shouldn't be.
Before embarking on a wild
goose chase in Sinai, urgent questions must be
asked and answered. Haphazard action will only
make things worse for Egypt, Palestine and Sinai's
long-neglected Bedouin population.
Ramzy Baroud
(www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally
syndicated columnist and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My
Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story
(Pluto Press, London.)
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2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
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