TROUBLE IN SINAI-by J. Millard Burr

TROUBLE IN SINAI by J. Millard Burr  August 30, 2011       In April 2010 the peace that had governed the demilitarization of the Sinai for more than a quarter-century was shattered when a string of rockets fired from the Sinai landed near Eilat, the Israeli port at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. While the attack surprised some, Israeli military (IDF) were already very concerned with what it called "beduin" activity throughout the Sinai Peninsula.  There had been kidnapping threats, which were so alarming that Israel had warned its citizens against travelling in the region.         Four months later, Grad rockets fired from the Sinai overshot Eilat and hit Aqaba, the Jordanian port. By then, there was substantial reason for increasing concern, and the Israel Ministry of Defense responded by initiating the construction of a border fence in November 2010.  By June of 2011 it had completed 100 kilometers of its proposed 240 mile length, and there was, according to the IMF, a notable reduction in illegal border crossing in what had once been known as a sparsely patrolled region.          A month later, in August 2011, Israeli forces reportedly checkmated what it called a "spectacular" border attack under preparation by an al Qaida affiliated group.  The plan was to bomb a gas pipeline that provides Israel with 35% of its supply (and Gaza with all its gas).  The plot was hatched within the Gaza Strip, and it appeared to be the continuation of a series of three successful attacks on the Sinai gas pipeline. The gas line has been the focus of rebel attacks after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power in February 2011.  Once Mubarak was edged from power it was soon observed that the so-called "security vacuum" that the Camp David Accords had addressed successfully in 1982, was vitiated by a circle of rebels who surfaced in the Sinai in the balmy days of the "Arab Spring".  The Egyptian military claimed that the emerging Sinai terror groups had not only attacked the pipeline that served Gaza, Israel and Jordan, but the rebels were also attacking police patrols.       Literally within hours, the international media reported that on 14 August three Egyptian army brigades of 1,700 men, an equal number of police, and 3,400 security personnel, backed by tanks and personnel carriers, drove into the Mediterranean towns of El Arish and Sheikh Zuweid.  Occupying those towns a spearhead continued on to Rafah, a town divided between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The units were soon involved in firefights with Islamic Liberation Army members.  An Egyptian military communiqué reported that the occupation force was determined to take control of a region already lost to lawless and terrorist elements, which emerged following the Egyptian revolution. Who their leaders were, was not clear, but the rebels were blamed for the sabotage of the Egyptian gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan and Syria.          Ironically, it was little noted in the media. but the movement of Egyptian forces into the eastern Sinai was in contravention of the Camp David Accords, Article 2, Annex I which defines the limits of responsibility (the "Security Arrangements") in the various geographic zones.        If the Egyptian army was looking for an excuse to occupy a region it had not visited in more than three decades, it maintained that there were an estimated 2,000 well-organized and heavily armed Islamist gunmen openly threatening the Sinai Peninsula.  Left unsaid was a reality that the Egyptian military felt that the number of rebels was obviously more than the Multinational Force and Observers -- created by the Camp David Accords signed by Israel and Egypt in September 1978 -- could handle. Under terms of the Camp David agreement Israel was prepared to affect a staged withdrawal from the Sinai.  It did so expecting that a United Nations peacekeeping force would accept the task of maintaining the peace in the region.  However, in May 1981 the Soviet Union, acting in support of Syria, threatened to veto the UN plan.  The demilitarization was then supervised by the United States and its civilian Sinai Field Mission.         In August 1981 the United States, Egypt and Israel signed a Protocol to the Camp David Treaty of Peace and established the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO).  The MFO mission was then required to implement the security provisions of the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace, and prevent any violation of its terms.         The MFO role was initiated in April 1982, the same day that Israel returned sovereignty of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Under Article 2, Annex I, of the Peace Treaty, the Sinai Peacekeeping Zones were delimited.  Thus, the Peninsula was to be divided into three geographically defined zones.  In Zone A, located to the east of the Suez Canal, Egypt was allowed to quarter a mechanized infantry division with a total of 22,000 troops.  Zone B, to the east of A and in area comprising the second third of the Sinai. allowed Egypt to emplace four border security battalions and civilian police.  Zone C, which was the most problematic was located between Line B and the Egypt-Israel border. In Zone C, Only the MFO and the Egyptian civilian police were permitted.  In Zone C the three battalions of MFO were quartered at two bases:  Two battalions (Colombia, Fiji, etc.,) were located at North Camp, the MFO headquarters; an American battalion was quartered at South Camp located to the far south and just north of Sharm el Sheikh, now a well known tourist destination.  Although the MFO sought to cultivate its image as a private entity responsible to no one, its first Director General Leamon Hunt was assassinated in Rome by elements of the terrorist Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction. It was, however, an isolated incident.                                                 ****      Only days after the entry of Egyptian forces in the northern Sinai, on August 18, 2011 eight Israelis, six civilians and two military, were killed and more than 30 were wounded in southern Israel in a series of three coordinated attacks launched from the Sinai Peninsula.  The attacks on two civilian buses, two civilian cars and a military vehicle occurred along Highway 12 at three points over a distance of twelve kilometers near the Netafim crossing some twenty kilometers north of Eilat. The twelve terrorists operated in four groups, and they were armed with automatic and anti-tank weapons, and supported by mortars and roadside bombs.  At least twenty terrorists were involved, Including support elements in the Sinai.  And at least ten were killed.          With the large number of Egyptian forces entering the northeastern Sinai peninsula it seems little wonder that some were positioned as far south in what would have been considered the MFO responsibility in Zone C.  Five Egyptian police and an Egyptian army officer were reported to have been killed in the resulting action, during which an Israeli helicopter reportedly fired on the Egyptian security forces.         The brazen attack, the first of its kind in the Negev in many decades, prompted a series of IAF reprisals.  Air strikes hit Hamas and Popular Resistance Committee outposts in Gaza.  The Committee claimed responsibility for the attack (although Egyptian sources claimed at least three of the attackers were Egyptian citizens).  According to various sources the Committee's leadership was killed in the airstrikes that followed.           The response in the Arab media both in the Middle East and Europe was immediate and predictable.  Nonetheless, of particular significance was the report of Abdel Bari Atwan, the Gaza-born anti-Israel firebrand and editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the widely read and London-based pan-Arab daily.  While acknowledging the Arab role in the attack, like many other Arab journalists he argued that Israel itself was actually responsible for what had occurred.  According to MEMRI, he wrote that the attack had highlighted the struggle for the "honor" of the Arab nation and in response to an illegitimate Israeli occupation. Most importantly, Atwan claimed that the "Israeli attack" was "not only an opportunity for the SCAF [military council] that rules Egypt to reopen the Camp David Accords and restore full Egyptian sovereignty to Sinai; it is also [a chance] to gradually revoke these accords in practice, as long as Israel is not committed to them."        Atwan's words should not be taken lightly because they are media morsels that feed the Egyptian mob.  According to MEMRI, Al-Ahram, the 126-year-old government mouthpiece that has Egypt's largest circulation, ran an editorial last week, which argued that "peace with Israel was forced on Egypt, and the Egyptian people were no longer disposed to accept the Camp David Accords."           It was just opposite Zone C, an area that the MFO ostensibly swept free of military forces, that the attack occurred.  From Beersheba in the Israel Negev, Highway 12 for most of its length parallels the unguarded Egypt-Israel frontier in the Sinai Peninsula.  Since 1982 this border region has been patrolled by the Multi-National Force and Observers, an international entity that in the aftermath of the Camp David Accords. The MFO was specifically created to patrol the Sinai and ensure its demilitarization. It was an essential ingredient in the Camp David Accords: On the one hand, it would satisfy Israel's demand for a demilitarized Sinai; on the other, Egypt would be assured that the Israeli occupation of the Sinai, which had dated from the Six Day War of 1967, would end once and for all.            What Egypt must decide is whether it wishes to re-militarize the Sinai and thus bring it closer to yet another war with Israel.  And what all sides to the Camp David agreement must soon decide is whether the MFO is worth the annual $75 million price tag required to keep it in operation.  While Egypt and Israel would have input to that debate, the final decision will be reached in Washington.  Though the MFO trumpets that the cost of the operation is met equally by the United States, Egypt, and Israel, Washington is in fact the paymaster and pays both Egypt and Israel sufficient funds annually to pay for the MFO many times over.        Most importantly, the Multinational Force, comprising three battalions of lightly armed military stationed and operating in the eastern Sinai, was never indented to be a serious combat element.  Thus, the MFO would serve a purpose only as long as both Egypt and Israel were determined to keep the peace.         It seems clear that should Egypt choose either to abrogate or ignore the Camp David accords the United States will have to decide whether to continue to provide the $1.5 billion annual stipend it provides Egypt.  From its beginning, that fund was provided with the expectation that Egypt would maintain the peace of Camp David. Unfortunately, it is now clear that the MFO cannot keep the peace.  While it played a quiet but essential role in the Middle East for nearly thirty years, it now seems time for the United States, Israel and Egypt to work out a new arrangement that will be required to keep the peace in Sinai. Whether the U.S. State Department approved Egypt's recent action, opposed it, or even knew anything about it, is not certain. Still, there remains the fact that the United States which provides an annual stipend annually only with the expectation that Egypt will act judiciously, should be of some concern in Cairo.     J. Millard Burr, a Fellow at the Economic Warfare Institute, authored with Robert Collins, Alms for Jihad, Revolutionary Sudan and many other publications, and is a former State Department official.