Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
While Israel and Egypt may have common Islamic militant enemies in the Sinai, they do not of course have common objectives. It was rumored that Israel recently took out suspects with a drone- a preventive strike on Islamic militants in the Sinai that killed four or five on Friday, before they could initiate a rocket attack.
On Sunday, 12 more were killed in an Egyptian helicopter raid in El Arish. With all the attacks on Egyptian security forces and the extreme break down of Northern Sinai, the two have taken steps to work closer together in the deteriorating cross-border threat.
Israel is known to breach Egyptian sovereignty for reprisals on extremists firing rocket or launching mortars into their state without their permission or approval. Both the Egyptian militants and the Israeli security forces violate national borders. The Egyptians are funneling weapons into Gaza. Obviously, this does not sit well with the Egyptian military or the Egyptian people who have a tense truce with Israel. Still, the Egyptian authorities are not set on taking any actions against the Israelis. Instead, they are working together. This is because they need to stabilize that region ASAP.
So while Israel and the Egyptian military have never liked each other all that much, they will continue their hatred for the destabilizing forces of internal/external terrorism far more. They will intensify their counter-terrorism maneuvers and develop further security cooperation. Al Qaeda affiliates in the Sinai even demand battle-ready hotlines between the two players. With greater eyes in the sky and the capability to take out future rocket attacks with drones or Apache helicopters, the two may turn the tide.
All of this is related to Sinai as both political engines of secular nationalism and Islamism in Egypt because they are moving toward a climax of force-on-force methods. In Cairo, the Brotherhood is mostly passive aggressive methods of sit-in martyrdom to their advantage. The military is now prized to remove every stain of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the on-going Cairo sit-ins which include women and children planned and planted.
Weapons piled in after the Libyan revolution, as well as a foreign extremist presence that some say appeared overnight. The strike today took place with the closure of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and 21 other embassies and consulates in the region.
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