Crossing the Nile: Egypt’s Return to a Role in Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking: Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2016— On November 15, 2012, Washington-insider Sidney Blumenthal wrote an email to secretary of state Hillary Clinton sharing information from sources with “direct access” to Western intelligence services.
Hamas and Egypt Make Amends?: Oren Kessler & Grant Rumley, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, June 21, 2016— A steady stream of reports in recent weeks has suggested that Egypt is burying the hatchet with Hamas.
ISIS Comes to Gaza: Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, July 11, 2016 — Hamas denies it up and down.
Transitioning to a New Middle East: Ted Belman, Arutz Sheva, July 11, 2016— The Obama era opened with his Cairo speech, in which he embraced Muslims in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular.
5 Years of ISIS Terror on Israel’s Southern Border: IDF Blog, June 20, 2015
What Next, Egypt’s Sissi Speaking in the Knesset? Well, Maybe: Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, July 11, 2015
With Egypt’s Blessing, Israel Conducting Drone Strikes in Sinai — Report: Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, July 11, 2016
Another Golden Era in Israel-Africa Relations: Boaz Bismuth, Israel Hayom, July 4, 2016
CROSSING THE NILE: EGYPT’S RETURN TO A ROLE IN ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACEMAKING
Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2016
On November 15, 2012, Washington-insider Sidney Blumenthal wrote an email to secretary of state Hillary Clinton sharing information from sources with “direct access” to Western intelligence services. The day before Israel had killed Hamas terrorist mastermind Ahmed Jabari in Gaza. Now it looked like fighting would increase between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, said he was concerned that he was “unable to exert significant influence” over Hamas and that fighting might spiral out of control. What if Egypt were drawn in, the Egyptian worried. General Abdel Fatah Sisi assured Morsi things were under control. “Military Intelligence officers were meeting secretly with their Israeli counterparts” and Israel had agreed Egypt might play a positive role in mediating the conflict. According to the report Sisi understood Jabari had been killed for his role in kidnapping IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. Morsi felt pressured by Islamists to stand up to Israel, but Sisi expressed concern. Morsi was “a new leader with a precarious hold on his country which creates a dangerous environment,” wrote Blumenthal. “Al-Sisi has not shared this particular view with the Egyptian President.”
A little over seven months later, Morsi was gone and Sisi was in power. It’s clear now from the secret dispatches that Sisi feared for the security of Egypt, and was deeply concerned over sectarian tensions and the rise of Islamist and terrorist groups, especially in Sinai. Sisi’s first year in power was spent shoring up his support and removing the tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood from power. In late May 2014 he was elected president by an overwhelming majority. After several years of uncertainty, Sisi sought to return Egypt to stability and a renewed role in the region.
Before the Arab Spring overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February of 2011, Egypt had worked closely with Israel on security issues. For instance, according to a US diplomatic cable, in 2009 Mubarak warned US General David Petraeus that Qatar and Syria were paying Hamas $50 million to keep captive IDF soldier Schalit captive. Mubarak obviously wanted Schalit released. After his overthrow, there was a hiatus in relations with Israel as Egypt turned inward.
Two months later he got his first chance to play a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when war broke out in Gaza in July. Mahmoud Salem at Al-Monitor claims the Gaza war gave Sisi a major victory. It “changed the balance of power in the Middle East conflict, sidelined Qatar, Turkey and Hamas, placed all the cards in the hands of Israel, the Gulf States [minus Qatar] and Egypt and none of them gave any weight to the Obama administration, which was unprecedented.” Turkey had had close relations with Morsi, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan viewed as a fellow-traveler in the world of political Islam. After 2013 relations between Turkey and Egypt soured to a kind of cold war.
This outcome was the result of a view that the US was weakening its support for its traditional Egyptian and Saudi allies in the region. This was symbolically evident in the snubbing of President Barack Obama by Saudi Arabia in April of this year when he was greeted by low-level functionaries on the tarmac during a visit to the kingdom. Sisi had been dismayed by the US administration’s policies on Egypt. Documents show that Sisi warned the Americans about threats to US interests in Egypt in 2012, and it seems he was not given credit for his attempt to care for the Americans.
In March of 2015 Sisi gave two interviews in which he spoke of his interest in working with Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Bret Stephens claimed “Egypt’s security cooperation with Israel has never been closer.” Sisi told The Washington Post he speaks to Netanyahu “a lot” and that he wanted to achieve a “historic deal” with Israel. In late May and early June Egypt said it supported renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks with Sisi as mediator. Meanwhile France has been pushing its own initiative, which Israel has rejected. The Palestinian ambassador to Cairo said Egypt’s involvement does not “contradict” the French plan.
Egypt Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry’s very public visit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday was the culmination of Egyptian efforts to return relations to where they had been before the Arab Spring. As Herb Keinon noted in The Jerusalem Post, it was the first visit since 2007 by an Egyptian foreign minister and showed Sisi’s attempts to become a central player in diplomacy in Jerusalem. Shoukry spent time with Netanyahu at his office and then later at his home. There is no doubt this is an important step for Israel and Egypt, but to what end? Coming on the heels of the reconciliation with Turkey and Netanyahu’s trip to Africa, one gets the impression Israel has emerged from its diplomatic slumber of the past six years. This isn’t coincidental. Turkey has also reconciled with Egypt. That illustrates not just a return to pre-Arab Spring normalcy, but a realization that the terrorist-chaos in Iraq and Syria is the real problem. Shoukry said the extremism is an “existential threat to peoples of the region.”
Cairo has traditionally been one of the main centers of culture and influence in the region, alongside Damascus and Baghdad. The wars in Syria and Iraq have virtually destroyed Baghdad and Damascus’ influence, which leaves Egypt in an excellent position. Egypt has also largely stayed out of the sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite conflicts, unlike Saudi Arabia and Iran whose regimes are ruled by clerics. This puts Egypt in a special position, and its connection to Israel is important. The problem is that there is more than an impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace issue. With Hamas in power in Gaza, and a lack of a clear solution to the Palestinian yearning for a full-fledged state, only incremental peace issues can move forward, such as improving the Palestinian economy or freedom of movement. A greater Egyptian role in the PA-controlled areas and an emphasis on stability will be good for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is now in his 80s. The return of Egypt to its role with Israel also shows the irrelevance of the Western powers and the need for greater regional diplomacy.
Oren Kessler & Grant Rumley
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, June 21, 2016
A steady stream of reports in recent weeks has suggested that Egypt is burying the hatchet with Hamas. The Washington Post saw an “unlikely alliance” between the two, Al-Monitor floated the prospect of “reconciliation,” and Haaretz suggested that Cairo is offering the group “another chance.” In short, the reports suggest the two sides are setting aside decades of animosity to confront the shared threat posed by Sinai Province, the affiliate of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the Sinai Peninsula. If it sounds like a stretch, it’s because it is.
The first notions of a budding Egypt–Hamas rapprochement appeared in March, when Cairo welcomed a rare delegation of Hamas political figures from the Gaza Strip, which the group controls. Egypt also reportedly began tamping down on anti-Hamas rhetoric in official media. The following month, Hamas deployed forces to Gaza’s border with Egypt in a bid to show Cairo that it is serious about stopping smuggling of arms to Sinai Peninsula fighters.
Egypt and Hamas have a long and acrimonious history, and contrary to reports of an imminent rapprochement, their relationship remains icy. Hamas has fostered a black-market tunnel economy in Gaza for nearly a decade, ever since Egypt and Israel blockaded the Strip after Hamas seized power there in 2007. That smuggling network, in turn, has simultaneously enriched and armed Sinai Province, whose insurgency has killed hundreds of Egyptian servicemen since the 2011 ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Since the military’s 2013 ouster of Mubarak’s Islamist successor, Mohamed Morsi, the military has waged a fierce campaign against the tunnels, destroying as many as 2,000 and creating a half-mile long “buffer zone” between Israel and Egypt. In this case, “buffer zone” is a euphemism for razing thousands of homes to make life difficult for would-be smugglers. In talks to end Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, it was Cairo that took the strongest position against allowing Hamas to build a seaport to Gaza or easing the blockade on the Strip.
Moreover, Hamas is an acknowledged offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian army’s decades-long nemesis, which it removed from power along with Morsi before jailing tens of thousands of its members. Egyptian officials have described the Brotherhood as the “mother” of all other extremist groups, and tend to view ISIS, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood as three heads of the same terrorist beast. Cairo labels Hamas’ military wing a terrorist organization, and has accused it, in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, of the June 2015 assassination of its top prosecutor, Hisham Barakat.
One of the deepest veins of Egypt-Hamas tension is the latter’s relationship with Sinai Province. It is true that Hamas and ISIS have significant ideological differences. ISIS has declared Hamas an apostate group and has denounced its Brotherhood parent group for engaging in the political process rather than joining the global jihad. For its part, Hamas has slammed ISIS for distorting Islam, as when the group beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians last year on a Libyan beach.
Squeezed by Egypt on one side and Israel on the other, Hamas has striven to persuade Cairo that it means no harm.Still, the two groups have previously shown themselves willing to set aside ideology for the sake of their own financial and strategic gain. Hamas might well view ISIS as a threat to its rule in Gaza (Hamas forces regularly clamp down on Salafi preachers in the enclave), but it has no qualms about supporting ISIS’ efforts against the Egyptian military in Sinai. Indeed, if there is any rapprochement occurring across the Egypt-Gaza frontier, it is between Hamas and Sinai Province.
Both Egyptian and Israeli officials have cited intelligence that the two groups are growing close. Arms smuggling has diminished in recent months—a result of Egypt’s relentless campaign against Hamas’ tunnels—but otherwise, the relationship between Hamas and Sinai Province is business as usual. Hamas has provided medical care to dozens of Sinai Province fighters in Gaza over the last ten months, and a number of former Hamas activists have found their way into the peninsula to join the ISIS affiliate. All of this proceeds under the watchful eye of Hamas’ military wing.
Hamas’ political leaders have refused to weigh in on the extent to which they support Sinai Province, thus allowing the military wing to handle the relationship (including by transferring anti-tank missiles) with almost full autonomy. Still, Hamas is playing with fire: the more it treats wounded ISIS fighters or hosts high-level ISIS commanders, the more support for the jihadist group is likely to rise within Hamas’ ranks. It will also face increased pressure from Egypt, which has responded to Hamas’ growing collusion with ISIS by clamping down on transit points between Gaza and Sinai. For example, Cairo has kept Rafah Crossing—Gaza’s one official entrance point to Egypt—largely closed this year, opening it for just six days over the past three months.
Squeezed by Egypt on one side and Israel on the other, Hamas has striven to persuade Cairo that it means no harm. Last month, Hamas officials claimed that the group had saved Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi from a plot hatched by the rival Palestinian movement Fatah (a bizarre claim given Egypt’s closeness to the latter). More recently, Hamas has doubled down on its insistence that its struggle is limited to fighting Israel, and has “nothing to do with Egypt.” Beyond the talking points, however, old enmities die hard. Egypt and Hamas continue to have fundamentally divergent interests, ones that don’t lend themselves to quick fixes. With mutual animosity running this deep, rumors of any reconciliation between Egypt and Hamas are just that.
Khaled Abu Toameh
Gatestone Institute, July 11, 2016
Hamas denies it up and down. Nonetheless, there are growing signs that the Islamist movement, which is based in the Gaza Strip, is continuing to cooperate with other jihadi terror groups that are affiliated with Islamic State (ISIS), especially those that have been operating in the Egyptian peninsula of Sinai in recent years.
This cooperation, according to Palestinian Authority security sources, is the main reason behind the ongoing tensions between the Egyptian authorities and Hamas. These tensions have prompted the Egyptians to keep the Rafah border crossing mostly closed since 2013, trapping tens of thousands of Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip.
In 2015, the Egyptians opened the Rafah terminal for a total of twenty-one days to allow humanitarian cases and those holding foreign nationalities to leave or enter the Gaza Strip. This year so far, Rafah has been open for a total of twenty-eight days. Sources in the Gaza Strip say there are about 30,000 humanitarian cases that need to leave immediately. They include dozens of university students who haven't been able to go back to their universities abroad and some 4,000 patients in need of urgent medical treatment.
Surprisingly, last week the Egyptians opened the Rafah terminal for five days in a row, allowing more than 4,500 Palestinians to leave and enter the Gaza Strip. The unusual gesture came on the eve of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr. However, the terminal was closed again at the beginning of the feast on July 6.
The renewed closure of the Rafah terminal coincided with reports that efforts to end the tensions between Hamas and Egypt hit a snag. According to the reports, the Egyptian authorities decided to cancel a planned visit to Cairo by senior Hamas officials. The decision to cancel the visit, the reports said, came in the wake of the dissatisfaction of the Egyptians with the way Hamas has been handling security along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. The closure of the border crossing came as a blow to Hamas's efforts to patch up its differences with Egypt and pave the way for easing severe travel restrictions imposed by Cairo on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In recent weeks, Hamas announced that it had deployed hundreds of its border guards along the shared border with Egypt in order to prevent infiltration both ways, especially of jihadi terrorists who have been targeting Egyptian security personnel and civilians in Sinai. However, the Egyptian authorities remain extremely skeptical about Hamas's measures. Egyptian security officials are convinced that Hamas is not serious about preventing jihadi terrorists from crossing the border in either direction. Moreover, the Egyptians suspect that Hamas maintains close relations with some of the ISIS-affiliated groups in Sinai, and is providing them with weapons and medical treatment.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has refused to conduct high-level contacts with Hamas since he came to power in 2013. His regime views Hamas as a threat to Egypt's national security. The few meetings that did take place between the two sides were restricted to security issues; that was why Sisi entrusted his General Intelligence officials to conduct the discussions with the leaders of the Islamist movement who visited Cairo in the past months. Apparently, the Egyptian skepticism towards Hamas is not unjustified.
In recent weeks, reports have surfaced that leave no doubt as to cooperation between Hamas and ISIS groups in Sinai. These reports, the Egyptians and Palestinian Authority argue, provide further evidence that the Gaza Strip remains a major base for various jihadi terror groups that pose a real threat not only to Egypt's national security, but also to Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, as well as neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon. Reports have also emerged that some of the jihadi terrorists in Sinai have been receiving medical treatment in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, with the approval of Hamas. The terrorists, who are wanted by the Egyptian authorities, are believed to have entered the Gaza Strip through smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt.
According to one report, one of the terrorist leaders from Sinai, Abu Sweilem, was documented lying in bed at the Abu Yusef al-Najjar Hospital in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. The report said that Abu Sweilem was hospitalized under the heavy guard of members of Hamas's armed wing, Ezaddin al-Qassam. It said that he, and other terrorists wanted by the Egyptian authorities, were admitted to the Gaza Strip hospital in return for weapons given to Hamas by the Islamic State in Sinai, which is known as Wilayat Sina'…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
TRANSITIONING TO A NEW MIDDLE EAST
Ted Belman
Arutz Sheva, July 11, 2016
The Obama era opened with his Cairo speech, in which he embraced Muslims in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. He planned to depose the secular dictators and replace them with the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus Qaddafi, Mubarak and Assad were marked for removal in that order. The EU was on board.
After supporting the takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood headed by Mohamed Morsi, he backed the takeover of Syria by the Muslim Brotherhood in collaboration with the newly Islamist Turkey, headed by Recep Tayyid Erdogan, extolling him as his best friend. Simultaneously, beginning in 2009, he reached out to Iran. He wanted to embrace it as an ally rather than to designate it as an enemy. His efforts culminated in the disastrous Iran Deal which provided a tail wind to Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. He overlooked the fact that Iran was a long standing ally of Assad’s and was fighting to resist his removal which was Obama’s stated goal.
Obama’s reach exceeded his grasp. Libya, sans Qaddafi, is in chaos. The Egyptian military under Gen al Sisi is in power. He indicted Morsi for treason and banned the Muslim Brotherhood again. Obama called this takeover of power a coup, thus preventing the US from supporting him. Russia and Saudi Arabia have moved in to take up some of the slack. Even though Turkey, the Gulf States and the Muslim Brotherhood shared his goal of removing Assad, they have not succeeded due entirely to Obama’s lack of leadership and unwillingness to fight.
His removal of the last of the US military forces in Iraq and his willingness to have Iran manage Iraq gave rise to ISIS. At first, Turkey and the Gulf states supported ISIS which was Sunni and was seen as a proxy to stop Iran expansionism and topple Assad. The US over time began to see ISIS as a bigger threat than Assad and started to support the Kurds, whom they originally shunned, so that they would fight ISIS. They did this even though Turkey was adamantly opposed.
Obama announced that if Assad used chemical weapons, that he would be crossing America’s red line. Rather than enforce that red line, he seized on a lifeline that Russia offered, namely, to work to remove the chemical weapons with the cooperation of Assad. This was a major turning point in the war as Russia proceeded to take on a greater role in the fighting with America’s blessings thereby enabling Syria to stabilize and go on the offensive. Russia was not so much interested in defeating ISIS as they were in stabilizing Assad and taking back some territory.
Meanwhile Obama’s plan to have the Muslim Brotherhood with the backing of Turkey, replace Assad, is no longer operative. The Muslim Brotherhood as a player in Syria is no longer discussed, let alone active. Turkey, which started out with grandiose ambitions to recreate the Ottoman Empire and to assume the mantel of Sunni leadership, has abandoned such ambitions and is working to contain the self-inflicted damage its policies have caused.
Erdogan’s embrace of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood has strained relations with Egypt where they are banned and actively fought. Egypt is also partnering with Israel to neutralize and contain Hamas in Gaza and all insurgents in Sinai. His bellicose statements and actions regarding Cyprus have resulted in new alliance between it and Israel based on their mutual interest in defending and developing their new found gas reserves. Greece too has joined that alliance. Erdogan has enraged the Russian bear by shooting down one of its fighter planes. As a result Russia has imposed sanctions on Turkey and is supporting the Kurds who are an anathema to Turkey…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
5 Years of ISIS Terror on Israel’s Southern Border: IDF Blog, June 20, 2015 —Israel’s border with Egypt has long been volatile, with terror groups shaking the stability in Northern Sinai. Our newest threat in the region is an offshoot of a deadly international terror organization: ISIS in the Sinai.
What Next, Egypt’s Sissi Speaking in the Knesset? Well, Maybe: Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel, July 11, 2015—In the three years since Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi took control of Egypt, relations have been steadily warming between Jerusalem and Cairo.
With Egypt’s Blessing, Israel Conducting Drone Strikes in Sinai — Report: Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, July 11, 2016—Israel has carried out drone strikes against terrorists operating in the Sinai Peninsula in recent years, according to a Bloomberg news report Monday that quoted an unnamed former senior official.
Another Golden Era in Israel-Africa Relations: Boaz Bismuth, Israel Hayom, July 4, 2016—Sixteen years ago, The Economist ran a cover story called "Hopeless Africa." Back then, even the most passionate Africa-philes were pessimists.
