NYT Report: ‘Israel struck over 100 targets in Sinai
with Cairo’s okay’
Israeli and Egyptian officials refused to
confirm the report by the New York Times.
By Daniel J. Roth
The Jerusalem Post,
February 3, 2018
EGYPTIAN MILITARY forces look on in
the northern Sinai. (photo credit: MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY/REUTERS)
NEW YORK – Egypt has allowed Israel to conduct more than 100
air strikes in northern Sinai in an effort to root out
terrorists affiliated with Islamic State, The New York Times reported
on Saturday.
For more than two years, unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters
and jets have carried out a covert air campaign in the area with
the approval of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has
struggled to contain the deadly threat in the restive peninsula,
according to the report.
According to the Times, who spoke to seven current
or former British and American officials involved in Middle East
policy, Israel began carrying out the strikes shortly after ISIS
insurgents brought down a Russian charter plane over the
peninsula in October 2015, killing all 224 people aboard.
The United States has since credited Jerusalem “with killing
a long roster of militant leaders” in Sinai, helping to
stabilize the border between Israel and Egypt as Cairo works to
regain its footing in the region.
The Israeli Censor’s Office has not allowed the media to
publish any reports about the alleged operations, and all source
material has been attributed to foreign reports.
The security effort has helped to shepherd in an
unprecedented era of cooperation between the two nations,
according to the Times, marking the most dramatic
evidence yet of a quiet reconfigurations of the politics of the
region.
The air campaign, however, has been conducted in the shadows,
with worries that news of the collaborative effort would cause a
backlash on the Egyptian street, which views Israel as an enemy.
Bilateral cooperation started to flourish soon after Sisi took
over the presidency in 2014. Israel helped lobby Washington to
accept the new Egyptian leader soon after he took over the
country in a military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood,
leading to favorable ties between the security establishments on
both sides.
The security challenges partly stem from the Israeli-Egyptian
peace treaty of 1979, which divided Sinai into three zones,
demilitarized to different degrees. The agreement inadvertently
created a large, uninhabited space with a faint security
presence that was ideal for extremist elements to fill,
according to the Times.
Since Sisi came to power, Egypt has seen hundreds of its
security personnel killed in terrorist attacks, mostly conducted
by its No. 1 foe in Sinai, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (the Partisans
of Jerusalem).
In 2014, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis declared itself an affiliate of
Islamic State. Along with its operations against Egyptian
soldiers and policemen, the group is thought to be responsible
for attacks on Coptic Christians, slaughtering villages and
destroying churches, the Times noted.
Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is also believed to have destroyed the
Russian charter plane in 2015, which, according to foreign
reports, led Jerusalem to approach Cairo with its plan to fight
the Sinai-based extremist group.
