This article originally appeared on themedialine.org.
The deadliest attack on Egyptian soldiers since the new government of Abdel Fatteh Al-Sisi took office is affecting not only Egypt, but Israel and the Palestinians as well. After an attacker drove a car rigged with explosives into a military checkpoint in the Sinai desert, killing at least 33 soldiers, Al-Sisi has vowed to crack down on Jihadi groups to prevent further attacks.
The Sinai Peninsula, which borders both Israel and the Gaza Strip, has long been a center for weapons and drug smuggling. After the most recently attack, Sisi closed the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt. Sisi blamed Palestinians in Gaza for helping the extremists behind the attack and announced that Egyptian-brokered talks on a more permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, that were supposed to have started this week, have been postponed. A seven-week war between the two ended with a temporary cease-fire in August, and talks on a more permanent deal have yet to commence.
Some in Egypt say the extremists are gaining ground, and there could be more attacks in Sinai or elsewhere in Egypt.
“The barbarian actions against the state and the region being disguised under Islam mistakenly produce more misunderstanding and raise the Islamophobia inside the Islamic countries itself,” Moataz Abd Elkarim, a professor at Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology told The Media Line.
He says that despite the mixture of anger and frustration following the attack, he believes “the security is getting better.” However, Egypt’s defense plan can always do better to protect its citizens, he adds.
The attack, viewed as a setback for Cairo’s efforts to crack down on Muslim extremists, has prompted the Egyptian National Defense Council (NDC) to discuss setting up a wide buffer zone in the peninsula.
Speaking to a Turkish News Agency, a former senior military official Alaa Ezziddin said that the NDC met to accelerate the ratification of a terrorism law which “includes all the necessary measures on how to deal with security issues, including sentence verdicts for anyone who owns unlicensed weapons, as well as prosecuting anyone who carries weapons and explosives before a military court.”
Abd Elkarim says the frustration only grows because of “the repeated scenarios of the terroristic attacks in Sinai within the same region and the lessons we didn’t learn.”
Palestinians in Gaza expressed frustration that yet again, their interests are being pushed aside by extremist groups in Egypt.
“Egyptian army failures can't routinely be blamed on others, on outside forces and on Hamas,” Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian columnist for Al-Monitor told The Media Line from Jordan.
Following the first visit to Gaza by the new Palestinian National Consensus Government, the plan was to have the Palestinian Authority replace Hamas forces, an agreement which has yet to materialize. Israel, Egypt and the United States have all said that having PA troops running the Rafah border crossing is a condition for allowing large amounts of reconstruction aid into Gaza. Israel worries the cement and iron could be used for weapons or tunnels instead of rebuilding homes.
Palestinians say the Egyptian tendency to blame them for these attacks makes it harder for Egypt to be an honest broker in talks between Hamas and Israel.
“Egypt is creating an atmosphere that is not conducive for meetings, when something happens, they (Egypt) blame Gaza,” West Bank political science professor Abdelsattar Qassem told The Media Line. He expects the attacks to continue, citing the lack of strength among Egyptian security. “In failing to prevent what happened in Sinai, it shows a weakness in the Egyptian intelligence” the political analyst, who teaches at An Najah University in Nablus, said.
While he could not elaborate on the security coordination between Israel and Egypt, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said that the two countries did see eye to eye on the same objective – fighting terrorism. Calling it a “dreadful terrorist attack,” he said that Israel was concerned and was behind Egypt in its fight against terror. “We are in constant dialogue,” he told The Media Line.
The United States has condemned the attack with the State Department saying that “a prosperous and dynamic Egypt requires an environment of security and stability.”
In a surprising move, the Muslim Brotherhood has also condemned the Sinai attack.
“I think the state should open the dialogue with the youth more to reproduce their anger in a peaceful attitude instead of using the ultimate power like what happened in Egypt’s universities in the last couple weeks,” Moataz Abd Elkarim said. Recently, university students, belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood damaged buildings in an attempt to provoke a response, but Egypt’s security forces showed restraint.
The Palestinian President’s top adviser on international affairs Majdi Al Khaldi says Mahmoud Abbas spoke with his Egyptian counterpart Al-Sisi on Sunday and gave him assurances that the Palestinian people “stand firm with Egypt in this war against terrorism.”
As for the buffer zone, Khaldi says “the President and the leadership supports the measures that will be taken in Sinai.”
Khaldi says if Egypt is too busy tending to prevention of attacks, it will be hard to play a key role in ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“We want Egypt to stand with us on this issue so we have to support Egypt to fight terrorism,” he told The Media Line.
