Attacks from Gaza on Israel have ramped up significantly in the last several days.  An Israeli patrol was hit by what was thought to be a roadside bomb on Tuesday (three were wounded), near the border fence with Gaza.  On Saturday, terrorists in Gaza fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli jeep with four infantrymen in it, as the patrol operated in the area of the roadside bomb attack.  The four soldiers were wounded, one severely.  More than 80 rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel since the attack on the jeep on Saturday, 10 November.  At least three Israeli civilians were injured in the rocket attacks.

Geography is beginning to rear its head again, as Israel has also sustained incursions into the Golan from Syria in recent days.  On Sunday, Israel fired “warning shots” into Syria after the latest incursion, which involved mortar rounds from Syria landing in the Golan.

Egypt is seeking to broker another soon-to-be-violated ceasefire between Gaza and Israel, but on Israel’s Egyptian flank, the stakes are being raised by “non-state actors.”  On Sunday, unidentified “gunmen” opened fire on an Egyptian security forces camp near the border with Israel in the northeastern Sinai.  Security in the Sinai has been a major – and legitimate – concern for Egypt since before the Arab Spring began; Iranian-sponsored subversives were identified as operating there while Mubarak was still in power, and as recently as August 2012, terrorists in the Sinai attempted to use stolen Egyptian military equipment to ram structures at the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel.

Israel has responded to the attacks from Gaza with air attacks on the terrorists’ infrastructure, as well as an immediate counter-attack against the position of the anti-tank missile launcher on Saturday.  Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Israel won’t hesitate to launch a Gaza operation, presumably similar to Cast Lead in early 2009.

A month ago, The Israel Project published an excellent analysis pointing out that the posture of Hamas in Gaza was very much like its aggressive posture in 2008, from militarizing civilian facilities like mosques to unifying Gaza-based terror groups under its political leadership.  In terms of the latter, an armed faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the missile attack on the jeep on Saturday, along with Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.  It is quite possible that both groups are acting under Hamas’s operational leadership at the moment.

Changing conditions for peace

The Arab Spring has changed the factors in this dynamic since the timeframe of Operation Cast Lead, however.  In January of 2009, Israel didn’t face the prospect of a significant remilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula.  Today, she does.  No one nation or event has created the situation that now exists, but it could be something of a Catch-22 for decision-makers in Jerusalem.  Crack down on Gaza hard enough, and the resulting spillover into the Sinai will give Mohammed Morsi legitimate reasons to increase his military presence there.  Yet Israel doesn’t have the option of simply allowing Hamas to ramp up its attacks on civilians across the south – or on Israeli infantry patrols, for that matter.

Could Israel get an explicit, enforceable agreement from Morsi to coordinate each and every military deployment into the Sinai, so that Israel would effectively have a veto over deployments she considered too dangerous?  It doesn’t matter that those are essentially the terms of the treaty.  Morsi is a new ball-game.  Nothing is clear right now, partly because we don’t know how fast Morsi wants to move on his ideological designs on Jerusalem – and partly because it isn’t clear what the United States will do.

The US was the essential third leg of the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace accord, and our affirmation of interest in it is the only thing that will keep it in force, at least for a time, if Egypt decides it’s better to start maneuvering around the treaty than to honor it straightforwardly.  During Egypt’s turmoil in the first half of 2011, President Obama did not reaffirm that the 1979 accord was a core national security interest of the United States – a measure that would have been simple, basic statesmanship.  His administration has been virtually silent on the subject.

The point here is not to assert that Obama doesn’t care about the treaty and will stand by passively as it is contravened.  The point is that we don’t knowwhat he’ll do.  My own assessment is that what he does will depend on how Morsi handles an effective treaty breach.  If Morsi’s words meet the criteria by which Team Obama’s ideologues judge foreign actors, the US Congress may be the last stand in the United States for the principle of the 1979 accord – which could be breached by inches, with small, day-to-day tactical choices, without anyone ever announcing that that’s the intention.

The Cairo Administrative Court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit filed against Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, calling for the annulment of the 1978 Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

The petitioners argued that limitations on the amount of Egyptian forces which can be present in the Sinai set by the treaty are a threat to Egyptian national sovereignty because of increasing numbers of terror groups in the area.

The court rejected the case as outside its jurisdiction, leaving issues of national sovereignty to the president and his executive branch.

Since the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and the election of Morsi, calls have increased within Egypt to cancel the peace treaty with Israel.  One of the most vocal of these advocates is Morsi’s advisor, political analyst Mohammed Esmet Seif Dawla.

Dawla argued that not only is the threat to Egypt from the terror groups great, but that Israel may one day attempt to retake Sinai itself.

A striking photo essay [here] from EgyptSource focuses on the stark realities of Sinai and the multiple challenges it poses to the Egyptians. EgyptSource, a project of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, 

follows Egypt’s transition and provides a platform for Egyptian perspectives on the major issues – economic, political, legal, religious and human rights – that are at stake in the post-Mubarak era…

Needless to say, given its physical proximity to Israel, Sinai is not only an Egyptian challenge. That it gets such a small degree of media attention is a puzzle.

The essay that accompanies the images, by Mosaab Elshamy and published yesterday, starts this way:

Army checkpoints on the road to Sinai are almost an indication of a region at war. The vast peninsula bordering Egypt with Gaza and Israel rose to the forefront of the new Egyptian government’s troubles after an army checkpoint was attacked by unknown militants last Ramadan, killing 16 soldiers. This was not the first attack of its kind in Sinai – the region has been a hotbed of militants long before the revolution, but even more so after the fall of Mubarak. This was, however, the deadliest attack seen in Sinai, and the first under President Morsi’s rule. Backed by public anger, the military launched Operation Eagle to hunt down those behind the attack. Different claims have been made regarding the outcome, but what is evident from my visit to the region is that little has changed.

All that Sinai has become notorious for – smuggling of weapons, torturing Africans and rise of militancy – remains unchanged. The army had also declared its intention to close down the tunnels connecting Sinai to the besieged Gaza strip, but in Rafah economic activity is booming with trucks full of goods coming in and out of the town almost every hour of the day.

The same lack of security along with rise of Islamist extremists led to yet another sectarian attack on the Coptic minority in Rafah, causing many to flee for their lives, almost 2 years after their church was burnt by armed militants. [More]

Sunday produced two disturbing illustrations of today’s Sinai realities – again, almost no media coverage.

Gunmen attack buildings in Sinai’s Dahab Maan News | Published yesterday (updated) 29/10/2012 21:34

EL-ARISH, Egypt (Ma’an) — Gunmen attacked government buildings on Sunday in the Egyptian city of Dahab in the Sinai peninsula, security officials said. Bedouin gunmen attacked a checkpoint at the entrance to the popular Sinai tourist destination and also attacked local government headquarters and a hospital, Egyptian security officials told Ma’an. Disorder has spread in Sinai since former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising last year, with Islamist militants stepping up attacks on security forces and the Israeli border. Egypt’s president, Muhammad Mursi, has vowed to restore order.

6 hurt in shooting on children’s park in south Sinai Maan News | Published Sunday 28/10/2012 (updated) 28/10/2012 23:09

SHARM AL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Ma’an) — Gunmen opened fire in a children’s park in south Sinai on Saturday night, wounding six, officials said. The al-Fayrouz park in al-Tur city was packed with families celebrating the Eid al-Adha holiday when a group of Bedouin men opened fire, witnesses said. Four children, a man and woman suffered injuries, some serious, medics said. One child lost the fingers on her left hand, they said.

Then there’s this additional aspect of the Sinai challenge; the op ed below from Al Arabiya provides a small window into the conflicted states of mind that characterize the Egyptian – and other Arab sub-groups’ – views of the Palestinian Arabs and the multidimensional challenges they have posed for three generations.

A Palestinian state in Sinai? By AHMAD NAGUIB ROUSHDY Al Arabiya

Rumour has it, and some articles in Egyptian newspapers have stated that the increasing crossings of Palestinians to the Egyptian Sinai through the illegal tunnels between Egypt and Gaza have been taking place in accordance with a plan by the Islamist-led government of Hamas in Gaza, which has ties with the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President Mohamed Mursiin Egypt. The aim is to settle the Palestinians in Sinai, not as refugees but as a permanent homeland for them and to declare a Palestinian state there, substituting it for the West Bank… Every Egyptian sympathizes with the Palestinian cause, and much Egyptian blood has been shed in defense of it. But if these rumors are true, the Palestinians have shown themselves to be ungrateful and could be considered to be Egypt’s enemies. The Egyptian government should force any Palestinians now in Sinai to return to where they came from, since they cannot be considered refugees. The Mursi government’s ties with Hamas should not compromise Egypt’s security and sovereignty. When President Mursi in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September called for the right of the Palestinians to establish an independent state, he meant in Palestine and not in Egypt. Any Egyptian who helps the Palestinians or others to plunder our land must be considered a traitor. [More here]

Good to keep in mind when simple solutions are next offered up for the complex challenges in this part of the world.

Gunmen opened fire in a children’s park in south Sinai on Saturday night, wounding six, officials told the Ma’an news agency.

The al-Fayrouz park in al-Tur city was packed with families celebrating the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, when a group of Bedouin men opened fire, witnesses said.

Four children, a man and a woman suffered injuries, some serious, medics said. One child lost the fingers on her left hand, they said.

Locals said a Bedouin man had been thrown out of the park for harassing a female child, and returned with family members for the shooting.

The assailants fled the scene.

In northern Sinai, two girls escaped an attempted kidnapping when an officer with the traffic police intervened, a Ma’an correspondent reported.

Nada, 13, and Sabha, 14, were walking down the main street of el-Arish city when three men tried to abduct them.

Officer Ahmad al-Saeedi opened fire on the assailants, and one suffered a bullet wound to the leg. Al-Saeedi was also wounded and transferred to al-Arish hospital.

Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, passed information to Israel which led to the extermination of the senior Salafi Jihadist official in the Gaza Strip Hisham Sa’idani, and another senior official, Ashraf Sabah. The two members of the Salafi Jihadist organization based in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, the “Mujahideen Shura Council near Jerusalem,” were killed on Saturday after an IAF aircraft fired a missile at a motorcycle they were riding in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, Yoni Alper’s Terror Watch reported, based on Palestinian sources.

According to these sources, Hamas officials who have been fighting Salafis and the aforementioned organization, gave the private phone number of Sa’idani to Israel in order to get rid of one of the leading Global Jihadists in Gaza who subverted the Hamas rule.

Shortly before the assassination, Sa’idani received a phone call from the Israeli Intelligence, apparently in order to verify that this is, indeed, him. The call was answered by his assistant, Ashraf Sabah, and shortly thereafter they were killed by the Air Force.

Salafi websites affiliated with the global jihad are pointing an accusing finger at Hamas, saying that Israeli Intelligence has penetrated extensively into the Hamas security apparatus and hinting that they suspect that Hamas insiders cooperated with Israel on the assassination. Those websites have been calling to find out and bring to justice those collaborators and traitors who facilitated the elimination of the two officials. Thos sites are also warning members to conduct themselves carefully against more attackis.

The Shura Council organization recently called for Hamas to stop its pursuit of Jihadist activists in the Gaza Strip, to return to them the weapons that have been confiscated and to release all Salafi detainees from the prisons. Additionally, the organization called on Hamas to allow Salafis to continue to train and to attack the Zionists.

The senior of the two Jihadists who were assassinated was Hisham Sa’idani (Walid Al Maqdisi), 43, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship. Sa’idani was the leader of the Tawhid and Al Jihad and was responsible for the deadly attack against an IDF patrol on the Gaza border, killing one IDF enlisted man and seriously wounding an officer in 2009.

Maqdisi was also charged by the Egyptians of responsibility for attacks against tourist targets in Nuweiba, Sharm El Sheikh and Dahab in the Sinai peninsula, between 2004 – 2006. Later he was one of the founders of the organization of the Mujahideen Shura Council near Jerusalem, which maintain terrorist bases and has a firm hold in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai. It is considered a rising power in the region, whose goal is to execute the attacks against Israeli targets in the peninsula and through the Gaza Strip.

The IDF has gone to a higher alert level along the Egyptian border following reports of an attack in the Sinai earlier today.

The Egyptian report stated that armed attackers captured an Egyptian army truck in the Sinai.

As the last attack from the Sinai involved a captured Egyptian military vehicle, the IDF is taking no chances and is assuming that this might lead to the same thing.

There has been no attack, or specific warning of an attack at this point in time.

Many are saying that this year will be momentous. They say that this will be the year when the decision whether to attack Iran will be made, that this will be a decisive year in the political arena, and that this year will be an unforgettable one – engraved in history.

I am not at all sure if these predictions will come about. The upheavals waiting to happen are not about military or political moves. They are part of a much broader strategic structure.

I do not believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will order the army to carry out an open attack on Iran. I think that the time to have done so was when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared his intention to destroy Israel and began practical preparations to achieve his goal. From the moment that Israel chose the strategy of passing the buck to the world’s nations, the legitimacy of Israeli action against Iran was lost. Both the world and the Israeli Left agree on that. Israel’s repeated attempts to force the world to act are like trying to close the stable doors after the horses have escaped. And if the U.S. defines a “red line” for Iran, will it be worth more than President Eisenhower’s guarantee?

When Israel retreated from Sinai after the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the Americans agreed in writing that they would not allow Egypt to blockade the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. When Egyptian President Nasser invaded the Sinai and blocked the straits, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol called President Lyndon Johnson and reminded him of the U.S. guarantee – the unambiguous, signed “red line” that the Americans provided in exchange for Israel’s retreat. “I can’t find my copy,” LBJ stonewalled over the phone. Now, Israel is pressuring President Obama to give us another guarantee that will conveniently get “lost” when it is needed most.

I will be more than happy if my evaluation is wrong, as I do not want to go to war. But more than fearing war, I fear that Israel will slowly disintegrate, making war extraneous. I cannot see how Israel, in the long term, can exist and flourish in a nuclear Middle East under Iranian hegemony. More than fearing war, I fear that our enemies will not need it to achieve their goals.

Will 5773 be an election year in Israel? While uncertain, the Likud is currently gearing up for elections. But events over the past few months have shown that elections do not necessarily take place even when the date is set. I am much less confident about my take on this issue than I am on the Iranian matter. But I would not be surprised if by Rosh Hashanah of next year, the elections will still not have taken place.

Reality will shape the Jewish state’s society in 5773 more than we will shape it. Culturally, we are living in extremely unstable times. These cultural changes, symbolized by the birthrate of only one child per family, are currently expressed in an economic crisis that will make Western economies collapse. The rise of radical Islam will rear its head and the Middle East will return to its natural, pre-World War I state. The mask of modern nation-states will disintegrate and the expanse will once more be tribal. A country that is not Arab will claim hegemony: That nation will be either Turkey or Iran – if the latter achieves nuclear capabilities.

This is not prophecy. It is simply an educated evaluation based on the processes that are unfolding before our eyes. Events can play out in any number of ways, but we must prepare for any eventuality.

The questions that Israel must ask itself are much broader than the question of a nuclear Iran. Are we preparing the next generation for the new world or are we still committed to the old order? Are we equipping the next generation with a clear answer to the questions of identity and destiny? Are we building a culture of liberty that can overcome the enslavement that is engulfing the world?

On Rosh Hashanah, we crowned the King of the world. We blew the shofar and declared that we accept His dominion – His dominion, and no other.

In events being ignored not only by the Egyptian authorities, but also by the mainstream media and human rights organizations in the West, Muslim terrorists have in recent weeks attacked Christian families and forced them out of their homes and businesses in the Sinai town of Rafah. The terrorists have threatened to pursue their jihad against Christians until all of them leave the Sinai.

According to reports from the Sinai, all the Christians who used to live in Rafah have already fled their homes after being targeted by Muslim terrorists.

Christians said that before the Egyptian “revolution,” they enjoyed good relations with their Muslim neighbors and felt safer. But under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, the Christians in the Sinai were being left alone to confront Muslim gangs by themselves.

Egyptian security forces finally began operating against the terrorists only after 16 border guards were killed several weeks ago, apparently by Muslim jihadis in Sinai. But these forces have not been able to protect the Christian families in Sinai, whose lives been turned into hell ever since the ‘Arab Spring’ arrived in Egypt.

The Egyptian newspaper Al-Yom Al-Sabe (The Seventh Day) revealed that the Christian families were forced to leave Rafah after Muslim terrorists torched the local church. It wrote that the terrorists sprayed graffiti on the walls of the destroyed church calling on Christians to leave Rafah immediately.

The attack on the church was the latest in a series of assaults against Christian-owned homes and businesses.

Ehab Lewis, one of the Christians who fled Rafah, said that not a single Christian has remained in the town. Lewis, a former school teacher, said: “I was in Rafah with my family and we left out of fear for our lives. They threatened to torch my house. They attacked my neighbor’s shop and destroyed everything inside. He too was forced to run away.”

Lewis said that all the Christians in Rafah had received death threats before fleeing. “We were afraid to send our children to school,” he recounted. He and other Christians accused the Egyptian authorities of turning a blind eye to their plight. Instead of confronting the Muslim terrorists, the Egyptian authorities advised the Christian families to move to the town of Al-Arish in Sinai.

“This is not a solution,” said Father Kuzman, a local leader of the Christian community. “Why are we being asked to leave our holy land? The solution is for the authorities to impose law and order and protect their citizens. The government should not leave the border open to armed groups.”

Father Michael George said that the ethnic cleansing of Christians Sinai was taking place as the Egyptian authorities did nothing.

Christian families living in Sinai say they miss the good old days before the “Arab Spring,” when they were able to lead lives that were relatively normal.

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.