After discovering last week, a tunnel from Gaza into the Sinai that extended 1850 meters, Egypt has decide to extend it sterile zone along its 14 kilometer Gazan border from 500 meters to 1000 meters it was announced on Thursday.

So far Egypt has destroyed 500 Rafah homes, affecting 25,000 people, and that number will now increase.

Egypt has paid out close to 8 million dollars to Rafah residents who homes were destroyed.The town of Rafah is located on the southern end of Gaza and is split in two by the border, half on the Gazan side, and half on the Egyptian/Sinai side.

In addition, Egypt is digging a trench along the 50 kilometer border that goes down to a depth of 50 meters to help stop the infiltrations from Gaza into the Sinai.

Egypt is still angry at the recent Gazan terror attack that killed over 30 Egyptian security personnel, which it blames on Hamas.

It has completely shut down the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.

Only Israel’s crossings into Gaza remain open, and Israel is allowing in construction material this coming week, which the UN claims will be monitored for misuse.

Gaza needs the construction material to rebuild homes that were destroyed after Hamas attacked Israel this summer and instigated a war.

Egyptian President A-Sisi said on Egyptian TV that he wasn’t going to allow Sinai to become a staging ground for terror attacks against Israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has agreed to an Egyptian request to deploy two infantry battalions and helicopters in the terror-plagued Sinai, another relaxation of the allowed number of Egyptian troops permitted in the Sinai under the 1979 treaty.

Th peace treaty stipulates that Israel must agree to additional troops.

For the time being, Israel is happy that President Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi is fighting Hamas and jihad terror in the Sinai, immediately south of Gaza, where a jihad attack last week killed 31 Egyptian soldiers. Cairo has charged that Hamas was involved in coordinating and carrying out the murders.

This is not the first time Israel has agreed to Egypt’s sending in more armed soldiers into the Sinai, which was used by the Egyptian regime in 1973 to start the Yom Kippur War. The issue rose after the fall of the Mubarak regime, and Knesset Members unsuccessfully argued that legislative approval was necessary before Egypt could beef up its presence in the Sinai, a move which also would give it an opportunity in the future to turns its guns on Israel in the future.

In 2012, Egypt moved in tanks without Israel approval.

“It is clear to everyone that the Egyptians — whether they succeed in dealing with the terror in Sinai or don’t — at some point are going to ask to open the military appendix,” Yediot Acharonot journalist Alex Fishman wrote at the time.. “The meaning of this is that the demilitarization of Sinai will be eroded, which is one of the most important anchors of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.”

The recent approval to deploy additional soldiers is conditioned on Egypt’s fighting “terrorist organizations,” Army Radio reported.

In the past four years, Egypt has gone through the Mubarak regime, a temporary military regime, the openly anti-Israel and anti-American Muslim Brotherhood government, another temporary military regime and now the government headed by al-Sisi.

What happens if the Islamists take over again, or if Abbas takes over Gaza and convinces Al-Sisi to oppose Israel until” Jerusalem is liberated”?

The Egyptian government will be armed to the teeth in the Sinai with Israel conveniently in range of its tanks.

Following the rocket launch from Gaza into Israel on Friday night, Israel closed the Kerem Shalom and Erez crossings between Israel and Gaza, until further notice – which may actually be just until Monday.

Egypt has also closed their crossing between Egypt and Gaza following the terrorist attacks in the Sinai.

Egypt is evacuating thousands of its residents from the Sinai side of the Gaza border in order to form a buffer zone.

The Egyptian government declared a state of emergency in the area after last week’s attack in which 31 soldiers were killed by the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a terror group linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist organization.

Egyptians began moving from the area on Wednesday in accordance with military orders issued by the government.

The planned buffer zone is intended to block terrorists and smugglers, government officials told Egyptian media.

They keys to 62 homes were handed over to military officials by their owners on Wednesday (Oct. 29) in the town of Rafah, which straddles the border with Gaza.

According to international media, Egypt plans to expel families living in 880 homes along the northern Sinai border with Gaza.

That means that some 10,000 Egyptians will be left homeless, or at the least, displaced by the expulsion. The number is comparable to the number of Israelis expelled in the 2005 Disengagement from the Gush Katif region of Gaza and northern Samaria.

As was the case in Israel, the Egyptian government has promised financial compensation to those who were displaced – but residents have yet to see the money.

Unlike Israel, however, residents were given very short notice to pack up and leave their homes within the 13 kilometer area (8 miles).

The Egyptian paper Al Masri Al Youm reports that following investigations into the Sinai terror attack that killed 31 Egyptian soldiers, the Sinai terrorists acquired their weapons from three Hamas terrorists who transferred it to them.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency Saturday after terrorists carried out a deadly assault in the northern Sinai, killing 33 Egyptian troops.

Al-Sisi charged that “this operation had a foreign fund to execute” he attack against the Egyptian army… to break the back of Egypt and Egyptians.”

A car bomb blew up at an army checkpoint, and armed terrorists fired on soldiers at another checkpoint.

Egypt closed the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.

No one has taken responsibility for the attack, but most analysts have concluded it was organized by the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group.

The IDF has concluded that Wednesday’s attack on two soldiers at the Egyptian border involved a drug smuggling attempt and “was not related to terror.”

“An IDF inquiry suggests the cross-border attack on patrol was a violent drug smuggling attempt, foiled by Caracal Battalion Company Commanders,” military spokesmen said. ”The perpetrators opened fire from three locations including from a car driving along the border. From the attack the Company Commander, Captain Or Ben-Yehuda and another soldier were wounded. IDF responded and killed at least three of the attackers. We are continuing to review the circumstances of the incident.”

The Egyptian version is totally different. Egyptians security forces directly blamed the attack on the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Beyt al-Maqdis (ABM) terrorist group.

“The goal is to provoke an Israeli incursion into Egyptian territory, which would then put Cairo in hot water,” Daniel Nisman, president of the Middle East think tank Levantine Group, told The Atlantic.

He added that Israel’s response is limited because “intervening in Egypt would backfire [and] all Israel can do is continue cooperating with the Egyptian government.”

Take the IDF statement for whatever it’s worth, but it is hard to believe that a “violent drug smuggling attempt” is not linked with terror, for which drug smuggling is a big money-maker.

Could it be that the IDF simply is trying to tone down the idea that Al Qaeda terrorists or ISIS sympathizers are active on the border?