Government efforts at restoring security in Sinai are proceeding along three tracks, none of them without pitfalls, writes Ahmed Eleiba The authorities concerned with the situation in Sinai have laid out three tracks for remedying the security crisis there, perhaps the most important of which is the political track that involves the Sinai people on the ground. There have been several roundtable meetings with Sinai tribal sheikhs as part of efforts to create a roadmap for cooperation with the government in handling the crisis. The drive was inaugurated by a high-profile visit by the army Chief-of-Staff General Sobhi Sidqi to South Sinai, where he held the first meeting of this kind with tribal leaders in the region. The following day, a delegate including members of Islamist group Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya held a dialogue with tribal and religious leaders. Informed sources relate that the meeting concluded with an arrangement for an expanded meeting in Cairo next week, with a view to halting the spread of extremist ideology in the region. Although many have welcomed this course of action, some activists have opposed dialogue that would include persons they regard as being responsible for the export of extremist ideas to Sinai. Ashraf El-Hifni, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Movement, told Al-Ahram Weekly that "there is an awareness of the nature of certain elements that will take part in the negotiations that are meant to proceed in parallel with Operation Eagle." "However, it would have been better if the government had brought individuals who subscribe to jihadist modes of thought to account, instead of seeking to engage in dialogue with them to secure their retraction. There are families in Sinai who have had to pay for the dissemination of this kind of ideology with the blood of their children." "The government should state exactly who the enemy is. Then we will all join together to form a barrier against such forms of extremism and their repercussions." Musaad Abu Fagr, another Sinai activist, was also scathing in his criticism of the political track in handling the Sinai crisis. Government policy towards Sinai has been the same for decades, he said, and the present government is merely reproducing the same elements. "In 2007, we fought bitterly for a change in the national security commanders in Sinai, whose methods were violent and brutal. Today, the same methods are being applied in Sinai, even at a time when repressive instruments should no longer have a place in government policy following the end of the former regime." "What this means is that the Sinai has once again been caught up in the same predicament, if not an even worse predicament than in the past. The Ministry of Interior used to handle the situation in Sinai, but today things have become more complicated because the government is negotiating while keeping the army in the background as a policy of last resort." "Initially, the army arrived in order to uproot terrorist cells in the Sinai. Today, there is a grander scheme to combat so-called terrorism in the whole of the peninsula, and the government is also negotiating with groups that espouse violence, operate outside the law and call for the establishment of an Islamic emirate in Sinai. This is a sign of failure: the government is facing the possibility of defeat not by political forces that offer an alternative view of the situation in the peninsula, but by groups accused of practising violence." The deeper problem in the Sinai is that there is no vision for handling an area that is not culturally or socially completely linked with the rest of the country, Abu Fagr said. "It is not the Camp David Accords and the related security protocols that are obstructing efficient security in Sinai. Rather, it is a lack of political imagination. What we are seeing is a clash between the way the state sees things and the way they are seen in Sinai. The crucial question is how we can bring about the fusion between the Sinai and the rest of the country." "Can we apply the sort of approach that Nelson Mandela used in dealing with the situation in South Africa, instead of the ways that former presidents [Gamal] Abdel-Nasser and [Hosni] Mubarak, and now apparently president [Mohamed] Mursi, used and are using in Sinai, in order to find an efficient way forward? The Sinai slipped out of control this time round. The fear is that it might slip away altogether." The second track used by the government in remedying the peninsula's security problems is the operational one, and this is being pursued by the army, deployed in the Sinai in greater numbers than ever since the signing of the peace agreement with Israel over three decades ago. However, in spite of this massive deployment, the operation -- codenamed "Eagle Two" -- appears to have been put on hold, according to eyewitnesses in Sinai. A source from Gabal Al-Halal, identified as a refuge for armed groups, said "there is no sign of a security presence or of military tensions" in the area. However, Sinai rights activist and lawyer Islam Qudeir said that "as quiet as things may now appear, the Armed Forces have mounted numerous raids in areas around Rafah, Sheikh Zuweid and Arish, and they have surrounded numerous strongholds." There has been intense activity in security quarters connected with the Ministry of Interior and homeland security, in particular, he said, and various Palestinians and persons of unidentified nationality have been arrested. According to leaked reports, video footage was found on some of these individuals' mobile phones that had a bearing on events in Rafah. However, solid information has been hard to come by because of the security surrounding the investigations, the findings of which have been submitted to the public prosecutor's office. Qudeir said that the coroner's report on the DNA of the bodies of the perpetrators of the Rafah attack, handed over by Israel to the Egyptian authorities, is expected to be submitted this week. "This should shed light on many of the mysteries surrounding the attack," he said. This is consistent with remarks made by military expert Talaat Muslim, who said that despite the present apparent calm Operation Eagle had succeeded in tracking down various terrorist cells, although he admitted that this could have been by luck rather than design. Muslim said that the operation had also put an end to arms smuggling in the area and had closed down many of the tunnels used to smuggle not only arms, but also drugs and other illegal items. He pointed out that "militarily, the operation wasn't required to branch out in all these directions, but realities on the ground made it necessary to do so. What is important is that care is taken to ensure that the operation does not lose sight of its main goal," he said. The third track is security and intelligence cooperation. A Palestinian security committee from Gaza held meetings with senior military officials in Cairo this week, the purpose being to furnish information that could contribute to investigations currently underway on the Rafah attack. However, it appears that the meetings may have made a slight detour. According to a telephone interview with Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, a Hamas official in Gaza, the security officials who arrived in Cairo on Sunday cautioned Egypt against moving in the wrong direction as a result of intelligence received within the framework of the security cooperation arrangement between Palestinian intelligence in Ramallah and the General Intelligence Agency in Cairo. Al-Zahhar said that some of the information received through this channel may be misleading, or constructed in such a way as to cast suspicion on Hamas and its military wing the Qassam Brigades. Other information may be conjectural and not founded on concrete investigations, he said. An Egyptian military source told the Weekly that Palestinians and individuals of other nationalities were involved in the Rafah attack, and that the security agencies now have a general picture of the networks these persons were connected to and those cooperating with them. He stressed that many such elements were now "under control" and that others were under surveillance. The comments are in line with the leaks referred to by Qudeir, which point to the involvement of Palestinian elements, but Al-Zahhar dismissed the remarks. "The list of names we received from Cairo included such persons as Mumtaz Dughmush, a founder of the Army of Islam. Our interrogation of these people confirmed that they were not involved in the attacks and some swore oaths that they had not participated in them," Al-Zahhar said. "The list also included elements of the resistance in Rafah [who are wanted in connection with the incident]. It is true that these are members of Hamas, but how could they have been involved when they are sworn to obey the resistance and cannot move from their locations without permission to do so? This has not stopped Palestinian Authority intelligence in Ramallah, which knew of their locations, from claiming that they were involved." "Cairo's relationship with the Hamas movement and the other resistance movements that are under the control of the Hamas government has improved to the extent that it now acknowledges the reality of the conditions in Gaza. It is impossible that Hamas could have been involved in any manner whatsoever in an incident of this sort." Al-Zahhar expressed his disappointment with the way the investigations are being handled from the Cairo side, saying that the inability of the Palestinian security delegation to convince Cairo of the facts as it saw them was a sign that Egypt was reverting to its former security mentality in its approach to the Sinai. "At the end of the week, we will meet with President Mursi, explain the situation to him and ask him to change Egypt's security approach," Al-Zahhar said. Egyptian sources have countered that Hamas was responsible for the jihadist organisations by virtue of its admission that it controls them and other movements in Gaza. The sources dismissed the notion that Gaza had been blameless in the recent attack. In response, Al-Zahhar said that, "we have control over the organisations, but not directly. Rather, this control is exercised by agreement and as a result of mutual understanding. At the same time, we are on the look out for individuals who may deviate ideologically, keeping them under constant surveillance." With regard to Operation Eagle, an Egyptian military source said that Egypt was coordinating with Israel regarding the forces deployed in Sinai. The Israeli media had been focussing on what it had portrayed as opposition in Israel to Egypt's deployment of military hardware in Sinai that had not been agreed upon by the two sides and which according to the Israeli press constituted a violation of the security protocols of the peace treaty, he said. However, the source said that, "there was an implicit agreement from the outset that there was a risk of imminent danger [in Sinai] and that Israel itself was threatened by this danger." As the Israeli press grew more strident, Egyptian Minister of Defence Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi had contacted his Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak, he said, and the two men had agreed on the operation such that it did not threaten Israeli security in any way. Although some Egyptian commentators have advocated imposing a de facto change in the security arrangements in Sinai, it is believed that Israel will strenuously object to any alteration of the security protocols, even though this will leave portions of Sinai, such as area D adjacent to Israel, devoid of aerial defences. Said Okasha, an expert on Israeli affairs at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said that "many Israeli reports indicate that Israel itself has penetrated area D and that in the wake of the January Revolution in Egypt Israeli forces treated this area as a kind of buffer zone and set up rapid intervention units there because of the poor or non-existent security situation in Egypt at the time." "Perhaps there was a justification for this at that time, but there is no longer any justification for Israeli penetrations into this zone. This means that if Israel believes that Egypt has been violating the security protocols by bringing in defensive military equipment, as Israeli military officials have repeatedly claimed, then Israel, too, has been violating the protocols," he said.
