Numerous press reports this summer referred to the imminent arrival of American soldiers to deploy on the Egypt-Gaza border in an attempt to curb the area's ongoing underground smuggling activities. Reports specified that 425 soldiers are due to arrive in Egypt in September from the Kansas National Guard's second battalion, as well as the 130th Field Artillery, and a subordinate unit from the 250th Forward Support Battalion. Little was reported, however, about the legal framework under which American troops would operate and their exact roles, and the news spurred nationalist sentiments against what could be considered an encroachment on state sovereignty. Meanwhile, officials from both the Egyptian and the American governments denied the claims. “There are no plans to deploy US troops in Rafah," Margaret White, US Embassy spokesperson told Al-Masry Al-Youm. In an interview in his office in El-Arish, the North Sinai Governor Muhammad Shousha also said no American troops are due to deploy in the area. “No country in the world can accept foreign troops on its land to guard its borders. Those borders can only be guarded by [the nation's] own children," he said. He added, however, that the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), mandated to supervise the implementation of the security provisions of the 1979 Camp David accords, has an American contingent, the largest among the 11 nations involved. “We don't have any role in the smuggling detection activities on the borderline," Normad St. Pierre, the MFO's representative of the director general, told Al-Masry Al-Youm. “We're here only to implement the treaty. The treaty tells us to monitor any security violations by Egypt or Israel. We are employed by Egypt and we work with its Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David accords 30 years ago, which accounted for the withdrawal of Israel's military and civil presence in the Sinai peninsula and the placement of limited Egyptian forces in the area. As per the treaty's first annex, the MFO deploys in four designated security zones, three of which are located in Sinai and the fourth in Israel. “If we take part in monitoring the border against smuggling and in the installation of technical systems to detect tunnels, this would take away from our mission to protect the border," said St. Pierre. Tarek Fahmy, head of the Israeli Studies Unit at the National Center for Middle East Studies, placed the issue of foreign troops in Rafah in the recent context of the 2005 agreement between Egypt and Israel. That deal, which was signed following the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, stipulated the deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards in the 13.8-kilometer stretch between Rafah and Gaza, a border area code-named the Philadelphi Corridor by Israel. “Following the [growth] of arms smuggling and other types of smuggling, then the terrorist attacks that took place in Sinai, Egypt wanted to increase its border guards, but Israel refused," Fahmy said. The push for enhanced border protection became more pronounced following Israel's assault on Gaza in January of this year. Israeli air strikes repeatedly targeted the main smuggling tunnel corridor, and Israel openly challenged the Egyptians to do more to combat smuggling. “There are three options on the table of the Palestinian factions' dialogue in Cairo," said Fahmy, who often attends the negotiation sessions aimed at reconciling Hamas and Fatah. “One option is to deploy international troops on the border, with European and American contingents, like in Bosnia. Another option is to deploy an Arab force under Egyptian and Saudi leadership and a third option is to deploy NATO forces." There has been a vehement rejection from Hamas leaders to the presence of foreign forces on the border. This makes the deployment of Arab troops a more likely option if the reconciliation talks succeed, according to Fahmy. Still, Fahmy said an increased American presence on the border was a possibility, potentially in the context of helping train Egyptian forces. “The American administration has been referring to [US Lieutenant General Keith] Dayton's work in restructuring security forces in the West Bank, saying that its forces there have been well trained and qualified for border protection work," he said. Dayton, the US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, has been assigned since 2006 to train Palestinian security forces in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. Yet, so far, American direct involvement in the border area is limited to logistical support. The American administration helps its Egyptian counterpart in its quest to curb smuggling activities from Rafah to Gaza. In early September, an official US Embassy car was seen driving to the Rafah border crossing. “Embassy officials routinely visit the border area, as do visiting delegations from Congress, all as guests of the Egyptian government," White said. “At the request of the Egyptian government, the U.S. has been sharing its technical expertise and knowledge in tunnel detection since late 2007. The tunnel detection project on the border between Egypt and Gaza is led and managed by the Egyptian government." For Ashraf Hefny, secretary general of the leftist Tagammu Party in North Sinai, the current American cooperation with Egypt is a threatening sign. “Camp David is changing and it's more than just submission to the enemy now," he told Al-Masry Al-Youm in El-Arish. “There is a clear collaboration with the enemy, especially after [the] Gaza war. The electric probes on the border are in direct communication with the Israeli army. This is dangerous." Shousha, the North Sinai governor, signaled that the American work on the ground in Rafah is purely a technical compliment to the primary Egyptian role. “The American delegations are concerned with the international borderline, which is also guarded by the MFOs, of which the US is a contingent," he said. “But our security forces are depending on themselves in combating border smuggling."
