Byzantine Realities

"They [Wilayet Sinai, ISIL affiliate] have genius strategists. If you study the map of their attacks, they obviously know what they are doing exactly, and it shows that they have a great deal of freedom of mobility."
Mohannad Sabry, Egyptian journalist

"Like anywhere, they could be considered a potential target [UN-mission-member troops]."
"ISIS is just out there."
"When will we [Israel] become the target [of ISIL]?"
Lt. Col. Yaron Malka, deputy commander, Israel Saqi Brigade, Sinai border

"The national security forces redeployed along the borders with Egypt, and it is part of the security plan to fully control the borders and the stability of it, as well as the security of our Egyptian brothers."
Eyad al-Gozom, Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman

Israel ups security level along Egypt's Sinai border. (photo credit:screenshot)

Egypt has been hard hit by Islamist terrorists in the Sinai, particularly of late. Since, as example, the emergency of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, whose barbarian exploits have attracted the attention and admiration of other, less threateningly controversial Islamist groups, like the Salafist Bedouin tribes whose home the Sinai is, and like al-Qaeda groups that established themselves in the Sinai, all of whom have targeted Egyptian police and military installations.

With the entry of ISIL into the lethal presence of other Islamist jihadis, the threats and the attacks have intensified, leaving the government of Egypt in an ongoing emergency situation to cope with their violent presence. Egypt's economy has been in a downward spiral, and standby adjuncts such as  tourism have suffered their own setbacks each time any of these jihadist groups attack foreign tourists who arrive to savour their presence at the sites of world renowned archaelogical symbols of antiquity.

When the ISIL affiliate, Wilayat Sinai succeeded in bombing a Russian charter flight last October killing all 224 people aboard, it was a celebrated victory for ISIL, a provocation to the Kremlin and a blow to Egypt's reputation as a relatively safe tourist destination. Since then the Islamist group has focused on mounting a stream of attacks on Egyptian soldiers, targeting them with roadside bombs and overrunning military posts.

Egypt has reluctantly transitioned from its earned distrust of Hamas which has led it to flood the smuggling tunnels from the Sinai into adjacent Gaza, to a point where in its desperation to deal with all the terrorist groups, it is negotiating with Hamas to help monitor the border against Islamic State militias and the Bedouin tribes in a turnabout from accusations that Hamas has been involved in attack conspiracies with them.

The Israeli outpost defending the Israeli border with the Sinai Peninsula is close enough so that the soldiers of the IDF not only can see the UN peacekeeping observers and their forces but with a pair of field binoculars the Israeli military can view fighting taking place between the terrorists and the Egyptian army. Both Israeli and Egyptian authorities believe that Hamas permits Sinai militants to enter Gaza through its smuggling tunnels and to make use of Gaza as a haven.

Israel accuses  Hamas of smuggling arms across the Sinai and into Gaza, aided by Bedouin gangs, some of whom have ties to the Islamic State, but Hamas denies all of this. Insisting it has no connections nor sympathies toward ISIL. A video issued by ISIL several years earlier branded Hamas as infidels. Egypt is now applying pressure on Hamas to better control its border to prevent movement of fighters between Gaza and Sinai.

And because Gaza is partially dependent on Egypt for economic survival, leaving Hamas willing to trade for the promise of opening its border with Egypt, there is some compliance with the Egyptian demand. Over 300 Hamas fighters have been deployed now in three areas along the sea and two land border crossings with the Sinai, in reflection of that agreement. It should also be recalled that the Palestinians living in Gaza are themselves Egyptian in origin, like Hamas, like the Brotherhood.


Lest we forget in our confusion over strange alliances in this part of the world of Byzantine intrigues, hatred and violence, this is Hamas, the very same group held to be a terrorist organization alongside its parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, by both Israel and Egypt. And this is the same Hamas whose charter's most important promise is the destruction of Israel. Hamas, the offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood which Egypt has outlawed.

A gunman from the Izz ad-Din al- Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, photographed inside an underground tunnel in Gaza, in 2014.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

The Guardian Misleads on Bedouin ‘Villages’

December 2, 2013 6:40 am

Author:

Adam Levick

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Bedouins in the Sinai desert. Photo: Wiki Commons.

On Nov. 28th the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent Harriett Sherwood ‘reported‘ on a letter (published at the Guardian on the same day) signed by 50 public figures such as “Antony Gormley, the actor Julie Christie, the film director Mike Leigh and the musician Brian Eno” (and Jenny Tonge) opposing an Israeli plan to remove up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins from ‘their historic desert land’.

Sherwood quotes the letter thus:

The eviction and destruction of about 35 “unrecognised” villages in the Negev desert will, the letter says, “mean the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land, and systematic discrimination and separation.”

Leaving aside the absurd idea that people who had till quite recent times led itinerant lives moving across vast distances of the Middle East with no fixed national identity can be now labeled “Palestinian Bedouin” like politically correct produce in an organic food co-op, the article (and letter) conjure up visions of camel-riding nomads being forced to fold their goat-skin tents and leave from vast stretches of Sahara-like dunes.

The Guardian once again is trying to promote the idea that these are Bedouin living in little villages that are the equivalent of the quaint villages one sees in reruns of “Midsommer Murders.” The reality, however, is far different.

Had Sherwood and the signatories ever bothered to take a drive down Route 40 from Beersheva, they may have found that they rather approved of the idea of relocating Bedouin from ramshackle tin huts in slum-like groups that have no running water to planned communities that provide the modern conveniences and sanitary conditions that they themselves expect and enjoy.

The photo below (which I took myself last year) depicts one “unrecognized village” a few miles south of Beersheva seen from Route 40.


It is “unrecognized” because it is simply an ad hoc assembly of tin and cardboard huts. The bales of hay are to feed the camels you can see in the foreground, the only reminder of this family’s nomadic past. There are dozens of these encampments strung out along the highway, and the issues of pollution, environmental destruction, and sheer unsightliness are immediately evident.

So here’s the question for the 50 public figures in the UK:
If you left Hampstead for a trip into the country, and found “unrecognized villages” like this (and there are dozens like it) strung out along the M-1, would you be protesting against the idea of moving people to better housing with modern facilities, or protesting against the British government for leaving them there?

Adam Levick is the managing editor of CiF Watch, an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).