Ever since the 1979 Camp David Accords, Israel and Egypt have officially been at peace. As a result of those accords, Israel agreed to return to Egypt, for the second time (the first time was in 1957, after the Sinai Campaign) the entire Sinai, together with several oilfields Israel had discovered and several airbases it had built, along with the tourist city of Sharm el Sheikh. The handover of the Sinai took place in three tranches, and was completed in 1982. Ever since then, Egypt and Israel have had a “cold peace.” The friendly relations Israel had hoped for never developed. No Egyptian leader, save Hosni Mubarak, has in the past 45 years ever visited the Jewish state, and he did so only to attend the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, as a private citizen, at the request of Rabin’s widow. Nor has any Israel leader ever been invited to visit Egypt.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian media have never stopped printing or broadcasting calumnies against the Jewish state, including such absurdities as the claim that Israel wants to expand “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” The anti-Israel animus frequently degrades into outright antisemitism. Israel has a handful of defenders, and hundreds of enemies, in the Egyptian media. Egyptian schoolbooks, though not nearly as bad as the UNRWA texts, continue to contain most unflattering depictions of the Jewish state and its inhabitants, including claims about the Jewish “love of money.” The 1948 war is depicted as having been started not by the five Arab armies that invaded Israel, but by Israel, and the same topsy-turvy version is provided for the 1967 war, with Israel presented as the aggressor even though it was Nasser who, beginning in mid-May 1967, demanded that UN Secretary-General U Thant remove the UN peacekeepers from the Sinai. Nasser announced that he was blockading the Straits of Tiran and moved 100,000 troops into the northern Sinai, approaching ever closer to the border with Israel.
Was the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel a success? Certainly it was for Egypt, which not only got back the entire Sinai with oilfields, airbases, and the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, but also has received from the United States since 1979, in economic and military aid, the astounding sum of $90 billion. But Israel lost those airbases, those oilfields, and that tourist destination of Sharm el-Sheikh. It also had its hopes dashed for closer relations with Egypt. The Egyptians have made no efforts to warm up that “cold peace.”
Now there are new Israeli worries about Egypt, because of the significant expansion of Egypt’s military, despite the fact that Egypt is not threatened by any of its neighbors. This buildup is mainly in offensive weapons, such as tanks, and fighter jets, and not in defensive weaponry such as anti-missile batteries. Most worrisome of all, Egypt has been building military bases in the Sinai that are suited only to house offensive weapons. More on Egypt’s military buildup, and those bases it has built in the Sinai that violate the terms of the Camp David Accords, can be found here: “Violation of peace deal? Israel’s US envoy warns Egypt is ‘reinforcing Sinai bases,'” Jerusalem Post, February
Egypt has built military bases in Sinai “that can only be used for offensive operations, for offensive weapons,” Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, highlighted on Sunday.
Leiter called it a “clear violation of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel – after some 45 years.”
He also noted that the Israeli government will present Cairo’s military buildup in Sinai “very soon.”
Leiter first said this in a meeting with American Jewish organizations on January 28, however the recording of this was just shared online by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in America on Friday, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
Ten days ago, Egypt released a video showing its army’s military capabilities, which includes hundreds of tanks, fighter jets, helicopters and navy vessels.
These tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, and ships are all offensive weapons. There was no video of anti-missile or anti-drone systems.
Last May, retired Lt. Col. Eli Dekel, who has been researching Egypt for 60 years, claimed that Egypt had increased its armored forces by hundreds of tanks.
“I did not find an explanation in the media for why Egypt increased its armored forces by 700 tanks. They call it a cold peace, but that’s not what this is,” he told Maariv.
No, this is much worse than a “cold peace.” An increase of seven hundred new tanks can only be understood as preparations for war. And the only conceivable enemy, as far as Egypt is concerned, is Israel.
The ambassador pointed out the violations in the Sinai Peninsula are “a subject that is bound to come up because it is unacceptable.”
According to the Camp David Accords, most of the Sinai was to have been demilitarized to various degrees. The Egypt–Israel peace treaty set a limit to the amount of forces Egypt could place in the Sinai Peninsula, especially within 20–40 kilometers (12–25 miles) of the border with Israel.
For a while, Israel allowed Egyptian forces to send troops further north in the Sinai than was allowed under the peace treaty. This was done because the Egyptian army was fighting ISIS forces in the Sinai. Israel expected that once ISIS was crushed, the Egyptian army would pull back to the lines set out in the Camp David Accords. ISIS was crushed, but not only did the Egyptian army not withdraw, but sent even more troops into the northern Sinai. At the same time, it has turned civilian structures, including 37 schools, into military bases. Egypt has built several large military bases in central and northern Sinai that are an express violation of the peace treaty with Israel.
somehistory says
What else can be expected from mozlums? Their professions of peace, of agreements, mean nothing to them and will be broken when they see their opportunity.
Israel is fighting on several fronts. The egyptian mozlums see an opportunity and their number of forces are likely to continue increasing.
Paul Weiss says
This is part of an overall Jew hatred and warloke behavior of our Egyptian and Islamic prejudice of their nation towards Israel. The USA must stop and deter these moves. Or Israel will have to talk, and act eventually.
rick says
Pretty amazing analysis of Egyptian priorities. 700 new tanks and how many older tanks? Again overwhelming superiority of Egyptian armor. In numbers that is. Those additional bombs and weapons for use against Hamas and Hezbollah may be necessary against Egypt. Hopefully war will not take place. So what lessons can Israel learn from this as well as the recent successes against Hezbollah and Hamas?
1. Israel can never deal or negotiate with enemies on what could be called an “understanding” equally. If an enemy fights against Israel the objective must be total destruction of that enemy. And Israel may have to abandon its moral code which puts caring about Arab civilians before IDF soldiers in the name of humane ideals.
2. If Egypt does attack, G-d forbid, and Israel is forced to fight again show no mercy. And if and when Israel retakes the Sinai no more giving it back. Egypt cannot play both the war game and then expect an understanding Israel to return land. That land must be used as either a buffer against Egypt or more creatively the home of Palestinians from within Israel and Gaza.
3. If Egypt has no defensive systems against rockets and missiles, then Israel should use rockets and missiles. If they cannot defeat drones, then Israel should over use drones.
4. Israel never wanted to deal devastating strikes against Egyptian troops which end in much less of them returning home in the hopes there would be more friendly relations. That never happened. Egyptians are part of the Arab world that was strongly pro-Hitler. Egypt and Palestinians were the foremost pro-Nazi Arabs. Seems that hatred has remained.
5. An Egyptian war will result in greater hope among Palestinians that finally Israel will pay a price and they will do what they can to make that true. Seems those 2,000 pound bombs that Trump sent Israel may be used against not Hamas but Egypt.
somehistory says
If the mozlums currently in Gaza are moved out, the Sinai would only give them nearness and opportunity to dig tunnels and keep on slaughtering Jews.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
That’s why they should be relocated to other Arab countries, preferably nowhere near Israel. I liked the ideas of Somalia and Western Sahara
࿗Infidel࿘ says
If Egypt and Israel go to war again, this time Israel should reconquer and re-annex the Sinai, and expel all the Arab muslims living there. Maybe make it a haven for Copts, as well as open it up to Yazidis, Assyrians and other non-muslims of the region. In fact, Gaza, once it is emptied of Palestinians, can be merged w/ Sinai again and become its capital, and the entire peninsula can be a DMZ. On top of that, Israel should have 50% of the rights to Suez traffic
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Just like after the Cold War, most Western foreign policy bureaucracies acted like nothing had changed, the same is true about US policy on Egypt. It’s important to recall why we were arming Egypt to the teeth in the first place
After Anwar Sadat was assassinated, Mubarak saw that the Arab countries around him – namely Libya and Syria – were pretty hostile to him, and too tied to the Soviets, who Sadat had expelled. While Syria was arming itself to the teeth, Libya was as well. This was in the early 80s, when Col Gadaffi was a revolutionary jihadist, sabre-rattling against Egypt for being a stooge of Washington. And he was pretty actively trying to set up puppet regimes elsewhere in North Africa – successfully in Upper Volta, unsuccessfully in Chad. Like Saddam, he was blowing Libya’s entire budget on Soviet weaponry, which Egypt rightly perceived as a threat to it
This is why Egypt started arming itself. Washington was anxious that Cairo not go the way of Damascus and fall to a Baathist-like or other pro-Soviet regime. The fear was that if that happened, the Camp David agreement would collapse, and then war would resume b/w Jerusalem and Cairo. The biggest threat to Egypt was Col Gadaffi, which is why they were arming themselves to the teeth
Part of the rationale went away after the Cold War. But even after that, once the Iraq War was done, one of the few benefits of the war was Gadaffi voluntarily ending Libya’s WMD projects and turning it over, as well as normalizing relations w/ Western countries. At this point, Libya was no longer a threat to Egypt. Neither was Israel, and neither was Sudan, which after Gaafar Nimeiry’s ouster, had never been a stable country
That was the point when the US should have revisited the question of military aid to Egypt. Certainly after the ouster of President Mubarak, this should have been revisited when Morsi came to power. Of course, since that happened under Obama, he ignored it.
But now, much as the US loves customers for our military hardware, it’s time to look at the geopolitical landscape of where we are selling to, not just what we are selling. There is no reason that Egypt needs such armaments, so it’s worth asking who they’re meant for. Much of Libya is under the control of Marshall Khilafa Haftar, who President Sisi backs, and who controls most of Libya, so Egypt is under no threat from Libya. Then there is Sudan, which is still in a civil war, if I recall right. Yeah, ISIS is a threat, but not so big a threat that they require the state of the art equipment. If otoh, a substantial portion of Egypt’s military is sympathetic to the jihadists, then giving them all that aid is simply empowering those jihadists, be it ISIS, muslim brotherhood, or anyone else
Israel Katz should feed this to Huckabee, who should feed that back to Rubio & Trump. It’s high time that the military gravy train to Cairo is ended
OLD GUY says
$90 BILLION American tax dollars that bought what?
Stop foreign aid and military aid to foreign countries, we as citizens of America are being TAXED to support foreign leaders rich lifestyle and spread hatred towards America.
JustJim says
As long as I can remember, this has been going on. The U.S. taxpayers have been supporting half the World, since the end of WWII. Trump is correct, telling Europe that they better put on their big boy pants, and start protecting themselves, without expecting help from the other side of the globe. Another correct thing, Trump immediatelty burst Zelensky’s bubble when he announced no U.S. troops to Ukraine. Personally, I think Trump should tell the Taliban, we are on our way over to pick up the billions in armaments that Dementia Joe abandoned there. Trump knows what is going on in Egypt, but is playing it cool, thus freeing up U.S. forces in Europe, to be deployed to the Middle East.
Brenrod says
Israel must prepare for the next war with Egypt and this time don’t stop after crossing the canal, go to Cairo, depose the government, capture the Suez canal and DONT return Sinai or the Suez Canal next time.