Petra was chosen by the BBC as one of “the 40 places you have to see before you die.” Admittedly, the finality of the phrase “See Naples and die,” didn’t prevent me visiting Naples four times. However, so far I haven’t been to Petra. Nevertheless, if the opportunity arises I will go there on my annual holiday, either before or after visiting the other 39 places. My fascination with a place I have never seen stems from visits to another Nabatean city, Avdat.
Situated in the central Negev, Avdat like Petra lies off the beaten track. Even route 40, a secondary road south, doesn’t quite reach Avdat
The ruins of three other Nabatean towns - Haluza, Mamshit and Shivta, with their associated fortresses and arid region farms were once part of a well beaten track, the renowned incense and spice route of the ancient Levant. A trade route that stretched from Oman and Yemen, via Petra and the Negev towns and caravanserais to Gaza. For centuries the Nabateans monopolised this route Precious frankincense and myrrh, at times as precious as gold were brought to the Gaza coast and shipped to Greece and Rome.
It seems that the Nabateans were pre-Islamic Arab tribes that absorbed and adapted other cultures, languages and religions. They were literate yet they left behind no literature of any worth. After the Arab conquest they assimilated completely and ceased to exist as an ethnic entity.
About 15 km southwest of Avdat lies the Egyptian border, Israel’s oldest border. In 1892 Lord Cromer, the British Administrator of Egypt advocated annexing the Sinai peninsular in order to add“strategic depth” to protect Britain’s vital asset, the Suez Canal. Cromer's proposed border line with the Turkish province, often referred to as Palestine, was drawn from a point on the Mediterranean coast of Sinai east of El-Arish then southeast to the Gulf of Aqaba at the northwestern point of the Arabian Peninsula. Finally in 1906 after lengthy negotiations the Turkish government agreed to the British modified proposal.
For many years after the Six Day War many Israeli politicians, military strategists, journalists and probably the majority of Israelis valued the “strategic depth” Sinai afforded us. However once the peace treaty with Egypt was signed Sinai was returned to Egypt and the old border reverted to its former status. According to the terms of the peace treaty Egypt was permitted to maintain a small lightly armed force in Sinai for the purpose of policing the region.
A border fence stretching along Lord Cromer's demarcation line will eventually seal our most porous border. So far only 20% of the fence has been erected. It is a simpler, cheaper version of the Gaza security fence. It won’t seal the border hermetically, but it will delay infiltrators of all kinds and give the security forces time to apprehend them.
The details of the terrorist attack perpetrated last week are well known, suffice to say that it was carried out by elements of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), an organisation with close operational ties to Hamas. It was controlled from Gaza and followed the so-called "U-route," by which Palestinian terrorists attempt to move from Gaza to Sinai and then into Israel. The attack itself was carried out along a strip of the Israeli-Egyptian border north of Eilat along route 12, where the road runs very close to the border in an area frequently used for illegal immigration and smuggling.
As many as twenty terrorists were involved in the ambush. Apparently they comprised several groups acting in concert. They used a variety of weapons, including at least one rocket-propelled grenade, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), explosive vests, and a mortar. They attacked two civilian buses and several cars and used IEDs against IDF units responding to the action. The scope and complexity of the operation suggests careful planning, good intelligence gathering, significant logistics preparation and tenacity.
The Israeli General Security Service (GSS/Shabak) got word of the terrorist group’s movements and intentions. A general alert was sent to the IDF southern command some days before the attack. Unfortunately the GSS didn’t know exactly when and where the attack would take place. In response to the alert special combat forces from the Golani Infantry Brigade and the police counterterrorism unit were deployed. At the time of the attack they responded quickly and efficiently. In the pursuit that followed the attack an IDF soldier and a counterterrorism police commando were killed. Seven terrorists were killed in the counter action. During the pursuit some Israeli soldiers crossed the border briefly and shallowly to engage the retreating terrorists.
After identifying the PRC as the group responsible, Israel retaliated strafing its command headquarters in Rafah. PRC leader Kamal Nairab (alias Abu Awad) and four of his lieutenants were killed, including military commander Imad Hamad, who Israeli intelligence believes planned the attack.
More broadly, the incident highlights the challenge Israel faces in responding to threats from the Sinai. Because of the peace treaty with Egypt, Israeli forces cannot operate in the area and must rely on Egyptian authorities to control criminal and terrorist activity there. Even if the IDF has warning of an attack, it cannot do much more than increase its state of preparedness, reinforce its side of the border, and communicate the warning to the Egyptian authorities.
The attack also accentuates Cairo's growing Sinai problem. The vast Sinai Peninsula and 274 km border with Israel have always proven difficult for Egyptian governments to control, including the Mubarak regime. But the situation has become more chaotic since the revolution, with smuggling, crime, and violence increasing significantly, including several attacks on gas pipelines and a recent assault by some 200 jihadists and Bedouins on an Egyptian police station at al-Arish in northern Sinai.
Indeed, conditions in the area have been exacerbated by the government's traditionally poor relations with the Bedouin population. Cairo has put most of its effort into policing the Sinai's northeast corner, where its ongoing "Operation Eagle" aims to disrupt criminal and jihadist activity. Yet this focus has left the central area more vulnerable to such problems.
In a recent issue of Policy Watch published by the Washington Institute for Near East policy Jeffrey White and Ehud Yaari analysed possible causes that spurred the attack. " Lately Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist groups have been applying pressure on Hamas to allow them to carryout attacks against Israel. Some group leaders may have believed that such an operation could relieve the pressure while avoiding full-scale Israeli retaliation, given that the attack was not conducted directly from Gaza.
Israeli sources indicate that the operation was also intended as a kidnapping action based on the Hezbollah model: that is, a border attack coupled with the seizure of military personnel or civilians. Israeli civilian vehicles using this road are certainly vulnerable to such tactics, though no Israelis were taken in this instance. Moreover, Hamas has never really given up on kidnapping as a strategy, bearing in mind that the PRC aided Hamas in the 2006 kidnapping of Gilad Shalit."
Travel between Egypt and Gaza has become much easier since the Egyptian Military Council reopened the border crossing at Rafah. Islamic terrorist groups are taking advantage of weaker security.
Since the opening of the Rafah border crossing there has been a sharp downturn in the "tunnel business." For years, the best way to make a living on the Egypt-Gaza border was to dig a tunnel under the border.
Tunnel entrepreneurs have joined forces with smugglers to supply Gaza with everything from powdered milk to Mercedes-Benz cars.
Dr. Diane Shammas, a Californian specialising in Arab American studies was a lecturer at Al-Azhar University in Gaza during 2010 and 2011.
In a piece she called "Kafka at the Rafah border," published by Al Jazeera, Dr. Shammas (her father was born in Lebanon) recounts the tortuous efforts to enter Gaza, "What should have been a simple border crossing turned into a four-month odyssey through the iron curtain of Gaza." Most of that time she spent at the Rafah crossing waiting for the Egyptian bureaucracy to process her entry visa. In trying to justify the permanent opening of the Rafah crossing Dr. Shamas describes how she sometimes experienced life in Gaza,
“A flexible Rafah border crossing becomes even more critical for Palestinian civilians when Israel initiates an escalation of attacks on Gaza. The relatively flat topography of the narrow coastal strip offers no immediate refuge from the sputtering Apache helicopters and the somnolent buzzing drones that can strike anywhere at any time.”
From the ground I’m sure it is a frightening experience, however the attacks she mentioned and the latest reprisals have been targeted executions like the attack on PRC command headquarters at Rafah last week and the assassination of Islamic Jihad leader Ismael al-Asmar who organised and funded the PRC attack last week. In addition terrorist squads preparing to launch rockets or fire mortars have been annihilated before or after firing their salvos. Terrorist facilities, ammunition dumps and weapons manufacturing machine shops have also been targeted.
The targeted assassinations are definitely effective. The higher the rank of the victim the greater the demoralisation among the rank and file terrorists.
Let’s return to the murderous attack on the buses and cars perpetrated last week. During the chase after the retreating terrorists Egyptian military personnel were caught in the crossfire. It’s not clear if two or more Egyptian soldiers were killed inadvertently by Israeli fire.
It’s interesting to compare the Israeli and the Egyptian response to the incident.
The IDF ordered an immediate investigation to determine how the Egyptian soldiers were killed. Israel’s minister of defence Ihud Barak thought it pertinent to apologise for the unintentional killing of Egyptian soldiers before the investigation report was published . The Egyptian interim government claimed the apology was insufficient. Simultaneously crowds demonstrated outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
Barak’s apology sparked off a ''for and against apologising" controversy in the Israeli news media.
I singled out one op-ed article that appeared in Yediot Ahronot . Calling for “No more apologies,” it stated “The Egyptians, without even a shred of corroborating evidence, rushed to blame the IDF – rather than lunatic Islamic fanatics - for the death of Egyptian soldiers. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Israel’s embassy in Cairo, demanding the abrogation of the 1979 peace treaty. It seems quite evident that many Egyptians were looking for a reason to blame us.”
Military affairs commentator Ron Ben-Yishai reported on the findings of the IDF investigation. He said, “The IDF did everything in its power to prevent Egyptian troops from getting hurt in the attack last week.
Videos shot from an IDF helicopter show that the soldiers intentionally diverted fire from the Egyptian all-terrain vehicles and soldiers towards open areas near the border post, from which the terrorist sniper fire originated. The terrorists, who positioned themselves a short distance from the Egyptian military post launched an RPG at one of the helicopters and directed machine gun fire at it.
In addition, an examination of the bodies of the terrorists killed by the IDF clearly showed that at least three of them were Egyptian citizens. One was a member of a radical Egyptian group who was tried and sentenced to imprisonment in Egypt. He escaped from prison during the first days of the Egyptian revolution, when several Cairo prisons were broken into as hundreds of Imprisoned Jihadist terrorists escaped to Sinai. Many reached the Gaza Strip and Egypt is demanding that Hamas extradite them. The Egyptian terrorists joined Palestinian operatives from the Popular Resistance Committees and together they perpetrated the coordinated attacks. Israel has further proof that joint Palestinian-Egyptian terror cells were in Sinai for weeks and were assisted by Bedouins in the region
In the meantime the rules of the game have changed. The two operating Iron Dome anti-missile systems are performing well, in fact well beyond expectations. Of course the Iron Dome has limitations. It is new and the crews operating the two units are learning the fine tuning under fire. So far they have chalked up 93% successful interceptions. Two more units will be delivered to the IDF by the end of the year and by 2013 a total of 13 units will be defending the Gaza periphery and our border with Lebanon.
Islamic Jihad tried to counter the Iron Dome’s successful interception rate by firing a barrage of rockets at Beer Sheva. The single unit defending the city performed well. It seems the Islamic Jihad blitz tactic has its downside. The crews launching Grad rockets are exposed to an immediate IDF retaliation.
Early this week the Egyptians brokered a ceasefire with Hamas without involving Israel in the negotiations. Hamas is trying to maintain a ceasefire but Islamic Jihad feels free to continue firing Kassam rockets and mortar shells at short range targets in the Gaza periphery communities.
I’ll conclude by wishing my family and friends in the Gaza periphery communities the peace and quiet they deserve.
Have a good weekend.
Beni 25th of August, 2011.
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