by AMREMAM
The new warnings come less than a month after a retired Israeli diplomat, David Govrin, accused Egypt of violating the 1979 peace treaty with his country.
Israeli military and political officials are once more sounding the alarm over what they describe as ‘build-up’ by the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, calling for caution and warning against a potential confrontation with Egypt in the future.
Citing Egyptian military activity in the north-western territory, which was liberated by Egypt from Israeli occupation in 1973, the officials referred to logistical preparations and the construction of cement obstacles in central Sinai.
These obstacles, they were quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying, aim at blocking Israeli armoured vehicles.
Egypt, they claimed, maintains more than a dozen tunnels between Rafah in the Gaza Strip and points deep in Sinai, which have not been demolished yet.
The new warnings come less than a month after a retired Israeli diplomat accused Egypt of violating the 1979 peace treaty with his country by increasing troop presence in Sinai.
David Govrin, who served as Israel’s ambassador to Cairo from July 2016 to May 2019 and was Israel’s first ambassador to Morocco, told the Hebrew news site, Ynet, last month that Egypt was sending more troops into Sinai than stipulated in the security annex of the treaty.
Egypt is investing, he said, huge amounts of money in the military build-up, even as no other country threatens it and despite its tough economic conditions.
Critical time
Egypt’s enhanced security measures in Sinai come at a tough time for the Arab country, Israel and the region.
The Israeli war on Gaza and threats to navigation in the Suez Canal are causes for concern in Cairo which shudders at the prospect of the Israeli war on Gaza seeping out of the Egyptian territory and into Sinai, a piece of land larger than Israel; the occupied West Bank; Gaza, and Lebanon combined.
Egypt is also apprehensive about the Israeli army acquiescing to calls by Israel’s far-right for the displacement of Gaza’s population of more than 2.3 million into Sinai, a prospect that will, according to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in October 2023, threaten the Egypt-Israel peace.
Citing all these fears, Egyptian military analysts highlight the importance of the measures Egypt is taking in Sinai and find no reason for Israeli concerns.
“Repeated Israeli media reports about special Egyptian measures in Sinai are only part of Israel’s psychological warfare which aims to keep ordinary Israelis worried about their country’s security,” Gen. Ali Hefzi, a former assistant to the Egyptian minister of defence and a former governor of North Sinai, told The New Arab.
“The fact is that Egypt continues to abide by the terms of its peace treaty with Israel, while all of Egypt’s security arrangements in Sinai move hand in hand with these terms,” he added.
Even before the Israeli war in Gaza, Egypt increased troop presence in Sinai, as per previous remarks by the Egyptian president, in the Arab country’s bid to uproot a branch of the Islamic State (IS) group in the north-western territory that stands in proximity to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.
IS militants, an amalgam of Sinai Bedouins, jihadists from other parts of Egypt and jihadi salafists from Gaza, wanted to establish an Islamic emirate in Sinai.
The New Arab for more