15 August 2012 By
Franklin Lamb The
Sinai Peninsula may be in the process of joining the
Arab and Islamic Resistance as this great awakening
spreads inexorably across the region toppling Western
imposed security states and replacing them with
governments of greater popular legitimacy. This
despite the fact last many view last week's events at
the border with occupied Palestine as simply
terrorism. Egypt and other countries in the region
are contributing to righting the historic wrong done
to the Palestinian people as millions around the World
are employing an increasing variety of resistance
strategies in solidarity with this regions central
cause of liberating Palestine from the crumbling but
ultra-violent Zionist colonial project.
Historically, the 23,000 sq. mile triangular Sinai
Peninsula has been an area of Resistance against a
series of occupiers and despots since it was joined to
Egypt during in Mamluk Sultanate (1260-1517) when the
Ottoman sultan, Selim the Grim, won the Battles of
Marj Dabiq and al-Raydaniyya, and added Egypt to the
Ottoman Empire.
Following the establishment of the
Muhammad Ali Dynasty's rule over the rest
of Egypt in 1805, the Ottoman Porte, faced with
increasing resistance from Sinai, transferred
administration of the restive Peninsula to the
Egyptian government, by this time under the control of
the colonial power, the United Kingdom. The British
occupied Egypt since 1882 and imposed the border in an
almost straight line from Rafah on the Mediterranean
to Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba which has remained the
eastern border of Egypt. At the beginning of the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egyptian forces
invaded Palestine from Sinai to support the
Palestinian Resistance in their struggle against the
imposed State of Israel. Last
week's Sinai operation by "terrorists in Bedouin
clothing" against the occupiers of Palestine resulted
in the deaths of 16 Egyptian guards protecting the
Israeli border as well as several of the Fedayeen,
signals again that the lawless Sinai Peninsula may be
returning to its historic role in confronting
colonialism on Egypt's border. The Egyptian people,
if not yet fully their leaders are returning to their
historic struggle to liberate Palestine and while
terrorist acts occur, the historic trend appears
clear. The
regime of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
would purposefully undermine relationship between the
Egyptian and Palestinian people. However, over the
past 18 months, much of the Sinai has become more
Resistance oriented, as police stations in the Sinai
were dismantled, the gas line with Israel repeated
severed, and Bedouin tribes and others began to
stockpile weapons arriving from Libya and from
Israel's black market and elsewhere. The area is
becoming a major Resistance base with fighters vowing
to repel any attempt by the US and Israel to retain
control. No
proof positive has been proffered to support a number
of claims being made regarding those responsible for
the Sinai attacks and other recent attacks against
Israeli installations that number more than 30 just
since last year's Tahrir revolution. It may indeed be
a pure act of terrorism and Zionist orchestrated
‘black flag' operation. The investigation is
evolving. A
spokesman for the Hamas government has claimed that
the Sinai attack was an Israeli "attempt to tamper
with Egyptian security and drive a wedge between the
Egyptians and the residents of the Gaza Strip." Tarek
Zumar, a spokesman for the group, claimed that Israel
was behind all recent terror attacks against the
Egyptians "because it wants to make changes along its
border with Egypt." The day after the attack, and
relying on its own intelligent sources, Hamas
announced that: "This crime can be attributed to
the Mossad, which has been seeking to abort the
revolution since its inception and the proof of this
is that it gave instructions to its Zionist citizens
in Sinai to depart immediately a few days ago." An
American critic of Israel's influence over the U.S.
Congress, who is an Assistant Staff Director on a
Congressional Committee, emailed that "We are
looking into what Israeli leaders knew about the Sinai
attack and when they knew it, but no definite
responsibility for this operation has been
established." The
Muslim Brotherhood has also blamed Mossad for the
claimed terrorst attack. One of
the reasons the Egyptian public is increasingly
calling for abolishing or at least re- negotiating the
"Treaty of Shame" as the Camp David agreement is
commonly known, is that Egyptian security forces in
Sinai are not enough to protect the borders. Under
Camp David's "Peace Agreement" it is Israel, and not
the Egyptian government who determines how many
Egyptians security personnel can stand guard at
Egypt's border. On
8/4/12, Egypt's new pro-Palestinian President,
Mohammad Morsi, responded to the attack by sacking the
pro-Israeli intelligence chief Murad Muwafi, as well
as the governor of Northern Sinai Abdel Wahab Mabrouk.
The same day Mursi ordered his defense minister to
relieve the head of the country's military police, as
his spokesman said to "turn a page" in the
Palestinian struggle and also as a confidence
building move in the face of a predicted Zionist
campaign to blame the Muslim Brotherhood for the
attack. There has been a relentless campaign by
Zionist leaders since Mubaraks ouster, to weaken the
Egyptian public's determination to isolate Israel and
cancel their governments relations with the occupiers
of Palestine.
Supporters of Morsi's rival in the presidential
election, Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander,
have called for Egyptians to rise up against the
Brotherhood and President Morsi as a result of the
Sinai operation. Such attacks underscore the divide
between new pro-Palestinian government and the
military, which continues to hold enormous political
power and has limited the president's authority.
This
most recent operation comes only a week after
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya made a rare
visit to Egypt to meet with Egyptian President
Mohammad Morsi to discuss easing travel restrictions
on Gaza imposed by Israel's siege, restrictions
respected by Mubarak for years. That meeting, coupled
with Morsi meeting both Hamas chief
Khaled Meshaal and Palestinian President Abbas last
month, resulted in the opening the Rafah
border for
12 hrs a day and increasing the daily limit
on passengers from Gaza to 1,500. By opening the
border Morsi was following through on a campaign
promise he made during the run up to Egypt's hotly
contested election. With the advent of the Arab Spring
a number of Egyptian pro Resistance organizations
demanded the complete opening of the Rafah crossing to
all traffic, including commercial. During his campaign
Morsi stated that "the time has come to open the Rafah
crossing to traffic 24 hours a day and all year
round."
Unfortunately, following the most recent operation the
Rafah crossing has been indefinitely closed just
like it was under the deposed Egyptian president
which will cause great hardship to Gazans and amounts
to nothing less than Israeli style "collective
punishment" as claimed by Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior
Hamas official. As one
Gazan young woman, Rana Baker, a member of the
Gaza-based BDS organizing committee recently
observed, "It is worth recalling here the official
Egyptian stance on the murder of two Egyptian security
guards in an Israeli raid along the Israeli-Egyptian
border last year. Not one Egyptian helicopter took off
in search of the assailants and not one bullet was
aimed at "suspects" from the Israeli side. Not only
did the SCAF bury the incident as if it had never
happened, but it went as far as to quell Egyptian
protestors at the Israeli embassy in Cairo almost a
year ago today. Days later the SCAF erected a high
wall around the embassy to "protect" it against
"extremists." The
Gaza Strip has now been closed off, as it was during
the time of deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
The siege is now expected to intensify following the
indefinite closure of the Rafah and Karm Abu-Salem
border crossings. The siege is now expected to
intensify following the indefinite closure of the
Rafah and Karm Abu-Salem border crossings. Robert
Satloff , Executive Director of the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), founded by
AIPAC, presented the Zionist lobby's reaction to the
Sinai operations and the expanding geography of
Resistance. He offered the following suggestions
presented on their website and in Lobby publications: "The
US must undertake firm communication to Egypt's Morsi
that if he wants international support to bolster his
flagging economy, he cannot pander to the worst
instincts of Egyptian public opinion. Indeed, any
serious effort to prevent terrorist infiltration in
Sinai requires coordination with Israel, and this will
not proceed in an environment of public vilification."
"Second, U.S. policymakers should reaffirm to the
Egyptian military that Washington views securing Sinai
as an essential aspect of Egyptian-Israeli peace, and
that continued provision of substantial military aid,
which has exceeded 35 billion over the past three
decades, is absolutely contingent on the investment of
adequate personnel and resources to do the security
job. Failure to direct the right people and resources
to the peninsula will trigger an overall reassessment
of the U.S. military assistance package, with an eye
to updating this 1980s-era relationship for the
current environment."
Satloft's views are reflective of the vast disconnect
between reality and expectations of Zionist officials
and their shills over what the past 18 months has
birthed in the Middle East with respect to resistance
to the continuing colonization and ethnic cleansing of
Palestine.
Despite what may well be determined to be a purely
terrorist operation last week, there is a perceptible
trend showing that the Sinai Peninsula is returning to
the era and culture of resistance. the liberation of
Palestine draws every nearer and more certain, perhaps
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