The Shelling of Rafah and Coordination with Israel

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Aircraft bombed a military site in Egyptian Rafah, killing, according to media sources, four fighters and destroying a crudely-made rocket launcher.

Accounts differed over who carried out this bombing. Some say an Israeli drone struck the site, while others say an Egyptian Apache-type helicopter carried out the mission. Egypt denies that an Israeli aircraft violated Egyptian sovereignty in Sinai.

I write this so that the matter is clear to the Arab people, and to Palestinians in particular, so that no one falls prey to disinformation — especially since it is easy for our peoples to buy whatever the media broadcasts. There are facts about Sinai, as follows:

There is no Egyptian sovereignty over Sinai under the agreements with Israel; rather, there is a form of self-rule that does not go beyond Israel’s will. Egypt is entirely bound by the agreements, which stipulate that only symbolic Egyptian military units may remain in Sinai, west of the Giddi and Mitla passes. Egyptian self-rule in Sinai is in some ways similar to Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank, and Egypt is entitled only to deploy lightly-armed civil order forces.

There is a multinational force in Sinai led by the United States, which is responsible for monitoring compliance with the agreements.

Egypt cannot bring Egyptian ground or air forces into Sinai except with prior Israeli permission and in accordance with specific, detailed tasks.

…would constitute a violation of the agreements, depending on the reasons for such entry.

Perhaps Israel did bomb the site — its drone aircraft do not necessarily need to enter Sinai to carry out such a mission, since they can strike targets across the colonial border between Palestine and Egypt. But the Camp David agreement does not prevent Israel from entering Sinai if it senses security threats. If, on the other hand, it was Egyptian aircraft that carried out the strike, that could not have happened without Israeli permission. Egypt cannot fly its aircraft over Egyptian Rafah without Israeli permission — that is, without security coordination with Israel.

And since Egypt under Morsi’s leadership was coordinating security matters with Israel, and it now has no choice, under Sisi’s leadership, but to keep coordinating, our peoples must not fall victim to media disinformation. They are all coordinating with Israel. Egypt’s current circumstances may not allow it to rebel against the Camp David agreements with Israel, but it is important that the Palestinian cause and the Arab-Zionist conflict remain outside Egypt’s internal struggle. And just as certain Egyptian parties are now trying to drag the Palestinians into Egypt’s internal conflict, it is in the Palestinians’ interest that no one draw them into the one-upmanship rhetoric of the 1950s and 1960s.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “قصف رفح والتنسيق مع إسرائيل” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.