A spokesman for President Morsi has claimed that Egypt has not received any official objections from Israel to the deployment of tanks in Sinai. Speaking to Aljazeera, he stressed that despite the terms of the Camp David peace treaty between the two countries, Egypt’s overriding concern has to be national security, which includes security in the Sinai Peninsula.
The Egyptian government was responding to Israeli media reports which claimed that Tel Aviv has demanded – through the United States – that Cairo should not deploy troops and heavy armour in Sinai without prior coordination. The reports mentioned that those already deployed should be withdrawn immediately.