Israeli analysts say Sisi has failed as ISIS gets closer

The Israeli media has been discussing the attack claimed by ISIS against the Egyptian army in Sinai as well as the assassination of Egypt’s State Prosecutor, and analysed the impact that these developments could have on the future of Israel. It was noted that there are concerns in Israel that Al-Sisi’s regime may be failing to control the domestic situation as ISIS gets much closer to its borders and may soon target the Zionist state itself.

Analyst Yossi Melman raised many questions about the ability of the Egyptian army to confront ISIS and win. In his column in Maariv newspaper on Thursday, Melman said that the terrorist attack in Sinai was the biggest ever by ISIS since it launched its war against the government in Cairo four years ago. He stressed that the attack is the most painful blow to the Egyptian army in its war against the terrorism of Islamic extremists.

Melman pointed out that the Sinai events prove that despite Al-Sisi’s vow to fight terrorist organisations and his unlimited use of the Egyptian army and security forces, this mission is turning out to be the most difficult and most costly yet. The truth must be said: Egypt has not yet succeeded in the war on terrorism and this raises question about the capabilities of the Egyptian army and the lack of intelligence behind it. What is even more dangerous, he claims, is carelessness and the lack of seriousness.

Talking about the strength of ISIS in Sinai, Melman pointed out that according to assessments made by Israel’s security forces and intelligence agencies, the group has several hundred trained and armed activists and an equal number of supporters who come mostly from the local Bedouin population. He said that over the past few months since January’s attack in which 30 Egyptian soldiers were killed, the Egyptian army has achieved a lot. It has, for example, succeeded in imposing relative calm over the remaining parts of Sinai, the middle and south, and managed to gain the allegiance of tribal chiefs in those regions by providing incentives at times and threatening punishment at other times.

According to military analyst Alex Fishman, there may be dire consequences as a result of ISIS getting closer to the Israeli borders. If Egypt does not succeed in hampering the group and seizing its resources in Sinai, and does not cut-off Gaza from Sinai completely, this problem will, sooner or later, be knocking on Israel’s door.

In his column in Yedioth Ahranoth, Fishman said that the reports from the front line indicate that ISIS fighters have seized heavy machinery belonging to the Egyptian army, including at least one tank. He believes that this started in August 2012 when Salafi terrorists massacred 16 Egyptian policemen and seized a truck and a military personnel carrier with which they stormed across the border and infiltrated Israel for several kilometres. It was a “miracle” that they were defeated and thus prevented from launching a bombing operation against Kerem Shalom.

It was the same Salafists, claimed Fishman, who launched the latest attack, and they happen to be mostly Egyptian residents of Sinai. In 2012 they worked under the name of “Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis” (Supporters of Jerusalem), but in the last year have changed the brand and are now working under the auspices of ISIS Sinai.

This change, said Fishman, makes the potential threat on Israel’s southern border much more dramatic. The difference can be discerned from the videos released by the terrorist themselves during recent months: six months ago they were clad in robes brandishing Kalashnikovs, reminiscent of Bedouin bandits; today they are in military uniform with ranks, bullet-proof vests and advanced military equipment.

Fishman insisted that the strategy pursued by the Sisi regime toward the Salafists in Sinai, including isolating them from the civilian population, has failed. Sooner or later, he warned, ISIS will attack Israel.

According to the Arab affairs editor of Haaretz, the problem does not end with Sinai because terrorist organisations are not content with the peninsula. They also work in the cities, wrote Tsvi Birael, and have been pursuing a new strategy.

He added that the Egyptian security agencies’ own estimates suggest the existence of two million illegal firearms of all kinds in Egypt. Some of these weapons have been used to kill 500 policemen since 2013; most are found in Sinai but they are also in Cairo and other cities.

Birael went on to say that the Egyptian army believed in the beginning that it was capable of confronting these organisations through a strategy of besieging their funding and armament sources. The army evacuated more than two thousand homes in Sinai along the border with the Gaza Strip and expanded the buffer zone between the two, installed advanced electronic reconnaissance devices along the border, destroyed most of the smuggling tunnels and closed the Rafah crossing.

Such pre-emptive measures are not an alternative to pursuit in the field, he said, and it is here where the tactical difficulty happens to be as far as the Egyptian army is concerned. It obtained permission from Israel to breach the Camp David Treaty and use military aircraft across the area. However, the army is finding it difficult to locate the caves and huts in which activists working for these organisations hide in Sinai.

To counter the Egyptian strategy, the terrorist organisations have developed a strategy of their own, explained Birael. They have widened their operational area in terms of geography and objectives. The past focus in Sinai was to target army and police officers. In the past year, though, they have started to work against tourist destinations, such as Luxor, plant bombs in Cairo railway stations, and set off car bombs in residential areas, with no hesitation about targetting public figures and officials.

This strategy, he said, shows that the groups have succeeded in rebuilding a logistical base within the cities that enable them to evade Egyptian intelligence. It is true that Egypt has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, arrested most of their political leaders and sentenced some of them, like former President Morsi, to death, but these are only the “usual suspect”, according to Birael.

He added that tough penalties and means of pursuit have not reduced the rate of terrorist operations and attempts. Whereas the Muslim Brotherhood has a known leadership that functions in a pyramid structure, the terrorist organisations like Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis work independently and without coordination. These new organisations have no known or united spiritual leadership.