Israel urges US to keep troops in Sinai to bolster Sisi regime

In a clear signal of its lack of confidence in the longevity of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s regime in Cairo, Israel has urged the US to keep its troops in Sinai. American forces are part of the peace-keeping force in the peninsula. According to Saturday’s edition of Maariv newspaper, Israel made the request in order to “maintain respect” for its Camp David peace agreement with Egypt.

A prominent Israeli military source was quoted extensively by Maariv: “Although decision-making circles in Tel Aviv realise the extent to which the Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi regime is eager to respect the Camp David Agreement, and although it has been showing all signs of desiring to deepen and expand the field of security cooperation with Tel Aviv, they also fear that the current regime may collapse and be replaced by a regime that is hostile to Israel.”

The newspaper’s intelligence affairs commentator, Yossi Milman, explained that the prevalent assumption in Tel Aviv is that there is nothing to guarantee that the current regime [in Cairo] will last. As such, international forces must remain in Sinai so as to guarantee Egypt’s respect for the agreement irrespective of the nature of its political leadership. Milman believes that the Americans have agreed to the Israeli request after it was reported that Washington was contemplating withdrawing its troops from Sinai in case they are attacked by “Sinai Emirate” militants. He stressed that the presence of an international peace-keeping force in the shade of a hostile regime in Cairo represents a “guarantee” for Israel’s security in depth.

Right-wing elites in Israel have previously asked Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to obtain international pledges from the Sisi regime to withdraw the extra Egyptian forces that Tel Aviv allowed to deploy in Sinai in contravention of the security supplement to Camp David. They fear that the regime may collapse and be replaced by a less compliant government which refuses to go back to the original minimal troop deployment levels stipulated by the 1978 agreement. In an article published in Makor Rishon newspaper, Professor Simha Hirsh of Bar Ilan University, which is dominated by the Zionist right-wing, called for Al-Sisi to be obliged to sign in the presence of US and EU representatives that Egypt pledges to withdraw its troops as soon as the problem of Islamic militants in Sinai is resolved. Other commentators have expressed their belief that further, more radical shifts in the Arab world’s balance of power are likely to take place, which may affect the stability of the regime in Cairo.

On a related issue, the Israeli media continues to celebrate the unprecedented hostile campaign waged by Egypt’s pro-Sisi media against Hamas. Israel’s Channel Ten TV broadcast several clips taken from Egyptian channels on Saturday evening. In them, one journalist expressed his astonishment at the harsh remarks made by one of the Egyptian presenters when talking about the leaders of Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement. The Egyptian media onslaught comes in the wake of accusations made by Hamas that the Sisi regime has to accept the responsibility for the disappearance of four young Palestinians who, it is claimed, were detained by the Egyptian security agencies. The Egyptians reject the accusation.

Translated from Arabi21, 30 August, 2015

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.