Israel to Allow more Egyptian Soldiers into Sinai

 


Israel is allowing Egypt to deploy more armed forces in the Sinai desert, while at the same time telling its citizens to stay away.

The measures, announced Monday, reflect growing Israeli concern over potential attacks from Sinai. In August, militants infiltrated across the border and killed eight Israelis.

Israel withdrew from Sinai under its 1979 peace deal with Egypt. Under the accord, Sinai was mostly demilitarized, and only a few hundred Egyptian policemen were permitted there.

Since the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February, Israel has been allowing more Egyptian troops into Sinai to counter extremist Muslims, as well as Palestinian militants crossing from Gaza.

-yahoo!


Apparently, this is a result of the talks between Israel and Egypt:

 Ma'an News, Oct 9, 2011 - Israeli officials arrived in Cairo on Sunday to discuss security arrangements, Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper said.

The delegation, which included a top defense official, came by private jet for talks on cooperation at the Israel-Egypt border and developments in Israeli-Palestinians relations, the report said.

The officials were not identified, as they did not pass through the terminal, the paper quoted Cairo airport officials saying.

Relations between Egypt and Israel frayed in recent months, after Israeli forces shot dead five Egyptian forces in the country's Sinai region while pursuing attackers who killed eight Israelis in the country's south in August

Israel Raises Alarm of Gaza-Egypt Cooperation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak both warned in interviews published Wednesday that the situation in Egypt’s Sinai poses a “very troubling” threat to Israel.

After Egypt’s revolution which toppled President Hosni Mubarak, security in the Sinai Peninsula has deteriorated, with Cairo sending troops into the area to try to bring it back under control.

Egypt gas pipeline to Israel, Jordan blown up.. Again!

Unknown assailants blew up an Egyptian pipeline in Sinai on Tuesday that supplies Israel and Jordan with gas, security sources and witnesses said.

A witness told investigators he saw three men jump out of a small truck at a pumping station in an area known as al-Maidan, southwest of the city of el-Arish, and open fire on the pipeline, the security sources said.

Egyptian detained in Lebanon for spying for Israel

BEIRUT — The Lebanese army says it has detained an Egyptian man and his Lebanese wife in southeast Lebanon on suspicion of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Israel's Ambassador to Egypt Speaks About Recent Embassy Breach

Yitzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to Egypt, was just sitting down to his Sabbath dinner of schnitzel at his residence in suburban Ma'adi when the phone rang. One of the six security officials guarding the Israeli Embassy in downtown Cairo, which had closed for the weekend, was on the line. They were in trouble.


An angry mob of some 3,000 Egyptians had arrived at the embassy from what had been a peaceful protest at Tahrir Square. Turning on his television, Levanon surveyed the scene. Carrying hammers, axes, and steel rods, the crowd was screaming anti-Israeli slogans and starting to breach a tall cement wall that Egyptian security forces had hastily built on a bridge overlooking the embassy entrance several days earlier, to secure the building. Egyptian police and military security—complete with armored tanks and cars—were deployed outside the apartment building in which the embassy is housed. But the live footage of the assault being broadcast by Al Jazeera showed that Egyptian forces were doing nothing to stop the attackers.


The 5 p.m. call to Levanon marked the beginning of a 13-hour drama, for him and other members of his 85-person staff, that has both intensified the deep gulf in Israeli-Egyptian relations and smoothed tensions between Israel and the United States. President Barack Obama; his newly minted ambassador in Cairo, Anne Patterson; and other American officials played a crucial role in mobilizing Egypt's transitional government and taking other steps to save the besieged Israelis.


Tablet Magazine

Turkey and Egypt to Hold Joint Naval Exercises

Turkey and Egypt will hold a joint naval exercise at the end of the year, according to an unconfirmed report in Egyptian news Web site 'Masrawy' Thursday. An unnamed Egyptian official told the web site the drill would help in the exchange of knowledge and combat techniques between the countried.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will make an official visit to Cairo next week and meet with high-ranking Egyptian officials in a bid to strengthen strategic and business relations between the two countries.

jpost.com

Israeli Drones Over Egyptian Border

A senior Israeli military official says the air force has deployed a special unit of unmanned surveillance aircraft along its long, porous border with Egypt after militants crossed the frontier and killed eight Israelis last month.

The official says the drones are monitoring both sides of the 150-mile (250-kilometer) border, though the aircraft are flying only in Israeli airspace.

In the wake of the attack, Israel also has sent more troops along the border.

Officials have grown increasingly concerned about the security situation in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula following the ouster of longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines.

Israel, along with the United States, is a world leader in drone technology.

Israel's Virtual Security Fence

In the shadow of recent security incidents in the south, a virtual fence that will aid in the detection and prevention of infiltration attempts will be set up on the Israel-Egypt border in the coming year.
Magna Technologies, a defense systems company, will be entrusted with constructing the virtual fence, which will cost millions of dollars.
The virtual fence will operate alongside the physical barrier currently being built along the Israel-Egypt border.
"Such a system would have surely prevented the terror attacks in the south," said Magna CEO Haim Siboni. "I believe that recent events will accelerate the process of constructing the fence, but this has been a long process of tests and checks over the past seven years."
http://www.idf.il/1283-12992-EN/Dover.aspx

Egypt Questions S. Sudan on Jerusalem Embassy

Some Egyptian observers in the past expressed concern that Israeli meddling in Africa aims at disrupting its supply of the Nile waters.

Cairo is already in the middle of a row with upstream Nile basin countries over re-allocation of water shares and amendments to colonial past agreements.

The status of Jerusalem - a city holy to three religions - is a sensitive issue for Israel as well as Arab and Muslim states.

Israel considers the city to be its "eternal and indivisible" capital city while Palestinians want the
Even the United States, Israel's staunchest ally, has been careful not to aggravate the Arab and Muslim states by making any official sign that it recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state.

The U.S. Congress passed a law in 1995 describing Jerusalem as capital of Israel and saying it should not be divided, but successive presidents have used their foreign policy powers to maintain the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and to back negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem.

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