Analysis: Egypt’s request to change the peace treaty
JPost. Com -09/25/2012 02:45
Last week’s terror attack on the southern border is a warning of things to come. The vast desert lands of the Sinai Peninsula have become a base for jihadi elements. These include homegrown al-Qaida-inspired Salafi groups, made up of radicalized Beduin, and Palestinian terror operatives of all stripes, who enter Sinai via tunnels from the Gaza Strip along with their rockets and machine guns.
The terror groups use Sinai as a springboard for attacks on Israeli targets, because they know that Israel cannot step in ahead of time to preempt the plots, as this would spark a hugely dangerous confrontation with Cairo.
The threat of more border attacks, attempted infiltrations and rocket attacks from Sinai isn’t going to vanish – it may even worsen.
Presently, Israel must rely on the Egyptian military to keep the threat at bay. The radical terror groups in Sinai target Egyptian military forces as willingly as they seek to attack the IDF, meaning that Cairo and Jerusalem have a common interest in seeing Egypt reestablish sovereignty over Sinai.
Egypt is now turning to Israel with a request to reassess the 1979 Camp David peace accord, and to alter sections that limit Egyptian military presence in Sinai, to allow more Egyptian forces in. Only through this change, Cairo seems to be arguing, can Egyptian forces really push back the jihadis and reestablish security for both Egypt and Israel.
Unfortunately, things aren’t so simple. The Muslim Brotherhood that has ascended to power has a radical, worrisome ideology, and it is far too soon to know how influential its ideology will be in Egypt’s policies on Israel. Furthermore, the region is going through its most uncertain and chaotic phase in modern history. Is this any time for Israel to take chances and allow an increased Egyptian military presence on its southern border? Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman answered this question with an emphatic “no” this week, urging the Egyptians to use their available forces to get the job done. Certainly, reports that Egyptian security officials have signed “ceasefire” understandings with the Salafi gangs in Sinai are failing to assure Israel that the terrorists are being pursued with full force.
And Israel has already approved past Egyptian requests for one-time injections of military forces that violate the treaty, allowing more Egyptian battalions, armored vehicles and helicopters into Sinai.
But some former senior defense officials say that isn’t enough. Some, like Shlomo Brom of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, think that Liberman is wrong.
Brom, former director of the Strategic Planning Division in the IDF’s General Staff, said that when the peace treaty was written up in 1979, it did not (and obviously could not) envisage current conditions.
Brom has proposed that in exchange for agreeing to a change in the security clauses, Israel would ask Egypt to sign the whole of the treaty again, ensuring that Cairo reaffirms peace with Israel in view of the whole world.
Brom is not alone in thinking that the time has come to look at the treaty again. A former IDF Military Intelligence chief has argued that ”the treaty is not holy” and needs to be modernized because of “changes that were not foreseen in 1980.” In fact, the former senior official said, doing so would be even more in Israel’s interest than Egypt’s.
Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, agrees there is room for negotiation and believes this creates an opportunity for Israel to make its own demand: Dialogue between Jerusalem and Cairo.
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