Egypt’s military crackdown on unrest in the Sinai Peninsula has gotten a boost today from Israel, which signed off on a deployment of two additional battalions into the border territory.
Under the terms of their peace treaty, Israel has to pre-approve significant military moves in Sinai, which was put in place at the time to keep the border area calm.
Yet in the context of Egypt’s military coup against its elected government, the army is looking to crack down on Islamist factions in Sinai, and has been hyping Hamas “infiltration” to justify deployments.
Israel seems just fine with that, never having been keen on Egypt’s President Morsi in the first place and liking the idea of an anti-Hamas force in Sinai. Though Israeli officials see this as beneficial in the near-term, being publicly linked to crackdowns by the new junta is liable to create a lot of new long-term enemies.
The activities of the Egyptian army are to root out Islamic Jihad and El Qaeda terrorists operating i the Sinai. By all means criticize the Israeli government and the Egyptian interim military government, but you show your bias by omitting any mention of the terrorists they are trying to counteract and their heinous acts. No one is asking you not to without bias. On the contrary, we've come to expect it. It is however easier to sell if you feign a modum of inpartiality, even when preaching to the converted.
Does anyone take seriously anything Israel does any more?
We have to; they run the U.S.,i.e the World
All this repression because people in power will do absolutely anything to ensure that if any democracy is allowed to populations, it is in as limited and impotent a form as is conceivable.