Egypt said it is in total control of the Sinai the day after massive and well-coordinated attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) on army and police posts.
Israel’s Channel 2 television reported that Israel has given the green light to Egypt to bring in heavy weapons into the Sinai, as required under the 1979 peace treaty that paved the way for Israel to surrender the Sinai a decade after the Yom Kippur War.
Positioning heavy weapons in the Sinai always carries the risk they can be used against Israel, but for the time being, Israel is the last enemy on Egypt’s mind.
Egypt may have done Israel a big favor by demanding the Sinai, which for years has become a fiefdom of Bedouin criminals and graduated into a no man’s land open for grabs by Bedouin, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and now ISIS terrorists.
Israel remains on high alert while Egypt said it will not stop its counter-offensive against Sinai jihadists until all of them are “eliminated.”
The ISIS attacks yesterday killed between a dozen and nearly 100 Egyptian army officers, soldiers and policemen, depending on whom you want to believe.
The numbers do not matter because the attacks on 15 different posts proved that ISIS is a very organized army.
Egyptian bombing raids continued into the night following the wave of attacks that were aimed at cutting off Rafah and El-Arish, which would have created a critical threat to Israel.
The IDF immediately shut down border crossings at Egypt and Gaza after the ISIS offensive, but re-opened the Kerem HaShalom crossing Thursday morning to allow trucks into Gaza with foods and merchandise..
Egypt will “exterminate” every jihadist in the northern Sinai, said its military spokesman.
Brigadier General Mohamed Samir said:
We control the situation in Sinai 100%.
The army claimed it killed more than 100 jihadists.
The cabinet of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Wednesday night approved urgent measures that call for “swift justice,” which can be translated as “don’t let democracy get in the way of survival.”
Four years after the rebellion against Hosni Mubarak, ostensibly because of his autocratic rule, his regime has been reincarnated.
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Transitional Justice Ibrahim Al-Heneidy said that In the absence of the parliament, Al-Sisi has legislative powers.
Coincidentally or not, ISIS attacked the day after terrorists killed Egypt’s state prosecutor Hisham Barakat, who was riding in a motorcade. Barakat had said that if former Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi is sentenced to death, the execution will be carried out.
Heneidy said that terrorists will face harsher punishment, meaning execution or life in prison.
The death penalty also will apply to anyone who funds terror, a classification that puts Muslim Brotherhood officials on notice that Al-Sisi is bent on destroying the organization that ruled Egypt only one year ago.
The process of appeal also will be shorted. “Under the current law, defendants are allowed to appeal verdicts twice, but under the amended draft, this process will be shortened to give defendants the right to appeal the verdict just one time,” said Heneidy. Furthermore, if a higher court accepts an appeal, the regime will be able to call for a retrial in the Court of Cassation, whose decisions are final.
So what did the Arab Spring rebellion and the Obama administration achieve by getting rid of Mubarak?
If the State Dept. has learned that transplanting American democracy in the Muslim Middle East is like feeding Muslims ham and eggs during Ramadan, it was worth everything to teach Washington a lesson.
The odd are heavy that the State Dept. has not yet learned.