June 06 2023
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The Cradle’s Egypt Correspondent
Mohamed Salah’s audacious operation, which involved infiltrating Israeli-occupied territory and eliminating three of its soldiers has sparked debate surrounding the vulnerability of Israel’s southern frontier, the underlying motives behind the attack, and its far-reaching implications for relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv.
At dawn on 3 June, the young Egyptian soldier Mohamed Salah left his service point on Egypt’s border with Israeli-occupied territories in the Sinai Desert. Armed with an old Kalashnikov, he crossed the border, reportedly through an existing emergency corridor between the two sides.
There, he encountered an armored vehicle carrying two Israeli soldiers, daringly opened fire and shot them down, before continuing to a depth of five kilometers inside occupied Palestine.
As the hours ticked by, an Israeli force arrived on the scene, only to meet the same fate as their fallen comrades, with Salah claiming one more enemy kill and wounding another before he ran out of ammunition and was fatally shot. It wasn’t long before images of his lifeless body began circulating on social media. His remains have since been repatriated, likely to an unsanctioned hero’s welcome by an Egyptian public who overwhelmingly approve of the operation.
The audacity of Salah’s operation at the Auja (Nitzana) crossing caught Israel completely off guard, shattering Tel Aviv’s illusion of seamless security coordination between the two nations decades after its peace treaty with Cairo. The contrasting accounts of the incident from both sides further add to the intrigue surrounding this individual operation.
Pick a narrative: ‘Terrorism’ or a drug deal gone bad?
Israeli political and military leaders were quick to label Salah’s actions as “terrorism,” “subversive infiltration,” and an “exceptional security operation.” Regardless of the semantics, one thing was undeniable – this operation was “painful for Israel.” However, Tel Aviv’s official version of events has remained elusive, as Salah was initially declared a member of the Egyptian military, and later characterized as a border police officer.
Meanwhile, Cairo presented its own, almost apologetic narrative, describing the incident as an “unintentional” occurrence where “chance” played a significant role and offered “sincere condolences” to the families of the soldiers. Notably, it was Israeli media that first revealed Salah’s name.
According to Egyptian military spokesman Gharib Abdel Hafez, “one of the security personnel tasked with securing the international border line chased down drug smuggling elements … During the chase, the security officer breached the security barrier and exchanged fire.”
Yet several Egyptian sources familiar with military affairs in Sinai disagree with the official version of events, telling The Cradle that the explanation lacks logic and coherence, especially given the fact that Salah had ventured deep into the occupied territories and awaited the arrival of further Israeli forces.
According to the Egyptian account, the soldier found himself unexpectedly on the Palestinian side of the border while allegedly chasing the smugglers. In a fateful decision, he decided to confront and shoot the two Israeli soldiers who were inside a military vehicle.
The Egyptian version of the incident is “flimsy and incoherent,” says Egyptian military researcher Ahmed Mawlana, drawing attention to the facts of the incident:
“The two Israeli soldiers were in a military vehicle and wearing military uniforms when they came under fire. Salah’s incursion into the occupied territories for hours waiting for the [Israeli] support force to come denies the idea that he was chasing drug traffickers.”
Safwat al-Zayat, a military researcher and former officer in the Egyptian armed forces, agrees with Mawlana’s skepticism:
“The incident did not take place, as some say, in a security-dwelling area, but in a very sensitive area at the strategic level of the Israeli side. This area is within the strategic triangle Beersheba-Dimona-Raymond, where the three largest air bases form the long-range strategic strike force against Iran’s nuclear program facilities as well as the Dimona Nuclear Research Center.”
He adds that “the incident revealed a wide shortcoming of the Israeli military and security services,” one of the biggest indications of which is “the time difference between the time of neutralization of the observation point in Auja-Nitzana by the Egyptian policeman, and the Israelis’ detection of it after more than two hours.” This, taking into account that “all border control points are linked to an intelligence information network that operates around the clock audio, visual and electronically.”
A security and communications breakdown
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters that they are investigating why there was no alert following the Egyptian soldier’s infiltration into Israeli territory:
“Between 6 and 7 in the morning, there were a number of shots in the area. We estimate that the incident happened somewhere at that time. The soldiers were together near the post, not dozens of meters away from each other,” he said, adding the soldiers did not fire their weapons and that their bodies were discovered at 9 a.m., as radio contact, which normally occurs on an hourly basis, did not take place.
Hagari also reiterated the claim that the matter was drug-smuggling related, and that there had been a smuggling incident on Saturday morning, hours before the first shooting incident, that he says was thwarted by the Israeli army. But he also admitted that the military “did not know how to link the smuggling attempt at around 2:30 am, about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) north of the attacked military site, to the fatal incident that occurred there four or five hours later.”
Egyptian sources agree that the link to the failed smuggling operation on Saturday morning is nothing but a spin exercise by the Egyptian government. In addition, Cairo concealed Salah’s identity and censored media coverage of and public access to his funeral, fearing his transformation into an icon for both his colleagues and Egypt’s population. That effort failed when Israel revealed his identity: Overnight, Salah become a celebrated Arab.
Yossi Yehoshua, a military affairs commentator, wrote the following day in the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot: “The Israeli defenses collapsed.” As the Israeli military “enjoyed real superiority in terms of manpower, daylight visibility conditions, and auxiliary troops,” the incident should have ended without Israeli casualties, he argued.
Nevertheless, some reports in Hebrew media suggest that the 22-year-old Salah “carried out a pre-planned attack as he knew the area very well.”
Mawlana agrees. He says the operation’s precision, Salah’s strategic handling of obstacles, and his calculated execution of the mission indicate that it was planned.
Blasts from the past
Mawlana also points to “several historical precedents for such operations,” which include the exploits of celebrated Egyptian soldiers Suleiman Khater and Ayman Hassan.
On 5 October 1985, Suleiman Khater killed 5 Israelis and wounded 7 who tried to bypass his border guard post, then surrendered to the Egyptian authorities. A year and three months later, newspapers published Khater’s “suicide” in the military prison hospital, amid widespread skepticism over his fate.
In fact, parallels between Salah and Khater were being made on social media this week, with the latter’s name trending on Arabic Twitter.
Another remarkable operation was undertaken by Egyptian soldier Ayman Hassan on 26 November, 1990, known as the “Ras al-Naqab” operation in a border area between Egypt and Israel. Hassan targeted and killed 21 Israelis while injuring approximately 20 others, including a senior official responsible for securing the Dimona nuclear reactor and Israeli officers at the Negev military airport.
His initial plan was to retaliate against an Israeli soldier desecrating his country’s flag, but upon learning about the Al-Aqsa Mosque massacre the month before, his anger intensified, leading him to modify his plan and maximize the number of Israeli casualties.
For nine days, Hassan meticulously studied vehicle movements along the border, identified security vulnerabilities, and carefully analyzed the geography of the area. He identified five key targets, with the most significant being a passenger bus carrying officers from the Ras al-Naqab Military Airport. During the following month and a half, he rigorously trained, running 15 kilometers daily – equivalent to the distance between his base and the potential target.
On the eve of the operation, Hassan prepared 450 rounds of ammunition acquired from his military unit’s arsenal. At approximately 5 a.m., he crossed the Israeli border, executing the operation in an area roughly 13 kilometers north of Eilat, on an asphalt road connecting it to the city of Rafah. After completing his mission, he swiftly retreated into Egyptian territory, sustaining a minor head injury. He then turned himself in to the military district command.
Widespread public support
The Egyptian sources insist that Cairo “is trying to absorb Israeli anger by pre-empting the issuance of the statement and suggesting that the incident was not planned.”
However, the Israeli side is aware that even under tight security coordination with Egypt, such operations can continue to take place. As the former head of Military Intelligence Division Chief Major General Amos Yadlin points out, “the Egyptian people were not raised on peace with Israel, and from time to time, an attack will come out against us from this side.”
A 2022 poll conducted by the Arab Index Foundation supports Yadlin’s claim, revealing that over 84 percent of respondents, which included Egyptian citizens, refuse to acknowledge the state of Israel. Despite official Egyptian-Israeli relations witnessing high-level meetings between their leaders, these do not reflect improved popular sentiment.
The results of the 2022 Arab Index clearly demonstrate that over half of Arab respondents consider Israel and the US as the greatest threat to Arab security. Additionally, over 75 percent believe that the Palestinian cause is not only a Palestinian issue but also the primary concern for all Arabs.
Backtracking on Camp David
In this context, Israeli and pro-Israel voices have raised concerns about the increasing presence of the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, which violates the military annex agreements of the Camp David Accords.
In June 2022, David Schenker, a former US State Department official affiliated with an Israel lobby think tank, warned that any future changes in Egypt could directly threaten Israel’s security, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula, which has been steadily re-militarized.
The growing threat posed by ISIS in the region has led to an influx of Egyptian military forces, surpassing the limits set by the security clauses of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement signed in 1979.
Although the agreement was amended in 2021 to allow for an increase in forces for Egyptian Border Security, Schenker argues that the current situation violates the original terms of the Camp David peace agreement, which prohibits the free movement of the Egyptian army in Sinai, except in narrow areas with light weapons and prior Israeli approval.
He also expressed concerns that Israel and the US would be unable to alter Egypt’s military presence in the event of political changes within the country.
Could the recent operation and the relocation of Egyptian forces in Sinai reopen the debate on this issue? The aforementioned sources agree that this is unlikely. Both sides recognize that their mutual interests outweigh such considerations, despite the significant, popular, public influence on the matter. The Egyptian sources tell The Cradle that:
“The incident may prompt the parties to intensify the security presence at observation points and seek a real-time information exchange mechanism at the lower (tactical) levels with joint contact, as in the case of the two observation points in Israeli Nitzana and Egyptian Auja.”
Despite Cairo’s cold peace with Israel, it is becoming clear that Israel’s continued occupation and attacks on the Palestinian people and holy Muslim sites are leading many Arabs to increase support for Palestinian resistance and retaliatory actions against Israeli aggression. Similar sentiments can be found among other West Asian and North African countries that have normalized relations with Israel, signed peace agreements, or are rumored to be in the process of normalization.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
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Filed under: "Israel", Egypt | Tagged: Al-Awja crossing, Camp David, David Schenker, Egypt-Israel border, IOF, Israeli Attack on Al-Aqsa, Martyr Mohamed Salah, Sinai | 1 Comment »
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 