All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our next guest is Adam Morrow, reporter for Interpress Service.
You'll find it all at IPSnews.net.
He's on the phone live from Cairo, Egypt today.
How are you doing this evening there, Adam?
Good, Scott.
Glad to be back.
Well, thanks very much for joining us today.
And let me make sure I have it right that this is your latest piece.
The Sinai Simmers in Security Vacuum at IPSnews.net, correct?
Yeah, yeah, that's about a week old, yeah.
Okay, great.
All right, now, there's been some major doings at the Gaza-Egypt-Israel border over the weekend, and I guess late last week.
I don't want to say more than that.
Please just go ahead and fill us in on just the facts for the last few days there.
Sure, sure.
Well, the article that I wrote, that was about a week ago, and that actually predated the most recent events, which were an Israeli raid into, an apparent Israeli raid into Egyptian territory on, I believe it was on Thursday, that resulted in the death of a handful of Egyptian border personnel, and which has caused a huge backlash in Cairo.
It's caused, it's brought people back out to protest.
There were several thousand people at the Israeli embassy here protesting for the last couple of days, demanding that the ambassador be expelled from Egypt, demanding an immediate halt to all sort of Israeli military activity near the border, and also in protest against the ongoing attacks on the Gazans.
So it's getting, it's, we knew since the revolution, which was now almost seven months ago, we knew that the situation in Sinai was a potential flashpoint, and we were just sort of expecting this sort of deterioration in Israel-Egypt relations, because under the old regime, you had incidents like this that happened before, but the government would never really object to them.
The government would never really, the Hassan Mubarak regime, never really condemned these activities.
Now that you've got a post-revolutionary government, more reflective of the will of the people, you see Egypt coming out and taking a much stronger stance against this sort of thing.
Well now, why is it that they kill these border guards?
They were attacking Hamas and accidentally killed Egyptian border guards, or they targeted these men?
And if so, why?
Well, to be honest with you, Scott, the information coming out of Sinai these days is extremely ambiguous.
There are conflicting reports about things, we've had these regular attacks on the gas pipeline that brings, that pumps Egyptian natural gas to Israel and Jordan, has come under attack five different times since the revolution, and until now, nobody really knows who's responsible for those attacks.
What's interesting is you also had a string of attacks in Sinai between 2004 and 2006, this is going back some years, but even that was never solved.
So the activity that happens in Sinai has always been the source of tension in Egypt, it's different, it's a special case, security-wise, in Egypt, and that has a lot to do with the fact that it is a, it's inhabited by Bedouin tribesmen mostly, who traditionally have had a very tense relationship with the central government, and b, due to the terms of the Camp David Peace Agreement, which was signed in 1979 between Egypt and Israel, the Sinai Peninsula must be, is partially demilitarized, it's broken up into several zones, and the farther east, the less Egypt is allowed to deploy, make military deployments.
So especially in the far east, and northern Sinai, which is where most of these things are happening, you really have a security vacuum, simply because Egypt isn't allowed to make large military deployments there, and also because you still have a police withdrawal, if you remember from the days of the revolution when the regime pulled out the police, the police never fully returned to Sinai, so you have this situation where you've got a serious security vacuum in which these things are allowed to happen.
Well now, so, just chronology-wise, though, Hamas and Israel got into it first, and these Egyptian border guards died in the middle of it?
I mean, I'm not sure if it matters all that much, I'm just trying to understand.
Sure, sure, well, I think the thing was triggered, well, you already had some very tense goings on between Israel and Gaza, but then on Thursday you had this attack on Ilet, which, again, nobody really knows is responsible, I mean, Israel is blaming Hamas, but Hamas is saying they didn't do it, they're praising the attack, Hamas is saying that they admire the attack, but they're saying, but we didn't do it.
So you have this attack that took place in the southern city of Ilet, which is on the Red Sea in Israel, in which seven or eight people were killed, it sounds like it was an attack on a couple of Israeli buses that were carrying soldiers, so it does sound like a strike on military targets, and then hours later you have Israel basically coming in with helicopter gunships, from what I understand, crossing the Egyptian border and opening fire, killing several Egyptian personnel, and saying, basically, that those gunships were coming in in hot pursuit of the perpetrators of the Ilet attack.
Now none of this stuff has been, there's been no real sort of hard evidence for any of this stuff, and it comes amid other conflicting statements, for instance, Israel originally, and afterwards, Israel said that these soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber.
So like I said, it's very difficult to get solid information on this, both from the international press and even from the local press.
The information we're getting is extremely choppy, but it does sound like Israel basically crossed into Egyptian airspace and opened fire, killing several Egyptians.
Well, and speaking of reports that can't be verified, here's one from Ynet News that says that a civilian man was killed and a baby was wounded in Israel as the result of some of these rocket attacks.
So you know, there's at least reportedly plenty of evil to go around here.
Oh, sure, sure, well, okay, but this comes within the context of, you also have this tension with Gaza, so this comes within the context of, I know Hamas is firing rockets into Gaza, that's for sure.
Well, I understand that the best that they can do are unguided rockets, that's basically all they've got, but then they know that they're basically firing at random off over the walls, see what happens.
Right, right, and in fact, I think it was just yesterday, I think a couple of missiles were said to have come down in Egyptian, from Gaza, were said to have come down in Egyptian territory, and it was assumed that they had sort of widely missed their mark and had landed in the Sinai Desert, so yes, they're extremely unreliable, and from all accounts, I understand they're these homemade rockets that really don't, you know, they're not terribly threatening, certainly not as threatening as the firepower that Israel can bring to bear on its enemies.
Sure, well, and of course all this is taking place in the context of the Gaza siege, and I guess an important question would be, what's the status of the Rafah border crossing in all this?
The Rafah border crossing, again, is the same as it's always been, they're letting out individuals, they're letting individuals come in and out.
So this crisis over the last few days hasn't resulted in a closing of the border at all?
I have not heard that, although, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we hear that, just due to the recent events, that the border's going to be closed.
What this is also doing is, Israel is saying that basically the perpetrators of this attack came out of Gaza, came into Sinai, went down south about 200 miles, and then came back into southern Israel.
So what this may end up being also is an excuse to close Rafah.
If they're saying that, you know, by opening the Rafah border we're allowing these militants into Sinai, who can then, you know, who can then freely strike at Israel, we need to, we have to, and possibly threaten the stability of Egypt, we have to shut down, we have to shut the Rafah border, you know, decisively, without even letting people through.
That's a possibility.
I mean, I hope that doesn't happen, because you're, again, you're looking at the imprisonment, the de facto imprisonment of more than a million and a half people inside of Gaza.
And this, all of this talk about militant groups in Gaza, in, excuse me, in the Sinai Peninsula, goes back several years.
Like I said, even under the former regime, in between 2004 and 2006, it was the summer of 2004, summer of 2005, and the summer of 2006, we had these large bombs going off at Sinai resort areas, which were blamed by the former regime of Hosni Mubarak on these shadowy militant Islamist groups, although no evidence was ever produced, and that was never proven.
What you also had was a massive arrest campaign against local Bedouin tribesmen that live in the area, some of which still remain in prison today, which caused tremendous resentment on the part of much of the local population, and that issue also has never been resolved.
Also, Sinai was never adequately developed economically under the former regime, and that also produced a lot of resentment amongst the Bedouin population.
So the whole area has sort of, for the last several years, has sort of been seething with anger, and then when you add to that the difficulties associated with both Israel and the Gaza Strip, both of which share a border with the Sinai Peninsula, you know, created, ended up creating a very, very tense situation.
But the point I wanted to say is, all of this talk about shadowy militant Islamists in the group, in the region, and blaming them for various things that have various attacks that go on there, is sort of a dangerous game, and it's without evidence, in the absence of evidence.
And this is something that the former regime used to do regularly, and I know Israel has certainly been caught, you know, financing or promoting these sort of shadowy Islamist groups as well, for its own purposes.
So it's extremely difficult to determine exactly what's going on, and who's responsible for a lot of this stuff.
Like I said, evidence has never really been produced for any of these past attacks.
So again, it's just an area that has a big question mark over it.
I just like, I'll just say very quickly, I just noticed that Egypt's transitional government just recognized the new Libyan transitional regime.
I think it looks like the Gaddafi regime has finally been overthrown in Libya.
So Egypt is now facing a situation where, to its west, it's got a post-revolution, a freshly, you know, liberated Libya.
And then to its west, it's got this brewing situation in Gaza and Israel.
And to the south, you've got a situation that not many people are talking about, just because the Arab Spring has taken so much media attention.
You've got Sudan, that's just been broken up as the largest African country, broken in two.
So Egypt's security, geopolitical and security situation right now is really unprecedented.
Nobody really knows what's going to happen next.
Yeah, well, you know, John Glaser was on the show earlier from antiwar.com, talking about weapon shipments by the United States to the Egyptian military, which, as we've talked about before, has such a giant ownership stake in the society.
It really, the military of Egypt really is the state.
And of course, the Americans are doing everything they can to retain as much influence as they can, which I think I have to assume that they're pretty good at having influence in Egypt historically.
Well, for the last, you know, 30 years anyway.
And you know, they're pretty entrenched.
They have a lot of friends in there, presumably.
And you know, we have, on one hand, the spectacle of Hosni Mubarak being tried.
And you know, hopefully he'll get the rest of his short life in prison, you know, as a result of that.
But I wonder whether it's kind of perceived there that that trial is a symbol of we're winning and the people really are getting their way.
Or this is, you know, what they're willing, you know, the military is willing to sacrifice them, but they're going to retain as much power as they can other than that, you know.
Right, right.
Well, I would be very, I would be very weary.
It's sort of like the phenomenon of everybody just blaming Bush, which always, always sort of irks me, you know, this sort of this focus on Bush as being the being the mastermind behind all of the all of the bad stuff that happened under under, you know, during his period, especially in the Middle East, you know, when in fact, it was actually this vast, vast network of neoconservatives that was actually pushing policy and was actually was actually behind behind everything.
And I hope the same thing.
I hope Egyptians aren't duped into thinking that, you know, if Hassan Mubarak alone goes, then, you know, then that then justice has been served because the network was so much more expansive than just Hassan Mubarak.
And interestingly, although I have to say, I don't think Egyptians are naive enough and they're out there demanding full, you know, investigations and full, you know, the full prosecution of everybody involved in violence against against protesters or that sort of thing.
But but it should be noted, though, that they just recently overturned it was that they had originally decided to televise those Hassan Mubarak trials.
And I just noticed a couple of days ago, they were sort of the news was sort of missed amid everything else that was going on.
But they overturned that decision and they're not going to televise the trials anymore, which I find kind of interesting.
Yeah, well, and, you know, there was they said back seven months ago when it was far enough away to, you know, for people to find it believable that they were going to have elections, new elections under the new constitutional amendments and everything next month.
And yet now they say that's put off till when, you know?
Yeah.
Delayed again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's disturbing.
It definitely seems like there's sort of a there's a back and forth going on.
You know, it definitely seems that this this council is doing these things with with reluctance.
You know, you can sort of sense the reluctance and people, you know, people are, you know, people's decision to go out and strike and continue the to continue the protest has been vindicated.
And if they don't see progress, I mean, they will go they will go out to they will return to Dr. Square.
But again, what's interesting also is you you did have a lot of polarization that was starting to set in after the euphoria of the revelator of the revolution, which saw such incredible displays of national unity, you were starting to see serious cracks within the public between liberals and Islamists and between those who wanted a constitution to be written first and those who wanted elections first.
You saw some real, real big splits starting to occur.
What's interesting is this latest this latest incident with Israel on the border has served to sort of reunite the public again.
I mean, everybody's coming out in condemnation of this of this attack.
You know, it would sort of be politically incorrect to do otherwise at this point.
I mean, anybody who's anyone like it would be presidential candidates, be presidential hopefuls and that sort of thing.
They're all lining up to condemn the incident.
I think Abu Musa, who's the former Arab League chief and and and a presidential contender, came out very, very strongly, basically saying that basically saying that incidents like this would no longer be tolerated in post-revolutionary Egypt, you know, as opposed to the earlier days of Hosni Mubarak when when things like this did happen.
It should be noted that that Egyptians have been killed on the border before.
I think during the Cast Lead raid and some other times there were incidents where Egyptian property on the border was badly damaged and and Egyptian civilians and I think even army personnel were were injured and killed in the past.
And like I said before, nothing ever came of it under the old regime.
The old regime would sort of, you know, the Mubarak regime would sort of let let it go.
But I love that cast lead, like shooting fish in a barrel, that kind of thing.
Yeah, exactly.
When when Egypt was actually actually closed the lid of the barrel on these people, if you can, you know, if you can believe it still, it still can't believe it in retrospect.
And if anything like that ever happened again and given the latest attacks on Gaza, that's not and I don't think that's entirely out of the question.
It will cause a very, very it'll it'll really, really cause a serious problem for Egypt, because I'm sure I'm sure the county, the ruling council here will come under tremendous pressure to keep the border closed again.
And I don't think that people would would would stand for that, you know.
Well, it seems like, you know, trials of Mubarak and his cronies and people in charge are people responsible for the attacks on the protesters during the revolution a few months back, as well as, you know, policy toward Israel on a day to day basis here is probably a really great barometer of how much influence the people of Egypt have gained over the choices that the military ruling council makes now.
Apparently, they have to take it into account much more than they used to.
But on the other hand, you know, top priority is to not have these things escalate.
I mean, if if, you know, going along with the will of the of the Egyptian people means striking back at Israel or something like that, I don't want that.
I want to see everything calm down.
Do you think things are calming down now?
Well, people certainly want things to calm down.
It's not like all Egyptians want to want war with Israel.
That's far from the case.
What they do want is they want a revision of the Camp David agreement.
That's that's that's really come to the fore in the last couple of months.
And now this this latest incident is really, really putting it on the front burner.
This this issue of of the Camp David peace agreement, which, as I said earlier, prohibits Egypt from making serious military deployments on throughout most of the finite peninsula.
And people are saying, you know, this is completely unfair.
And it really it really should.
The latest incident also really shows up the one sidedness of the agreement where Egypt isn't allowed to make military deployments in the area.
And yet Israel is allowed to conduct airstrikes, even even go as far as entering Egyptian territory.
And I think the council did issues to the council.
The government did issue a statement in which they said this was this did constitute a breach of the agreement.
So a lot a lot of people are calling for for the abrogation of the agreement or at the very least, a serious revision of the agreement, which would which would allow Egypt to police to adequately police Sinai and put put adequate military forces into into the area.
Well, yeah, you know, the New York Times is reporting that Israel actually apologized to Egypt for the killing of these soldiers, which is the first time in a long, long time.
So apparently I saw that it was struck by that.
I saw several headlines about Barak Barak issuing an apology.
Now, I went I'm doing this working on a story on the whole the whole now.
And I went to have a quick look and just to have a look at exactly what Barak said.
And it doesn't look full blown apology.
It looks like they that Israel regrets didn't take responsibility for it, but said it nevertheless regrets the death of these officers.
But still, any anything like that, I mean, an apology is so, so rare from Israel that quite frankly, I can't recall the last you know, I don't remember ever having heard an official apology from Israel over something it's done.
But well, that's the situation in the Gaza Strip cools down from here as well.
Right.
Well, I can't believe they that Israel would have done something like this.
I mean, it seems like the heat, the heat is on them so much already.
I mean, they currently seem to have their hands full with with so many other issues, including the whole, you know, Palestinian recognition next month at the U.N.
And they've got their own internal protests that are going on.
And, you know, they're they're they're losing.
They're really losing the PR war for ever, ever since the ever since cast lead.
And then the Marmara Turkish ship and the and the death of those Turkish activists.
Well, of course, they have to deal with the possible loss of Assad in Syria, too.
Oh, yeah, exactly.
And they're also dealing with the whole Arab Spring thing.
Exactly, exactly.
I mean, they've never seemed to have been in such a tight spot in their entire and their entire 60 plus year history.
It seems it just seems kind of silly just starting another fire on the border of Egypt and just aggravating all the, you know, really irking the Egyptian public to the point where they're back on the streets again.
Just maybe it was a mistake.
Maybe it was an error of some kind.
I, you know, maybe I don't think it was.
I don't know.
It really doesn't seem like it doesn't strike me as a smart move.
All right, well, we'll definitely be keeping our eyes open for your newest piece there at IPS news dot net.
Everybody again, that's Adam Morrow, a reporter in Cairo report reporting for IPS and for us.
Thanks very much.
Appreciate it.
My pleasure, Scott.
Hope to talk again soon.
