A few minutes before dawn last Wednesday it was Zero Hour. Vowing retribution for the death of 16 border guards at the hands of gunmen in Sinai, the army launched an attack against armed groups in Peninsula.
Since that hour, Egyptians have been glued to their TV and computer screens, following the details of what appeared to be all-out war in Sinai against those who targeted their sons.
The battles, however, revealed more than anything that Egypt is polarised along religious lines. Reader comments on the online social media bared the differences between the non-Islamists, who wholeheartedly supported the Egyptian army; and the Islamists who insisted that Israel was the culprit and the jihadists were serving Allah’s cause of defending the [Muslim] Palestinians.
President Mohamed Mursi, for his part, launched a barrage of changes in staff. He replaced the chief of the intelligence apparatus and the governor of North Sinai; and ordered the Defence Minister Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi to replace the head of the Military Police. He also ordered the Interior Minister Major General Ahmed Gamal Eddin to replace his deputy for central security and his deputy for Cairo security.
Gunned down at breakfast
Egypt had been in mourning.
Three days last week marked national mourning in honour of 16 Egyptian border guards who were shot Sunday evening at their checkpoint near Rafah, the North Sinai border town between Egypt and Gaza, at the hands of some 35 masked gunmen in Bedouin garb.
The gunmen, later claimed by Egyptian State TV and State news agency to be “jihadi militants from Gaza in collaboration with elements from Sinai”, attacked the guards at sunset as they sat for iftar, the meal which breaks the day-long fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Sixteen were killed and seven wounded.
The terrorists then seized a military armoured vehicle and a pick-up truck and, armed with explosives, sub-machine-guns and grenades, headed to the Israeli border. They blew up the truck next to the border fence and drove the armoured vehicle through the hole caused by the explosion. Israel said its troops killed eight gunmen, and the armoured vehicle was destroyed by Israeli helicopter fire.
Retribution
A statement by the Egyptian military described the gunmen as “enemies of the nation who must be dealt with by force”, and swore in the name of God to avenge them. “They will pay dearly for this.”
Patrols were stepped up in North Sinai, and at least two helicopter gunships were deployed in the area, demonstrating a determination to hunt down the Islamist militants. The Rafah border crossing to Gaza was indefinitely closed as security forces hunt the remaining attackers.
“Those who carried out this crime will pay dearly; our forces will take full control of these regions,” President Mohamed Mursi said in a televised address.”
The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), to which Mursi belongs, on Sunday evening urged Egyptian authorities to take all necessary measures to “confront this serious challenge to the Egyptian sovereignty and to protect Sinai from all armed groups.”
But then in a highly contradictory move, the MB posted a claim on its website that the attack “can be attributed to Mossad [the Israeli foreign intelligence agency]”. The allegation was echoed by Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the MB, that governs Gaza.
Israel’s foreign ministry dismissed the allegation as “nonsense”.
Where’s the president?
Yet, for all the bravado, President Mursi was conspicuously absent from the young men’s funeral held at noon last Tuesday at Al Rashdan mosque east of Cairo. His spokesman Yasser Ali explained off the President’s absence as owing to “security reasons”, and said the President was at the time visiting the seven wounded at Qubba public hospital. But his failure to attend the funeral brought on a deluge of comments from online readers that Mursi was more a president of Gaza than of Egypt.
Defence Minister Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi who is also the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces led the mourners in a military funeral. He was joined by the military Chief of Staff Sami Anan, senior government officials and generals in a brief procession that followed the caskets, wrapped in the military flag, to the Memorial of the Unknown Soldiers with thousands of mourners in attendance.
The funeral was aired live on State television.
Prime Minister Hisham Qandil was unable to take part in the funeral procession. He was attacked by angry protesters upon his arrival at the mosque, forcing him to leave immediately.
Leading Egyptian figures present at the funeral included al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyib, the Coptic Orthodox acting patriarch Anba Pachomeus, as well as former prime ministers Kamal al-Ganzouri and Essam Sharaf.
The Church mourns the victims
Early on Tuesday the Coptic Orthodox Church had issued a statement condemning the Rafah attack and mourning the Egyptian soldiers.
“We were pained and grieved,” the statement declared, “ by the brutal attack in Sinai in which our sons in the armed forces lost their lives while securing our borders and defending our homeland.”
The statement described the assailants as terrorists, and prayed for mercy for the souls of the departed, and comfort from Heaven to their bereaved families.
“Events such as this will at no time weaken our determination nor persuade us to relinquish our responsibility before God towards our nation,” the statement concluded.
The future of Sinai
The raid comes amid growing fears that jihadists have gained a foothold in the thinly populated Sinai Peninsula.
After the former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011 in the wake of the 18-day revolution, militants stepped up attacks in Sinai, prompting the military, then in charge of the country, to send reinforcements to the peninsula. It is widely believed in Egypt that radical Islamism is spreading among the tribesmen of the northern Sinai.
The most recent attack presents a challenge to President Mursi who comes from the MB which is in turn the parent organisation of Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian activists, rights groups, and secular parties have one and all condemned the Rafah attack and called for prompt action to catch the criminals and bring them to justice. Many of them, including former MP Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, blamed Mursi’s pardon of Islamists who had been spending time in prison, for the raid.
For his part, the strategy expert Hussam Sweilam said on Egyptian TV that the raid comes within the context of an old US-Hamas plan to allocate an area in North Sinai as an extension for Gaza residents. Mubarak, Sweilam claimed, had adamantly rejected the idea.
Former head of the Arab League and ex-presidential candidate Amr Moussa said that the exploitation of Sinai as a spearhead for attacks against Israel, with total disregard of Egyptian sovereignty was unacceptable. Egyptian authorities, he said, should stand up to that very firmly.
Reported by Georgette Sadeq, Karim Abdel-Massih, Nader Shukry, Mariam Rifaat, Margaret Adel, Angele Reda, and Lillian Nabil
WATANI International
12 August 2012