Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

In our 12 September issue, we looked at growing Israeli fears about the direction of Egypt under its Muslim Brotherhood president, Muhammad Mursi.  Last week, while in New York for the UN General Assembly, Mursi reportedly told France’s President Francois Hollande that Israel is in violation of the Camp David accords with Egypt.  Although Mursi emphasized that Egypt, under his Muslim Brotherhood government, would adhere to the peace treaty, his remarks can only have added to the disquiet in Israel about the future of relations with Egypt.

On the sidelines of the General Assembly, Mursi reportedly told Hollande: “All the agreement’s [Camp David’s] stipulations need to be adhered to.  Granting rights to the Palestinians is part of the agreement, and Israel at the moment is not honouring this clause.”

In addition to demanding more Israeli action on the Palestinian front, Mursi has also raised the question of remilitarizing the Sinai.  On 13 September, his aide Mohammed Esmat Seif Al-Dawla said that the Camp David treaty must be amended so that Egypt can achieve complete control over the Sinai Peninsula.  He said: “The peace agreement with Israel does not allow protection of the Sinai.”  Sinai looks set to become a running sore between Egypt and Israel.

The Sinai is an intensely complicated issue for Mursi.  Under the Mubarak regime, the Bedouin were sidelined and immigration from the Nile Valley was encouraged.  The total population of the Sinai is 565,000, of which 300,000 are Bedouin.  Some 400,000, including the 145,000 inhabitants of the capital El Arish and its surrounds, live in North Sinai.  The 165,000 population of South Sinai is largely nomadic.

The key point about the Bedouin, as a recent Chatham House paper (Sinai: the Buffer Erodes) emphasized, is that ethnically and historically they have closer ties with the Arab populations to their east than to the Nile Valley.  In particular, they are very close to the Gazan Palestinians, a closeness which has been strengthened by the 40,000 Gazan refugees/migrants in Rafah, Sheikh Zuwayed, and El Arish.  Up to a third of Gazans have Bedouin family connections, with the Bedouin influence particularly strong among the leadership of Hamas.

The danger to Cairo of an alienated Bedouin population has been compounded by the large amounts of weaponry, including heavy weaponry, that has found its way to the region, particularly since the downfall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

For Mubarak the answer was to try to marginalize the Bedouin and to swamp them with immigration.  For the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo, which is traditionally close to Hamas, an entirely different scenario now presents itself, namely to rebuild ties with the Bedouin as a means of extending Egyptian influence eastwards.

The fact that it is the armed Bedouin and various Islamists who are creating the unrest that Cairo is now trying to use to justify a renegotiation of the Sinai demilitarization provisions of Camp David complicates the strategy but does not negate it.  The Muslim Brotherhood wants a political not a military solution to Bedouin unrest.

All of this is being watched with disquiet by Israel, which fought wars in the Sinai five times in its first 25 years of existence as a state - in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 – before the 1979 Camp David accords established peace for the past 33 years.

The dilemma for Israel is that if it refuses Cairo’s desire to re-establish full control over the Sinai it could face increased terrorism from a pro-Gazan well-armed population which is increasingly offering a welcome to extremist jihadists.

On the other hand, if Israel lets Cairo re-establish full control over the Sinai, it will be a Cairo that is prepared to accommodate and use the Bedouin’s Gazan connections, not one seeking to extinguish Bedouin influence under a tide of Nile Valley immigration.  Such a development could only embolden Hamas.

Some in Israel say that the plus side to allowing full Egyptian control of the Sinai would be that Gazans could be made to look more and more towards Egypt and less towards the West Bank, but that would be a considerable gamble.  And any future Israeli action against Gaza would then run far greater risk of an Egyptian response.

NOTE: The head of the Hamas Politburo, Khaled Meshal, is stepping down after 16 years and the struggle to succeed him is under way.  A key component of this struggle is opposition to Meshal’s desire for a reconciliation with mainstream Fateh faction of the PLO in the West Bank.  On the other hand, Meshal still seems to have the support of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Meshal’s decision to step down came after strong attacks on him by Hamas leaders Mahmud Zahhar and Khalil al-Hayeh, both of whom opposed his moves towards Fateh and both of whom are close to Iran.  Iran is said to have cut off ties with Meshal after he left Syria.  The leading candidates to replace Meshal are his deputy Abu Marzuk (another relative pragmatist) and the hardliner Saleh Arouri.