The Sunni vise that we wrote about is alive and kicking with Turkey working to occupy much of Syria and be the mentor of the new Moslem Brotherhood government there. Israel still stands in the way with its occupation of parts of the Syrian Golan and hopefully will make that permanent along with an agreement with the Druze in the south of the country. However, the southern part of the vise, Egypt is now becoming more dangerous to Israel and the west. A revanchist Erdogan in Turkey will be able to both compete with and befriend Egypt, the self-styled leader of the Arab world.
However, let us leave Turkey alone for the moment and ask what Egypt has been doing for the past decade and what their plans are. Much of this discussion is based on this fascinating interview (it is in Hebrew, but well worth watching if you can manage it) of Eli Dekel by Alex Tseitlin. Dekel is a former Lt. Colonel in the IDF intelligence unit continues to do strategic research dealing with the Israel-Arab conflict. Tseitlin is a polymath immigrant from the ex-Soviet Union who covers topics as wide ranging as Biblical history, Kabballah, Russian military affairs, Israel-Arab issues and just about anything else interesting you can think about. He also runs a free-wheeling Telegram channel (in Hebrew) and allows people from all over the political spectrum to voice their views.
In any event, what sparked this interview was a report that Tseitlin produced from an anonymous intelligence source claiming that President Trump was issued a warning that Egypt was close to attacking Israel. While both Tseitlin and Dekel take this report with a grain of salt it is worth looking at what the Egyptian military has been purchasing in general and building in Sinai in particular – the latter as a breach of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, of which the US is a signatory.
Egyptian activity in Sinai seems to be nothing other than preparing the battlefield for war. Egypt asked Israel’s permission to increase its armored and other military deployments in Sinai in order to fight ISIS but that war has been won and Egypt has not only not reduced its presence in Sinai it has increased it.
While the treaty (PEACE TREATY BETWEEN ISRAEL AND EGYPT - March 26, 1979) says specifically that “only civilian maritime ports and installations may be built in the Zones” Egypt has built two Naval ports in the Peninsula over the past few years. Egypt’s navy has also increased in power as it sports a total 320 vessels and 50,000 active and reserve sailors and naval officers including 8 submarines. Israel, in comparison has a total of 69 ships including 6 submarines.
Besides police and light army brigades, Egypt is allowed, by treaty, to have up to 230 tanks in Sinai all of which have to be in Zone A, which is farthest from Israel and borders the Suez Canal and Gulf of Suez in the West. However, in the Rafah area, where Egypt borders Gaza Egypt currently has 40 tanks as well as an additional 90 tanks in Al-Arish -about 50kms from Rafah. In total Egypt has over 600 tanks in Sinai, all of which can reach the border with Israel in 24 hours.
But the main offensive project of the Egyptian army in Sinai is building of over 30 tunnels for forward storage of ammunition and other necessary military supplies. These tunnels, built at the cost of over $200 million are supplied with everything an army will need for offensive and defensive operations. This is in addition to the over 300k square meters of warehouses built in Egypt itself for storage of military supplies – this is large enough to fill over 30 stadiums with ammunition and supplies.
Over the past 10 years Egypt has purchased 54 advanced French Rafale fighters, 46 MIG-29s from Russia and there are unconfirmed reports that it is purchasing China’s J-10C fighters with advanced anti-tank targeting and air-to-air missiles with a range of 200-300 km’s. This is in addition to its fleet of 220 F-16’s and the yet to be delivered 24 F-15’s, 40 Black Hawk and 100 Apache helicopters from the United States. Israel has a total of 320 combat jets.
In short, Egypt has spent over $140 billion in military purchases over the past few years from the United States, Russia, China, Italy, France and other countries. There are also reports that it has built a new chemical weapons plant.
That the Egyptian military trains to fight Israel and that most of its purchases are geared towards defeating Israel seems to be the consensus. The main question is if Egypt actually plans to attack Israel unilaterally or if it plans on coming in at some future war to be part of Israel’s destruction and take credit for it? In order words – would Egypt attack on its own or only as part of a wider coalition? And does this coalition have to be planned or can it be ad hoc? As an example, if Hezbollah did in fact join Hamas on October 7 and captured towns in the northern Gallilee and maybe even Nahariya and had the PA and Hamas on the West Bank joined in, Iran fired rockets and the then Syrian air force crossed the border and had it looked like Israel was, if not on the way to total defeat, at least see itself fighting a true existential war – would Egypt have stayed out?
If we remember back to 1967, the fighting started against Syria and Egypt and Jordan only came in because King Hussein believed Nassar’s lies that Egypt was defeating Israel. The temptation to be part of a winning war against Israel, even by the so-called Arab “moderates” might be too great to bear.
It is also quite clear that Egypt’s policy regarding Gaza is not only to keep Palestinians out of Egypt but to keep the pressure on Israel. Egypt, which has been the major go-between for both Hamas and Israel has never actually delivered an agreement in which Israel has gained. The fact that Israel’s soldiers and spies have always led these negotiations means that the heads of Israeli military intelligence, the Shaback and others have developed “relationships” with their Egyptian counterparts. While Israeli leaders see them as partners in an attempt to reign in Hamas, the results of these negotiations (pre and post October 7) lead one to believe these Isareali leaders have been hoodwinked time and time again. There is even an unconfirmed report that the head of the Shaback called the head of Egypt’s military intelligence on the night of October 6/7 to ask about Hamas and their plans for attack. Not only has Israel misinterpreted Hamas’s “interests” it has also misinterpreted Egypt’s interests.
For Israelis see Egypt as needing the peace agreement with Israel and a moderate Palestinian presence in Gaza as in their best interests but looking at what Egypt has built up over the past years militarily shows that this has been yet another of Israel’s wishful thinking. For a weak Israel is what Egypt is after and keeping the fires burning in Gaza, is what further those interests. That is why Egypt is so opposed to the Trump Gaza plan. They don’t want Israel to have a peaceful Gaza next to them.
Which brings us back to the Sunni Vise itself with Turkey in the north. Sadat realized that Egypt was not going to get the Sinai back via a war and was interested in moving his country forward with Sinai rather than without it. Now, 45 years later Israel has nothing to offer Egypt besides gas and Egypt has done nothing useful with the Sinai peninsula other than to prepare it for a launchpad in a war against Israel (and a tourist center in Sharm-al-Shaikh of course). Turkey’s main concern now is the Kurds but once they have finished with them, they will need to prove their Sunni leadership by targeting Israel. A treaty of interests (meaning weakening or destroying Israel) might be tempting for both powers.
There is a new IDF Chief of Staff coming on board in March replacing the man of no honor, General Herzi Halevi. Eyal Zamir is from the armored corps and the thought, the hope, is that he will take the ground forces more seriously and rebuild what needs to be rebuilt. Israel needs to add more tanks to its armored brigades and advanced armored personnel carriers for its infantry. It needs to double its artillery corps. It needs to make sure it has enough basic ammunition to fight a long war on multiple fronts without the threat of arms embargoes. The first test of Zamir will come in who he chooses as his main assistant, as head of intelligence and as head of the Southern Command. Israel does not now teach Egyptian tactics in any of its officer or squad commander courses and introducing it will show that he takes the threat from Egypt seriously.
Comments
Well done John, thank you. Not just Gaza. During the Yom Kippur War we were living in Bat Yam - we watched Dado (David Elazar) on television every night giving us briefings of where our troops were and what was seen as they went from structure to structure - as they wore infrared cameras on their helmits we were able to view what they saw at night, they found the corpses of Egyptian soldiers the average age was estimated at 13 and amphetimenes were found in their pockets, the IDF found the same of the michablim (terrorists) that were killed this past year. Some things never change.
Just saved this yesterday,
You itemized a lot of military spending. This is the same Egypt that can barely feed itself?