The Economist
“SOMETIMES you have to subordinate strategic considerations to tactical needs,” says Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, former prime minister and the country’s most decorated military man. This is one such time: Mr Barak, backed by the current prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is going to agree to Egypt deploying thousands of troops in Sinai even though the Israel-Egypt peace treaty strictly forbids it. They will have helicopters and armoured vehicles, Mr Barak says, but no tanks beyond the lone battalion already stationed there.
The decision comes after an audacious attack on August 18th on Israeli vehicles travelling on a scenic road that hugs the Israel-Egypt border and ends at the resort town of Eilat. Eight Israelis, civilians and soldiers, died in the attack and in shoot-outs involving the army. Ten attackers were killed, two apparently by Egyptian border guards, six of whom were also killed in the crossfire. Egypt blamed Israel for the deaths. Israel replied that a hard-core group of Palestinians, all heavily armed, had entered Egypt’s Sinai peninsula from Gaza a month ago, camped and trained there, and made their way unhindered across open desert to the site of the attack. Egyptian and Israeli security sources believe that several militants operating in Sinai joined them to take part in the attacks. Read more »
