DEBKAfile/Israeli policymakers’ alarming over-reliance on Egypt to grapple with Hamas and ISIS/ Mohamed Soliman: Egyptian Assassinations and Islamist Escalation

Egyptian Assassinations and Islamist Escalation
Mohamed Soliman/Fikra Forum/ July04/15

Following the latest high-profile assassination, tensions between Islamists and the state will likely continue to escalate, with the judiciary looming large in both the government’s response and further Islamist plots.

 On June 29, Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat died in an orchestrated blast that targeted his convoy in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. The attack was forceful; the leader of Barakat’s security team also perished while eight others were injured. This incident raises many questions as to how President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi will deal with the loss of a main pillar in his regime and a major representative of the constitutional state. It is also unclear how the assassination will impact the political struggle and escalation of violence that began between the state and Islamists after the overthrow of former president Mohamed Morsi.

Barakat’s murder is one of the most successful Islamist political assassinations in the last several decades, which included the assassinations of former president Anwar Sadat and former speaker of the People’s Assembly, Rifaat al-Mahgoub. In the aftermath of each attack, Hosni Mubarak’s regime tightened its grip against Islamist groups by cracking down on member activities and speeding through trials against major Islamist leadership. The escalation continued until Islamist groups declared a truce in 1997, sixteen years after President Sadat’s assassination.
However, Islamist violence is once again escalating. The Barakat assassination must be viewed as the most recent incident in a string of judge assassinations and as part of the Islamists’ retribution against the regime’s new crackdown on them.

Last month, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis — an ISIS affiliate — assassinated three judges in al-Arish, the provincial capital of Northern Sinai. This attack targeted a vehicle carrying a number of civilian judges and prosecutors, also killing the driver and causing several injuries. Ansar Beit al-Maqdis intended for the attack to serve as reprisal against the Egyptian judiciary’s decrees that Morsi and 104 Muslim Brotherhood members receive the death sentence in mid-May.

 The Islamist community’s response to the rulings demonstrates their impact — 150 Muslim scholars and 10 Islamic bodies with close monetary ties to the Brotherhood issued a joint statement on May 30 titled “Call of Egypt: Muslim Scholars’ Statement on Crimes of the Coup in Egypt and the Stance Towards It.” The statement called for revenge against the judges for their endorsement of the execution of innocent souls: “Rulers, judges, officers, soldiers, muftis, media persons, politicians, and any other party proven beyond any doubt to be involved in the crimes of violating honor, bloodshed, and illegal killing, even if through inciting such acts, are considered, from Islamic perspective, murderers to whom all rulings related to the crime of murder are applicable. They must receive qisas [retribution] within the Islamic Law limits. Allah Almighty says that ‘whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land — it is as if he had slain mankind entirely’ (al-Maidah 5:32).”

 While Ansar Beit al-Maqdis had already attempted at least one major assassination targeting former interior minister Muhammad Ibrahim before Morsi’s sentence, the successful assassination of Barakat marks a major shift in Islamist tactics. The targeting of major state figures, ministers, judges, and politicians appears to be a key new Islamist strategy. The Muslim scholars’ statement serves as a political, religious, and intellectual cover for these assassinations and supports the idea that political killings are now within the repertoire of accepted Islamist actions. Unfortunately, this trend is not likely to end with this most recent assassination.

 And it is clear from Sisi’s recent statements that the great concern about the continuation of political assassinations will tighten state policies against Islamists. Directly after the prosecutor-general’s funeral, Sisi gave a speech stressing the importance of the judicial process and vowing to enact new laws to help Egyptian judges obtain quick execution of their decrees. The president addressed judges directly in his speech, saying, “The way tribunals have been working over the last two years is ‘inefficient’; if a death sentence is issued, it should be carried out, the same goes for life in prison.” Then Sisi indirectly referenced Morsi by claiming that “some people issue commands to kill from behind bars,” alluding to Morsi’s hand gesture during his trial, which is now perceived to have been a signal to kill Barakat.
There are many indications that tensions between Islamists and the state will continue to escalate both publicly and behind closed doors. Based on the recent judicial assassinations, the Muslim scholars’ statement of condemnation, and Sisi’s suggestion of free rein for the judiciary, it seems that Egypt’s judges will be key in this new escalation.
Mohamed Soliman is an engineer and a member of the Dostour Party’s political bureau. This article originally appeared on the Fikra Forum website.

Israeli policymakers’ alarming over-reliance on Egypt to grapple with Hamas and ISIS
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis July 04, 2015

The statements coming from different Israeli spokesmen this week were not just at dangerous variance with the actual events but with one another, when it came to Egypt’s massive confrontation this week with ISIS close to Israel’s border, a fresh round of Palestinian West Bank anti-Israel terror and the ambivalent role played by Hamas extremists in all these events.

Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said in an Al Jazeera interview Thursday, July 2, that Israel had “clear evidence” of Hamas aiding the offensive the Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate launched against Egyptian positions in northern Sinai Wednesday.

The Israeli commander accused Hamas of giving “weapons and logistical support to the ISIS affiliate.” He added “we have examples of Hamas commanders who actively participated in this assistance,” and named “Wael Faraj, a brigade commander of the military wing of Hamas…who smuggled wounded [ISIS fighters] from Sinai into Gaza,” and “Abdullah Kitshi …who trained operatives belonging to Wilayat Sinai.”

Asked about Israeli-Egyptian cooperation, Mordechai commented: “Egypt is a strong and independent country.”

The Defense Ministry’s strategic adviser Amos Gilead was more specific: He said Egypt was “a strong country of 90 million people with an army of half a million.” Gilead was sure that the Egyptians would do everything necessary for a determined war on ISIS.

Thursday, July 2, the day after the ISIS raid, the Egyptian military said it had killed 123 Islamic State gunmen in two days, 100 of which were killed on Wednesday. Egyptian bombers were then described as wiping out ISIS concentrations around the northern Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwaid. “The situation in northern Sinai is now under complete control,” said the Egyptian spokesman

All three officials were doing their best to put a good face on the Egyptian army’s reverses in its largest battle yet with ISIS, say debkafile’s military sources. No one was ready to admit that the Islamic State’s Sinai branch had won this confrontation on points.

For two years, the Egyptian army has only chipped away at the edges of the threatening Islamist presence growing larger in the Sinai Peninsula, even through Israel suspended the restrictions of the 1979 peace accord and allowed Egypt to bring large military forces, tanks, artillery and helicopters into Sinai for a major campaign to expunge that presence. This has not happened although both the Egyptians and the IDF know the exact whereabouts of the Islamist terrorists’ bases.

Even while playing down the unwelcome outcome of the Wednesday battle, the IDF took the precaution of closing to traffic the main Israeli highway running parallel to the Egyptian border from Nitzana to the southern port of Eilat. The army in the south was also placed on high alert in case ISIS raiders crossed the border from Egyptian Sinai.
Then, on Friday afternoon, parts of southern Israel heard a red alert for rockets which the IDF estimated had come from Sinai, i.e. ISIS, rather than the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials are at their most mixed up when they discuss Hamas – even after crediting that extremist Palestinian group with conducting a fresh surge of terrorist attacks on the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the past week, they murdered three Israelis – David Capra, Danny Gonen and Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld.

Yet, according to the mantra the IDF has taught accredited military correspondents, all Hamas wants is a long-term ceasefire so as to live in peace. They also trot out the official claims that the deadly attacks were the work of “lone wolves,” just as the persistent trickle of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip comes from “rogue” elements.
Israeli officials appear to have lost their way amid vain attempts to let Hamas off the terrorist hook.
Hamas’ own willingness to jump into bed with Egypt, Hizballah, Iran and ISIS – all at once – undoubtedly creates a confused picture about its shifting motives. However, Israeli policymakers must beware of falling into the dangerous trap of ambivalence and loss of focus.
President El-Sisi must realize by now that his army has missed the boat for a resounding one-strike victory against ISIS, because that enemy is no longer alone. Its association with Hamas is further bolstered by a secret pact with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the deadly foe of the El-Sisi administration.
Hamas, as the Brotherhood’s ideological offspring, in fact hosted Mahmud Izzat Ibrahim, head of the Brotherhood;s clandestine operational networks, which run from Libya through to Sinai.

This tripartite ISIS-Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas axis is currently in full momentum. Egypt is therefore in for a drawn-out bloody war.

Israeli policymakers would be foolish to depend on Cairo pull this red-hot iron out of the terrorist fire any time soon. They must find ways – the sooner the better – to grapple with the reality of a rampant Islamic State next door. ISIS is already in the process of overrunning the Gaza Strip; it is on the way to seizing expanding sections of the Sinai Peninsula. That territory will serve as a convenient base for Islamist raids against Israel.
If ISIS leaps further to hijack the coastal areas of Sinai, it may be necessary to fight a major war to preserve the freedom of navigation in the Suez Canal and Israel’s southern exit through the Gulf of Aqaba.