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Solution for Sinai

Nov 22,2014 - Last updated at Nov 22,2014

The suicide car bombing that claimed the life of 30 Egyptian soldiers and wounded many others in Sinai last month was not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last, judging by the ever-increasing number of such attacks.

This state of affairs prompted Cairo, and rightly so, to declare a state of emergency in the north and centre of the Sinai Peninsula last month, in an effort to end the state of lawlessness there.

Acts of terrorism in Sinai have been almost daily occurrences for years now. Such acts can be traced to the fact that Egypt cannot maintain a large and effective military force in its territory because of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which restricts the number of Egyptian military presence in Sinai to a token number equipped with light weapons.

This renders Sinai a fertile territory for jihadists and other radical movements who can roam freely this vast territory.

The solution to the increasing number of acts of terrorism in Sinai, which includes frequent sabotage attacks of the pipeline carrying Egyptian gas to Jordan, is to allow Egypt to maintain a much larger military force in the area, with a view to uprooting terrorists and their bases in the area once and for all.

The deployment of an effective Egyptian force in Sinai would not pose a threat to the security of Israel. Maintaining a state of lawless, on the other hand, poses a much greater risk to the security of both Israel and Egypt.

If Egypt is not allowed to deploy more military personnel, extremists operating in Sinai can only get stronger.

Surely Israel understands Cairo’s dilemma in wanting to respect its peace accord, while seeking to deploy more of its military power to maintain law and order in Sinai.

The sooner the two sides reach an agreement on this issue the sooner the cycle of violence in Sinai will end.

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