On Saturday night, an Egyptian border guard crossed the border and entered Israeli territory. There he ambushed and killed two Israel Defense Forces soldiers, a young man and a young girl, who were on patrol. A few moments later their bodies were found by an IDF officer. When the Israeli soldiers began to investigate, they managed to track down the terrorist. During the firefight that erupted, a third Israeli soldier was killed. Only after that, during another attack, the Egyptian terrorist was finally eliminated. May the Almighty avenge the blood of three of our fighters!
Unfortunately, this terrible terrorist attack was a logical result of the dreadful “peace treaty” with Egypt, a state that prepares for war with us every day, and does not stop its extremist rhetoric against us in all its media for decades, without exception...
There are many questions about the painful results of this terrible attack. One of them is why there were no regular and obligatory communication checks with the soldiers on duty for such a long period of time, why their position was completely unprotected, and so on...
Its unfortunate that the mainstream Israeli media hesitates to ask the leadership of the army and the government the obvious, in my opinion, questions:
1. Why, in the context of the furious Egyptian incitement against us that has been going on for decades, the threat posed by the Egyptian military is treated with such blatant carelessness by our army?
2. Why is the Egyptian military literally flooding the area bordering Israel, contrary to the framework specified in the “peace agreement” at all?
3. Why does our side tolerate an Egyptian defense minister calling Israel after a horrible terrorist attack, saying to our defense minister that he feels “sorry for the victims on both sides”? Since when did an Egyptian terrorist who killed three of our soldiers become a victim?
4. How is it possible that the bloody Egyptian terrorist knew perfectly well about the “emergency crossings” uncovered in our security fence? And if the information about these passages is actually transmitted to the Egyptians, isn’t it time to seriously investigate why it is transmitted to them, why there is not even minimal control — guards or surveillance cameras over these passages? Has anyone in the army leadership been so naive to believe that these “vulnerabilities” would not be used for terrorist activities?
5. Finally, an incident of such a magnitude, if it were our fault — an Israeli soldier killing three Egyptian soldiers — would immediately lead to an endless round of apologies from the whole political leadership, from the President and the Prime Minister, to the Chief of Staff and all the IDF and senior government officials. But when an Egyptian policeman kills three of our soldiers, the entire Egyptian leadership, military and political, reacts with a dead silence. There is no apology, and the only thing that happens is an outrageous phone call from the Egyptian defense minister, in which he calls his Egyptian terrorist a “victim”...
To summarize, we get the following unfortunate conclusion:
When you trust the Egyptians as much as you can and consider the border with them “peaceful”, it leads to an inevitable ignorance of the dangers and threats emanating from that border, resulting in a lack of proper resource allocation for guards, for cameras, for the deployment of quality and trained fighters. And a general atmosphere of lack of serious security threats (with the exception of anti-smuggling activities), which, as we have now seen, result in tragedy once again.
However, as has been said many times before, the main thing is not the lack of proper preparation, but the approach itself, believing that there is a “peace treaty”. While the reality is that we are in a state of “cold war,” and we are under constant fierce incitement from the Egyptian media, including their official state channels, and that’s not even counting the radical Islamists. All this is happening while Egypt is making enormous purchases of advanced military equipment and conducting ongoing exercises aimed at preparing for war against Israel. This, in turn, obviously means that everyone in the Egyptian military sees us as the enemy. In other words, it is clear that there is a very serious security threat from Egypt, which seems to be underestimated in Israel.
Unfortunately, it seems that only by the grace and the miracles of G-d manifested to us, the cold war with Egypt, combined with the fierce incitement from the Egyptian side against us, has not yet led to more horrible tragedies or, G-d forbid, to war.
So let there be only good news for us. It is time for our leaders to look at the Egyptian problem with a more realistic perspective.