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i

iii

Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

ASSESSING EGYPTIAN PUBLIC SUPPORT 

FOR SECURITY CRACKDOWNS IN THE SINAI

Gregory Aftandilian

February 2015

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and 

do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and 

U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Press publications enjoy full 

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information, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresent 

official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to 

offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared for 

public release; distribution is unlimited.

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This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code, 

Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not be 

copyrighted.
iv

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be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. 

Army War College Press, U.S. Army War College, 47 Ashburn 

Drive, Carlisle, PA 17013-5010. 

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ISBN 1-58487-663-8
v

FOREWORD

Egypt, a pivotal country in the Middle East, is facing a significant terrorism problem emanating from 

the strategically important Sinai Peninsula, which 

borders the vital Suez Canal waterway to its west 

and Israel and the unstable Gaza Strip to its east. 

Terrorist groups in the Sinai have not only attacked 

Egyptian security forces and foreign tourists in that 

region (along with periodic attacks against Israeli border posts) but have taken their fight to the Egyptian 

mainland, which has caused anxiety among the public. The Egyptian government has used heavy-handed 

tactics against these terrorist groups and their sympathizers in the Sinai, but with mixed results. Although 

the level of violence has dipped since the summer of 

2013, the terrorist groups continue to be active. Moreover, such groups are still able to recruit disaffected 

Bedouin youth in the Sinai who often see no viable 

alternatives to joining the extremists. Helping Egypt 

effectively counter and defeat these terrorist groups, 

some of which are copying the brutal tactics of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is an important U.S. 

strategic goal.

Mr. Gregory Aftandilian, a Middle East specialist 

and an expert on Egypt, examines the important question of Egyptian public attitudes toward the government’s security crackdowns in the Sinai. He brings to 

bear such public attitudes toward the Bedouin inhabitants of the Sinai and how domestic political events 

in Egypt, as well as broader instability in region, have 

affected public attitudes toward the security policies. 

He also shows how instability in the Gaza Strip and 

conflicts between Israel and Hamas can impact Egyptian public attitudes toward the security crackdowns 

in the Sinai.
Mr. Aftandilian also provides cogent recommendations for U.S. civilian policymakers and U.S. Army 

officers in dealing with their Egyptian counterparts on 

this terrorism problem. He offers a comprehensive approach involving both military and economic policies.

The Strategic Studies Institute hopes the findings 

and recommendations in this monograph will be of 

assistance to U.S. civilian strategic planners and U.S. 

Army officers as they try to help Egypt to deal with its 

terrorism problem.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

vi
vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GREGORY AFTANDILIAN, a consultant, scholar, 

and lecturer, is currently an associate of the Middle 

East Center at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, an adjunct faculty member of Boston University 

and American University, and a Senior Fellow for 

the Middle East at the Center for National Policy in 

Washington, DC. He spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill, where 

he was foreign policy advisor to Congressman Chris 

Van Hollen (2007-08), a professional staff member of 

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign 

policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-04), and 

foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999). Prior to these positions, Mr. Aftandilian 

worked for 13 years as a Middle East analyst at the U.S. 

Department of State where he was a recipient of the 

Department’s Superior Honor Award for his analyses 

on Egypt and of the Intelligence Community’s Certificate of Distinction. His other government experience 

includes analytical work for the U.S. Department of 

Defense and the Library of Congress. Mr. Aftandilian 

was also a research fellow at the Kennedy School of 

Government at Harvard University (2006-07) and an 

International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign 

Relations in New York (1991-92), where he wrote the 

book, Egypt’s Bid for Arab Leadership: Implications for 

U.S. Policy. He is also the author of the monographs: 

Looking Forward: An Integrated Strategy for Supporting 

Democracy and Human Rights in Egypt (2009); Presidential Succession Scenarios and Their Impact on U.S.-Egyptian Strategic Relations (2011); and Egypt’s New Regime 

and the Future of the U.S.-Egyptian Strategic Relationship

(2013). He holds a B.A. in history from Dartmouth 
College, an M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from the 

University of Chicago, and an M.Sc. in international 

relations from the London School of Economics.

viii
SUMMARY

Mr. Gregory Aftandilian examines Egypt’s public support for the Egyptian government’s security 

crackdowns in the Sinai where terrorist groups have 

undertaken violent attacks against security forces and 

foreign tourists and have even taken their fight to the 

Egyptian mainland. Although the leadership of these 

terrorist groups appear to be from mainland Egypt 

(those living along the Nile River and in the Nile Delta 

region), much of the rank and file appear to be disaffected Bedouin youth in the Sinai who have become 

susceptible to the entreaties of the terrorists. 

Because most mainland Egyptians harbor negative 

views toward the Bedouin and because much of the 

Sinai is a closed military zone and a wilderness area, 

most Egyptian citizens are not bothered by the government’s heavy-handed security measures in the Sinai. 

Indeed, the vast majority of Egyptians desire stability and appear to give the Egyptian government wide 

berth to crack down hard against the terrorist groups. 

A complicating factor is the violence in the neighboring Gaza Strip. In the summer of 2014, the Egyptian 

government blamed Hamas for foolishly instigating 

the fight with Israel and relied on negative Egyptian 

public perceptions of a Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood 

nexus to justify its policy of keeping the Sinai-Gaza 

border closed. However, when Palestinian civilian casualties in that conflict started to mount, some Egyptian citizens began to question the Egyptian government’s cooperation with Israel, and this development 

was one of the reasons why Cairo attempted to broker 

a cease-fire between the two sides. If the more moderate Palestinian faction, Fatah, takes over Gaza and 

another mini-war breaks out between Israel and Gaza, 

ix
x

the Egyptian government will have a much more 

difficult time trying to manage public opinion. 

Mr. Aftandilian argues for enhanced counterterrorism assistance to help Egyptian authorities fight 

the Sinai-based terrorist groups. He recommends the 

reconvening of a U.S.-Egyptian strategic dialogue 

where U.S. Army officers can brief their Egyptian 

counterparts on successful counterterrorism policies. 

In addition, he recommends bringing Egyptian military officers to the United States to attend counterterrorism classes at U.S. professional military educational 

institutes, as well as training whole Egyptian military 

units by U.S. Army counterterrorism specialists in either the United States or in a friendly Arab country. He 

also recommends programs to help disaffected Bedouin youth in the Sinai (such as persuading Egyptian 

authorities to recruit some of them into local police 

forces and an extensive job training program, funded 

in part by the United States), to give such youth meaningful alternatives to joining terrorist groups.
1

ASSESSING EGYPTIAN PUBLIC SUPPORT 

FOR SECURITY CRACKDOWNS IN THE SINAI

Egypt has a serious security threat emanating from 

the Sinai Peninsula. Over the past several years, but 

especially since the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood 

President Mohammad Morsi in early-July 2013, the 

level of terrorist activity and violence against Egyptian security forces has escalated to high-levels. The 

violence threatens Egypt’s stability and its ability to 

get its troubled economy to rebound, particularly over 

such important economic engines as tourism and foreign investment. Newly elected Egyptian President 

(and former Field Marshal) Abdel Fatah al-Sissi stated 

in his inaugural speech that, as president, stamping out terrorism is his first priority.1

 For the United 

States, the security problem in the Sinai has important 

ramifications as well. It threatens the stability of the 

most populous country in the Middle East region—a 

linchpin state in the area; it threatens the peace treaty 

between Egypt and Israel; it has the potential of a spillover effect to threaten the vital Suez Canal waterway, 

upon which U.S. military ships (as well as merchant 

ships) pass from the Mediterranean to eastern Africa, 

the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf.2

The Egyptian military, which has taken the lead 

in security operations in the Sinai, seems determined 

to use maximum force to pacify the Sinai and eliminate the threat posed by the terrorist groups. One of 

the key questions that has not been explored is: How 

much leeway, in terms of Egyptian public opinion, 

does the Egyptian military have in these security 

operations? In other words, to what extent does the 

Egyptian public give the Egyptian military wide berth 

to carry out such operations? Related to this question 
2

is to what extent such operations can backfire and rebound against the Egyptian military and government 

if they are not successful? Furthermore, to what extent 

can such operations, because they employ so much 

violence and severely impact the lives of Bedouin villagers, create even more problems for the military and 

impact the attitudes of Egyptians concerned about the 

government’s human rights abuses?

Characteristics of the Sinai and Its 

Complicated Image.

The Sinai Peninsula is a very complicated piece of 

territory. The western part straddles the important 

Suez Canal waterway, with the major cities of Port 

Said, Ismailiya, and Suez located on the western side 

of the canal. The southern tip of the Sinai includes the 

important resort areas of Sharm El-Shiekh and Ras 

Muhammad, which draw many thousands of European tourists every year and are an important source 

of revenue for the state. The town of Taba by the Israeli border and the Gulf of Aqaba in the southeastern 

portion of the Sinai traditionally has attracted Israeli 

and other foreign tourists. The central, northern, and 

eastern parts of the Sinai are mainly mountainous 

and desert areas inhabited by Bedouins who traditionally have been marginalized in Egyptian society. 

They have a reputation in mainland Egypt as a sort 

of lawless and rootless people who earn their living 

by smuggling and other nefarious activities.3

 Whether 

this characterization is justified or not, it seems to be 

widely held by the Egyptian people who inhabit the 

Nile region, that is, most of the population. Hence, in 

the eyes of most Egyptians, the Bedouins are not considered truly “Egyptian.” They live on Egyptian terri-
3

tory but are not considered full citizens. For example, 

they are excluded and exempted from the military 

and the police services for complicated reasons, but 

in large part because their loyalty to the nation-state 

has always been suspect. Correspondingly, they have 

always received a much smaller share of state resources.4

 In addition, in the northeastern part of the Sinai, 

bordering the Gaza Strip, there is a small community 

of Palestinians who have been living there as refugees 

since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

As a kind of “wilderness area,” most of the Sinai 

is largely unknown to the Egyptian public. It has never been a place where Egyptians from the Nile have 

settled, except for the development of the resort areas in and near Sharm El-Sheikh since the mid-1980s. 

Much of the peninsula has long been a closed military area, contributing to its rather mysterious and 

wilderness status. 

This is not to say that the Egyptian people do not 

consider the Sinai as Egyptian territory. Indeed, when 

Israeli forces occupied the Sinai after the 1967 war, the 

peninsula’s loss was seen as humiliating by the Egyptian people, a situation that needed to be rectified.5

The Sinai is important strategically for Egypt because 

it is a “buffer zone” between Israel and “mainland” 

Egypt, and it gives mainland Egypt a kind of “strategic depth” in the face of invasions coming from the 

east (as proved to be the case when the Ottoman army 

invaded it in the early stages of World War I, and 

when the Israelis invaded it in 1956 and 1967). Former 

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat invested much time 

and energy trying to retrieve the Sinai through a combination of war and diplomacy. In the October 1973 

war, the Egyptian military’s successful crossing of the 

Suez Canal and the recovery of territory in the west-
4

ern part of the Sinai was seen as a great victory by the 

Egyptian people because they had finally gotten some 

of their lost lands back and had inflicted substantial 

military losses on the Israelis. Although the Israelis 

counterattacked, and the war was fought to a sort of 

draw, Egyptians still tout that war as a great victory 

after the humiliating defeat and the loss of the Sinai 

in 1967. Subsequent diplomatic efforts supported by 

the United States in the form of the Camp David Accords of 1978, and the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 

1979, enabled Egypt to retrieve all of the Sinai by 1982. 

Although Egypt was criticized by much of the Arab 

world for concluding a so-called “separate peace” 

with Israel, Sadat and most Egyptian citizens held the 

view that Egypt had made enormous sacrifices for the 

Palestinian and Arab cause since 1948, and no country 

had the right to criticize it for getting its lands back.6

One of the consequences of the Israeli occupation 

of the Sinai from 1967 to the early-1980s was that there 

were suspicions that many of the Bedouins in the Sinai had collaborated with the Israelis.7

 The Bedouin 

deny this charge, but the notion persists among many 

mainland Egyptians, and it may be one of the reasons 

why the Egyptian military continues to exclude the 

Bedouin from military service.

Another consequence of the Israeli occupation of 

the Sinai was that, as a price for peace and the return 

of the Sinai to Egyptian sovereignty (including oil 

resources there at the time), Cairo was compelled to 

accept military restrictions (concerning the amount of 

military equipment and troops) within various zones 

in the Sinai Peninsula. The Multinational Force and 

Observers (MFO) peacekeeping force, supported by 

the United States, has been monitoring this agreement 

since that time. Egyptian officials, and Egyptians with 
5

general knowledge of these restrictions, were never 

happy with this arrangement, but they grudgingly accepted it as the price to retrieve the Sinai. Periodically, 

there have been calls by some nationalist and Islamist 

political figures in Egypt to revise the terms of these 

military restrictions,8

 but nothing official has come of 

this because it would take the concurrence of the Israeli government to do so. Nonetheless, with the upsurge of violence by extremists in the Sinai since 2011, 

the Israelis and the Egyptian governments have come 

to behind-the-scenes agreements and understandings 

to allow more Egyptian military assets to be deployed 

to their common border than would otherwise be the 

case. It appears that the Israelis are generally accepting of the deployment of additional Egyptian military 

assets to the border, as they serve both countries’ interests in seeing the Sinai pacified and tunnel activity 

from the Sinai into Gaza closed. One Israeli scholar, 

writing in January 2014, noted: 

Over the past year, Israel and Egypt have used little-known, legally permissible understanding—the 

Agreed Activities Mechanism—to bypass restrictions 

on the number and type of Egyptian forces permitted 

in much of the Sinai. In doing so, they have made defacto modifications to their 1979 peace treaty without 

resorting to the diplomatically risky procedure of 

‘reviewing’ the treaty itself. As a result, considerable 

Egyptian army forces are now constantly deployed in 

central and eastern Sinai (Areas B and C of the peninsula, respectively), in a manner and scope never envisioned by the teams that negotiated the treaty more 

than 3 decades ago.9

The only time the Israelis protested this increase 

in military assets was in August 2012 when the Egyptian military apparently did not inform the Israelis in 
6

advance about the movement of military assets close 

to the border.10 But this disagreement soon dissipated, 

and cooperation between the Egyptian and Israeli 

military and intelligence services reportedly has been 

working smoothly since that time, even during the 

presidency of Mohammad Morsi.11

Developments in the Sinai.

Prior to the 2011 revolution which led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak as president, Egypt’s main 

fight with terrorists occurred in the 1990s in the Egyptian mainland, when the Islamic Group Al-Gamaa AlIslamiyya and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad undertook 

attacks against regime officials, policemen, and foreign tourists, hoping to weaken the state and somehow cause the regime to fall.12 Although hundreds 

of Egyptians and scores of foreign tourists died over 

the course of the 1990s, the regime was able to defeat 

these terrorists through a combination of security 

measures, economic development in some neglected 

urban areas, as well as in rural areas of Upper Egypt, 

and effective propaganda. Perhaps more importantly, 

most Egyptians, while disliking the Mubarak regime, 

never saw these terrorist groups as viable alternatives 

to Mubarak’s rule. Furthermore, the terrorists’ tactics 

of attacking foreign tourists and policemen were seen 

as both “un-Egyptian” and “un-Islamic,” for they only 

contributed to hurting Egypt’s image abroad and putting hundreds of thousands of people involved in the 

tourist industry out of work.

After the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks by alQaeda against the United States, there appears to have 

been some extremists (whether Egyptian or foreign), 

perhaps affiliated with al-Qaeda, who came to the 
7

Sinai to undertake terrorist acts against foreign tourists and Israeli targets. Although only a few of such 

attacks occurred between 2004 and 2006, the Egyptian military reacted strongly against them, especially 

since they occurred in the Sinai resort towns of Sharm 

El-Sheikh, Taba, and Dahab, which are important 

sources of foreign revenue. The Egyptian government 

claimed that the October 7, 2004, attack in Taba, which 

killed 34 and wounded 171, was undertaken by a Palestinian who had recruited some mainland Egyptians 

and Bedouins as accomplices. In the aftermath of this 

incident, the Egyptian government rounded up 2,400 

people, the majority of whom were probably Bedouin, 

and kept many of them incarcerated for years.13 Three 

purportedly mainland Egyptians were later sentenced 

to death. 

Despite government claims that it either rounded 

up or killed the perpetrators of these attacks, the dragnet did not apparently capture all of the terrorists. 

More worrisome, these terrorists were able to continue 

to entice many disaffected Bedouin youths to join their 

ranks and inculcate them in Islamist extremist beliefs. 

At the same time, after Hamas took control of the Gaza 

Strip from Fatah in 2007 and Israel imposed a trade 

embargo on the area, tunnel digging—and the smuggling of goods, food, and weapons—became a very lucrative activity between the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. 

This smuggling activity was especially important for 

Hamas during and after the first of several mini-wars 

between the Hamas and Israel in 2008. Who actually 

dug the tunnels remains somewhat unclear (Palestinians or Bedouin), but certainly the terrorist groups, 

including Hamas, and some Bedouin tribesmen, benefitted substantially from the smuggling activity. As 

the smuggling business thrived, many Bedouin tribes 
8

became essentially armed gangs with military equipment, such as machine gun-mounted pickup trucks. 

Egyptian police forces soon proved to be no match for 

such armed groups.14

Developments since the 2011 Revolution.

During the Egyptian revolution of January-February 2011, thousands of inmates in Egyptian prisons 

were freed or freed themselves in the chaos that ensued when the police abandoned their posts. Included 

in this group were many terrorists, some of whom 

remained in mainland Egypt while others went to 

the Sinai. One of the prominent escapees was Ramzi 

Mawafi, a doctor who joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1990s, but was subsequently arrested by 

Egyptian authorities. According to Egyptian security 

officials who spoke to the Associated Press, Mawafi is 

believed to be in the Sinai coordinating the terrorist 

groups and helping them secure money and weapons.15 In the Sinai itself, the temporary “disappearance 

of the security state gave Sinai’s population the opportunity to avenge its suffering by sacking abandoned 

checkpoints, police stations, and intelligence offices 

throughout the peninsula.”16 The Supreme Council of 

the Armed Forces (SCAF), which initially ruled Egypt 

after the revolution, tried to quell such activity in the 

Sinai, but with mixed results. SCAF put more troops 

into the Sinai to fill the security vacuum left by the ineffective police forces, but these troops were unable to 

pacify the area or prevent the gas pipeline from Egypt 

to Israel from being attacked several times. During 

2011, the Bedouin tribesmen, probably in conjunction 

with extremist elements: 
9

attacked the police station in al-Arish, orchestrated 

seven pipeline explosions, repeatedly disrupted traffic on the main road to the trade terminal with Israel, 

skirmished with Egyptian forces that have ventured 

into Wadi Amr and other Bedouin strongholds, and 

expanded their large-scale trade in organs harvested 

from African immigrants.17

Shortly after Mohammad Morsi of the Muslim 

Brotherhood won the presidency in the summer of 

2012, a serious terrorist incident occurred in the Sinai. 

On August 5, 2012, a group of Islamist extremists fired 

on Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai border town of Rafah, killing 16 of them, stole their armored vehicles, 

and attempted to smash into the Israeli side of the 

border before being stopped by Israeli forces.18 The 

incident was an embarrassment for the Egyptian military, and Morsi used it to reshuffle Egypt’s military 

and intelligence services. Minister of Defense Hussein 

Tantawi and Army Chief of Staff Sami Annan (both 

of whom had opposed Morsi for political reasons) 

were sacked, as were the heads of air force and navy 

commands. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, then head of military intelligence, was named Defense Minister. This 

reshuffling of the military hierarchy proved popular 

with the Egyptian people, some of which favored the 

removal of the SCAF old guard leadership because of 

the SCAF’s repressive policies in the 2011-12 period,19

while others believed that Egyptian soldiers should 

have been better protected against the extremists, and 

that the top brass should be held accountable.

Interestingly, shortly after this leadership shakeup, 

new Defense Minister al-Sissi traveled to the North 

Sinai on August 20, 2012, to meet with disaffected 

Bedouin tribal leaders to hear their complaints and 

to enlist their support against the extremists. Report-
10

edly, al-Sissi offered rewards to the Bedouins to collect weapons in the area, and he promised that $165 

million in development assistance would be sent to 

the region.20 It is not known whether any weapons 

were collected or such assistance was ever rendered. 

Morsi himself promised economic development in the 

North Sinai, but this never materialized, according to 

one analyst, in part because of fiscal constraints and 

pressing needs in the Egyptian mainland.21

In early-July 2013, Morsi was ousted by al-Sissi 

and imprisoned after millions of Egyptians came 

out to protest his rule. Egypt’s public prosecutor in 

May 2014 said that investigations of terrorist suspects 

showed that Morsi had struck a deal with the main 

terrorist group in the Sinai, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem), to refrain from attacks during 

his presidency in exchange for pardoning members 

of the group.22 It is difficult to verify these charges. 

Morsi’s public encouragement of Egyptians going to 

Syria to fight against the Assad regime, and the statement of one of his top aides that Egyptians who did 

so would not be prosecuted upon their return,23 was 

probably a cause of concern for the Egyptian military 

and intelligence services who were worried about the 

returnees from such conflicts.

What is known is that after Morsi was overthrown, 

terrorist activity in Sinai increased markedly. Egyptian military and security services came under attack 

almost daily in the Sinai in the summer of 2013, replete with roadside bombs and executions of military 

personnel. The new, military-backed Egyptian government blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for these 

attacks and claimed that the Brotherhood not only 

had close ties to these terrorist groups in the Sinai, but 

were actively coordinating with them. One Brother-
11

hood leader claimed that these attacks were in retaliation for the coup against Morsi.24 Whether this statement was based on the actual situation, or was merely 

bravado meant to scare the military, is unknown, but 

it played into the Egyptian military’s narrative that 

all of the terrorist violence was linked to the Brotherhood. One thoughtful analyst has written that: 

more likely, the increase in salafi jihadist attacks came 

from an opportunism on the part of the militants—

who were not supporters of the Brotherhood while it 

was in power—and a response to a newly activist military in the [Sinai] peninsula: an increase in Egyptian 

military forces provided an increase in salafi jihadist 

targets.25

 For its part, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis tried to capitalize 

on the government’s severe crackdown on pro-Morsi 

supporters in mid-August 2013 by stating: “We were 

horrified by what they saw of massacres against the 

helpless Muslim masses.”26

Terrorist Groups in the Sinai.

The extremist elements in the Sinai are made up of 

several groups, perhaps with membership numbering 

about 1,600,27 the most prominent being Ansar Beit alMaqdis who probably came into being in 2011. Membership in this organization is somewhat murky, but 

it is believed to consist mostly of Egyptian nationals, 

some of whom, including a few former Egyptian army 

officers, had fought with Islamist extremist forces in 

the Syrian civil war, plus a smattering of foreign Arabs who have come to the Sinai after having fought 

in Syria and other conflict areas. The group claimed 

responsibility for the August 2011 rocket attacks on 
12

Eilat, Israel, near Egypt’s Sinai border with Israel, during which 13 Israelis were killed. In October 2011, alQaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri praised this operation 

and added that one of its gains was: 

exposing the treason of the ruling [Egyptian] military 

council, which was quick to send it troops to chase 

[Ansar operatives] in order to protect Israel’s security, 

and then begging from Israel to increase the forces in 

the area so as to pursue Israel’s enemies.28

One press report noted that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has 

shown: 

it can build and remotely detonate large bombs in 

strategic locations, gather intelligence about the precise timing of movements by their targets, record their 

own attacks and manage the complicated maintenance 

of an advanced portable surface-to-air missile—all 

suggesting combat experience.29

Interestingly, both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State 

of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which was disowned by 

al-Qaeda, have endorsed Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. In an alQaeda video, Zawahiri referred to the group as “our 

people in Sinai” and showed a funeral for some of its 

fallen fighters. Zawahiri added that “we must be determined to thwart the Americanized coup in Egypt.”30

Meanwhile, ISIL featured a video of an Egyptian national who fought with them in Syria, urging his fellow 

Egyptians to take up arms against the Cairo regime. 

ISIL also featured an Islamic court judge in Syria vowing to support “the mujahedeen in Sinai and the Muslims in Egypt” with “our hearts, our men, and what 

we can supply you with.”31 In early November 2014, 

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis swore allegiance to ISIL.31a Complicating the picture is that some Egyptian security 
13

officials have claimed that Ansar is the Egyptian wing 

of a Gaza-based salafi jihadist group, though this has 

not been proven.32

In early-2014, one Ansar Beit al-Maqdis operative 

even shot down a military helicopter over the Sinai 

with a man-portable air defense (MANPAD) system 

that was probably an SA-16 missile, marking the first 

time such a missile was used in Egypt by the terrorists, suggesting some obtained training in either Syria 

or Iraq.33 Ansar Beit al-Maqdis also has taken responsibility for the attacks against security officials and 

forces in mainland Egypt from September 2013 to 

the present.

On August 18, 2014, a group calling itself “The Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt” claimed responsibility for two attacks earlier in the month in which 

five policemen were killed. The same group also 

claimed responsibility for an attack against an Egyptian army post in Farafra in Egypt’s Western Desert in 

July 2014, during which 23 soldiers and officers were 

killed.34 However, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis also took credit 

for these same attacks, suggesting Ansar may be capitalizing on the Islamic State’s name to sow confusion 

and to link itself to the militancy of the group that has 

taken over large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.

Other extremist groups in the Sinai include Tawhid 

wal Jihad, an al-Qaeda inspired group believed to have 

been involved in the 2004-06 terrorist incidents in the 

Sinai mentioned earlier. Although severely weakened 

by the large-scale arrests that followed, Tawhid wal 

Jihad is believed by the Egyptian security services to 

have retained its military wing, though its military 

commander reportedly was killed by the security 

forces in January 2014. Other reports suggest that remaining Tawhid wal Jihad militants have joined Ansar 

Beit al-Maqdis.

35
14

Another group is the Muhammad Jamal Network, 

named after its leader, Muhammad Jamal, who was 

first trained by al-Qaeda in the late-1980s. He reportedly has maintained links to Zawahiri as well as alQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Qaeda in the 

Maghreb. He was imprisoned by the Mubarak regime, 

released in early-2012 following the revolution, and 

re-arrested in November 2012 following suspicions 

that his group was involved in the Benghazi attack 

on U.S. officials 2 months earlier. It is unknown how 

large his following is in the Sinai, but there are press 

reports suggesting that it collaborates with Ansar Beit 

al-Maqdis.

36

There are some other reports suggesting a presence of the Yemeni-based group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the Sinai. In August 2012, CNN, citing an Egyptian security official, claimed that Yemeni 

militants had come to the Sinai to train local jihadis. 

In early-September 2013, based on Bedouin sources, 

Associated Press reported that there had been a recent influx of foreign fighters into the Sinai, including 

several hundred Yemenis.37 It is not possible to verify 

these figures. Egyptian sources believe that while 

there are probably some foreign Arab fighters in the 

Sinai, like the Yemenis, the figure of several hundred 

is probably an exaggeration; the bulk of the fighters 

are either from mainland Egypt or Bedouin recruits 

from the Sinai.38

In addition to these mainly Egyptian groups, there 

are unconfirmed reports of Palestinian salafi groups 

undergoing training in the Gaza Strip and then, after 

such training, traveling through the underground 

tunnels to the Sinai where they aid the terrorist cells of 

such groups as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. This assessment is 

the view of Egyptian intelligence, according to some 
15

press reports,39 and probably accounts in part for the 

hostility of the Egyptian security services toward 

Hamas outside of the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas 

connection. It is doubtful that these salafi groups 

would be able to train in the Gaza Strip without the 

knowledge of Hamas. One press report noted that 

Hamas is thought to have an agreement with Mumtaz 

Dughmush, the head of the Palestinian salafi militant 

group, Jaish al-Islam, which purportedly runs training 

camps in Gaza for jihadists who subsequently go to 

fight in Yemen, Syria, and the Sinai.40 The purported 

links between the Palestinian salafi groups and the 

Sinai-based terrorist groups also account for the Egyptian military’s clampdown on the tunnels and efforts 

to seal the border as much as possible.

Transporting Terrorism to the Egyptian Mainland.

More worrisome to the Egyptian government and 

people has been the violent actions of the Sinai-based 

terrorist groups to undertake attacks in Cairo and 

other areas of the Egyptian mainland. In September 

2013, Ansar carried out a failed assassination attempt 

against Egyptian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim.41 In December 2013, Ansar detonated a large 

car bomb against the security directorate building in 

Mansoura, killing 15 people. The following month, it 

carried out more bombings in Cairo, including one 

that targeted the Cairo Security Directorate.42 In lateJanuary 2014, it assassinated a police general and an 

interior ministry official. Late-January 2014 also witnessed the death of five policemen in the Beni Suef 

governorate in a firefight with militants.43

Although attacks in the Egyptian mainland 

dropped in February and March, they picked up again 
16

in April 2014. Early that month, three bomb blasts 

took place near Cairo University, killing a senior police officer and wounding at least five other people. 

The officer was head of the investigations unit of the 

West Giza district in greater Cairo, suggesting that 

he was specially targeted. A group called Ajnad Misr

(Soldiers of Egypt) took responsibility. It was unclear 

if this was a new group or merely a cell of Ansar Beit 

al-Maqdis, trying to confuse the authorities by using 

another name. From July 2013 to late-April 2014, according to the Egyptian government, about 500 army 

personnel, police officers, and officials were killed by 

the terrorist groups.44

Since the summer of 2014, the terrorist groups have 

also started to attack civilian targets. On June 25, 2014, 

there were four rudimentary car bomb attacks in the 

Cairo metro during rush hour. No deaths occurred, 

but six people were injured. Three days later, an improvised explosive device (IED) was detonated in a 

building in Giza, south of Cairo, killing a girl and her 

mother. On July 3, 2014, the anniversary of the removal of Morsi from power, a bomb exploded on a local 

train in the city of Alexandria, injuring nine people.45

It is unclear which group(s) were behind these 

attacks on ordinary citizens. They were probably designed to sow panic in the general public and to try 

to turn the public against the military-backed government. The authorities, not surprisingly, blamed the 

Muslim Brotherhood for the attacks, as it had with 

previous attacks. Whether the Brotherhood is actually 

behind such attacks is not known. Some analysts have 

speculated that since the summer 2013 crackdown on 

the organization, some younger elements of the Brotherhood, without the guidance from senior officials in 

the organization, nearly all of whom are now incar-
17

cerated, may have joined the actual terrorist groups 

out of frustration. Some other Brotherhood members, 

particularly in the summer of 2013, engaged in more 

rudimentary attacks against police forces and Coptic 

Churches, usually by hurling Molotov cocktails at 

such targets.46 Such attacks differed from the more 

sophisticated attacks against police targets by Ansar 

Beit Al-Maqdis in December 2013 and January 2014. On 

July 4, 2014, however, there was a blast at a farm in 

Fayoum, southwest of Cairo, killing four people who 

were trying to assemble an IED. The farm was reportedly owned by a Brotherhood activist, suggesting that 

at least in this case, some Brotherhood members were 

attempting to engage in violence.47 In mid-August 

2014, the Egyptian authorities accused the Muslim 

Brotherhood of trying to blow up power line pylons 

in an effort to exacerbate electricity shortages in Egypt 

that are affecting millions of families.48 Again, it is not 

known whether the Brotherhood was actually behind 

these attacks or whether this was merely another case 

of the government’s propaganda campaign against 

the organization.

In the meantime, Ansar has continued to undertake terrorist attacks in the Sinai. For example, in February 2014, it attacked a tour bus of South Koreans in 

Taba, and it has continued to strike against military 

targets in the Sinai. On August 20, 2014, four beheaded 

corpses were found in the town of Sheikh Zuwaid in 

the Sinai. The victims were believed to have been Sinai residents who were targeted by the extremists for 

cooperating with the Egyptian police and army.49 A 

day earlier, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis posted a video online 

showing the murder of Egyptian soldiers and scenes 

of an attack on an army checkpoint. The video contained a clip of one of Ansar’s leaders admonishing the 
18

soldiers for taking up arms for “your leader” (meaning President al-Sissi), who “took the side of the U.S. 

without hesitation . . .” The soldiers were also admonished for killing “jihadists” and not getting blamed 

for doing so.50 Needless to say, such images and video 

clips have undoubtedly angered the Egyptian military 

and the public, especially since the military is a largely 

conscript army.

Egyptian Government’s Response in the Sinai.

The Egyptian government has often used brutal 

methods in the Sinai that have matched at times the 

brutality of the terrorists. In the summer of 2013, in 

an example of the latter, terrorists in the Sinai pulled 

police recruits from buses, laid them on the ground, 

and shot 25 of them to death.51 In response to such 

incidents, the military has often used helicopter gunships to strike suspected militant hideouts in several 

villages in northern Sinai, killing many people, not 

necessarily all extremists, in the process. One North 

Sinai villager told the independent press that military 

helicopters in the summer of 2013 shelled his village 

“almost daily” in 1 week. He continued, “Imagine, in 

1 week, they bombarded the village with more than 

a hundred shells.”52 In addition to strikes from the 

air, the military has also used tanks against Bedouin 

villages. A villager reported that in September 2013:

a tank positioned itself in an elevated sandy area and 

shelled the houses randomly. Most of the residents 

fled their homes as soon as they heard the sound of 

tanks, but in one of the homes that had been shelled, 

we found the bodies of a mother and four children 

who were killed by the shelling.53
19

In addition, the military reportedly has cut down 

hundreds of olive trees on the road from El Arish to 

Rafah in the northern Sinai, presumably to prevent 

terrorists from using the trees as cover for their own 

operations against the military but also, in part, as punitive measures against villages suspected of harboring terrorists.54

Some villagers in the North Sinai have admitted 

to journalists “the presence of armed men” in some 

villages, but said that the military, by using collective 

punishment on mostly peaceful villagers, is fighting 

“terrorism with terrorism” and is “creating terrorism” by compelling the disaffected youth to join the 

extremists.55 The government has promised that it 

would compensate villagers to mitigate the effects of 

such heavy-handed security measures against innocent villagers and their building and crops, but such 

villagers have reportedly seen no recompense yet.

In 2014, the Egyptian Observatory for Rights and 

Freedoms issued a scathing report on the Egyptian 

army’s operations in the North Sinai, and characterized the transgressions as “crimes against humanity.” 

The report noted “systematic violations” committed 

by the military, adding that military operations in the 

North Sinai alone had left 200 people dead, 1,500 arrested, and destroyed more than 350 houses since July 

3, 2013.56 In addition, on January 25, 2014, 13 Egyptian human rights groups wrote an open letter to the 

authorities criticizing the excessive force by the military, and calling upon them to employ a more “comprehensive approach” to take into consideration the 

“economic, social, and political” circumstances of the 

region, adding that “counterterrorism efforts must not 

include arbitrary measures but rather be conducted 

within a framework that respects the law and indi-
20

vidual rights throughout the process of identifying 

the real perpetrators.”57

Although the government’s response has elicited 

strong criticism from Egypt’s human rights community, the Egyptian public, by and large, does not seem 

to be bothered by such heavy-handed military tactics 

in the Sinai. First, mainland Egyptians have very few 

family connections to the Bedouin residents of the Sinai, and second, because of their low opinion of the 

Bedouins and the prejudices they have toward them, 

coupled with anger at the terrorist incidents emanating from the Sinai, mainland Egyptians have little 

sympathy toward the plight of the Bedouins now under siege.58 In the aftermath of the upsurge in terrorist 

violence not just in the Sinai but in mainland Egypt, 

in January 2014, one Egyptian citizen told the press 

that he would be voting “yes” on the new post-Morsi 

constitution “because there is a terrorist organization 

that is trying to destroy us.”59 Another Egyptian citizen said that a vote for the constitution was a vote for 

al-Sissi, “and Egypt will be safe again.”60 Although 

such quotes are not a scientific gage of public opinion, 

they seem to be widely held among many ordinary 

Egyptians—probably a majority—who harbor negative attitudes toward the Muslim Brotherhood and all 

Islamist extremist groups, and keenly want stability to 

return to the country.61

The Impact of Renewed Conflict between 

Israel and Hamas.

The renewed military confrontation between Israel 

and Hamas that broke out in July 2014 put additional 

pressure on the Egyptian government and complicated public attitudes toward the Sinai situation. 
21

The government-supported media in Egypt blamed 

Hamas for the conflict, and charged that the missile 

strikes by Hamas against Israel and Israel’s military 

retaliation led to the loss of hundreds of Palestinian 

lives while doing very little damage on Israel. In other 

words, the pro-government Egyptian media put out 

the line that Hamas was foolhardy and irresponsible 

for provoking such a conflict when its outcome was 

never in doubt. Several pro-government media commentators even made sarcastic remarks about Hamas 

leader Khaled Mashaal, claiming he was living the life 

of luxury in Qatar while Palestinians were dying by the 

hundreds in Gaza because of his foolish policy. One 

Egyptian commentator stated that he would personally drive Mashaal to the Egyptian-Gaza border and 

drop him off there so he could perform jihad against 

Israel—in other words, the commentator was taking 

Mashaal and other Hamas leaders to task for living 

in safety while Gaza was in flames and Palestinian 

civilians were bearing the brunt of the confrontation. 

Other pro-government television commentators also 

criticized Hamas for initially rejecting Egypt’s efforts 

to broker a truce and charged that Hamas’ demands 

were unrealistic. One commentator said that one of 

these demands—having an Arab country (not Egypt) 

in control of the Rafah crossing point between Gaza 

and the Sinai, was an affront to Egyptian sovereignty. He added sarcastically that Hamas, by this logic, 

should simply take over Tahrir Square in downtown 

Cairo.62

Throughout the conflict, Egypt kept the border with 

Gaza closed, only allowing some wounded Palestinians to come across for medical treatment in Egyptian 

hospitals. It also allowed for the delivery of some humanitarian supplies to Gaza that was provided by the 
22

Egyptian military. But the Egyptian government was 

strongly against private Egyptians doing the same. 

Some opposition party activists signed a petition to 

President al-Sissi requesting that the government do 

more. One private convoy of 11 buses and 550 activists was stopped at an Egyptian military checkpoint 

in the Sinai on the way to Gaza and was told to turn 

back, supposedly because the military “had security 

concerns for the safety of the convoy.”63 Another convoy carrying medical supplies and made up of 12 

people, including a pharmacist who was a member 

of the “Popular Campaign to Support the Palestinian 

Uprising,” was able to make it all the way to Rafah by 

the Gaza border, but not before being stopped by the 

military at several checkpoints. The medical supplies 

were then supposed to be picked up by the Palestinian 

Red Crescent society.64 It was not clear if the Palestinian Red Crescent Society was able to cross the border 

to pick up the supplies, or if the Egyptian military 

transported the supplies to the Red Crescent society 

on the other side of the border. 

As the Gaza conflict dragged on for several weeks 

in July and the Palestinian civilian death toll mounted, the Egyptian government started to worry about 

public opinion. While the pro-government Egyptian 

media did its best to limit the coverage of the conflict 

and blame Hamas for prolonging it, many Egyptians 

turned to other media outlets like Al Jazeera television 

that is owned by the government of Qatar. Although 

the Egyptian government has tried to de-legitimize Al 

Jazeera because of its purported support for the Muslim Brotherhood, its more focused coverage of the 

Gaza conflict may have revived its stock in Egypt.65

Not surprisingly, Egyptian supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood tried to stage several demonstrations 
23

in mainland Egypt in support of Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza and against what they saw was the 

Egyptian government’s collusion with Israel to keep 

Gaza locked up. The government responded forcefully against these demonstrations and arrested many of 

the participants. Although such measures succeeded 

in quieting the Egyptian streets, the government was 

undoubtedly concerned about public opinion and, as 

a hedge, started to criticize Israel for its military actions in Gaza. This government criticism followed the 

criticism of some Egyptian commentators who were 

not affiliated with the Brotherhood and who said 

that al-Sissi should separate his anger at Hamas from 

support for the Palestinian people.66

Egypt’s relationship with the Palestinian issue is 

very complicated. For decades, Egypt has championed the Palestinian cause and fought several wars 

ostensibly on behalf of the Palestinians. Most Egyptians sympathize with the Palestinians and hold 

strong views against Israel despite several decades of 

peace. These views tend to intensify during periodic 

conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians.67 During 

the late Mubarak period, such as in 2008, many Egyptian citizens—not just Muslim Brotherhood supporters—demonstrated against the Egyptian government 

for not doing enough to help the Palestinians while 

an Israeli-Hamas conflict was taking place.68 During the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas, one 

thoughtful analyst and an expert on Egyptian public 

opinion noted: 

though many Egyptians view Hamas as an ally of 

the Muslim Brotherhood, most sympathize with the 

Palestinians and are angry at Israel. When they see 

the scale of casualties—for example, the death and 

destruction in the Shuja’iah neighborhood in Gaza—
24

they overwhelmingly blame Israel. This is true even 

as their leaders express anger over Hamas’s refusal to 

accept Egypt’s ceasefire proposal.69

On the other hand, there have been times, like in 

1979 when Egypt was ostracized in the Arab world for 

signing its peace treaty with Israel, when Egyptians 

have felt that they have done more than their share for 

the Palestinian and larger Arab cause, and if the Palestinians and other Arabs do not like it, so be it. Further 

complicating matters is that Egyptian views toward 

the Palestinians are not only shaped by periodic Palestinian-Israeli conflicts but by intra-Palestinian politics and the struggles between Hamas and Fatah (the 

latter in charge of the Palestinian Authority), which 

tend to be connected to Egypt’s own internal political 

situation.

The Egyptian government under the leadership of 

Mubarak and now under that of al-Sissi, has long been 

hostile toward Hamas because of its Muslim Brotherhood connections. Mubarak told a Western journalist 

in the mid-1990s that: 

this whole problem of terrorism throughout the Middle East is a by-product of our illegal Muslim Brotherhood—whether it’s al-Jihad, Hizbollah, in Lebanon, or 

Hamas. They all sprang from underneath the umbrella 

of the Muslim Brotherhood.70

In the same interview, Mubarak added: 

My own fear is that if there is a delay in the [peace] 

process, if Arafat fails, all these extremists, all these 

terrorists trained in Afghanistan, will rush to Gaza 

and join Hamas. It will be a disaster and cause one hell 

of a problem for us.71
25

 Similarly, al-Sissi, since his ouster of Morsi as president in early-July 2013, has put all of the blame for 

Egypt’s terrorist activity at the feet of the Muslim 

Brotherhood, which the government has declared a 

“terrorist” organization and has banned its political 

wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, from participating in elections.72 Al-Sissi’s strategy has been to discredit and weaken both the Brotherhood and Hamas 

since he believes they feed off each other.

The exception to this hostile position toward 

Hamas was during the Morsi presidency (2012-13), 

when Morsi showed sympathy and, at times, expressed solidarity, with Hamas, sent his prime minister to Gaza in a show of solidarity with Hamas during 

another mini-war with Israel, and even helped to broker a truce between Hamas and Israel in November 

2012. Nonetheless, this pro-Hamas position was not 

shared by the entire government apparatus, which 

constrained Morsi’s actions to some degree. As two 

scholars have recently noted: 

While one might have thought that Morsi would have 

opened the floodgates to Hamas, the Brotherhood’s 

ideological bedfellow, in actuality Egypt kept the border with Gaza largely closed during his presidency 

and continued efforts to destroy tunnels. Whatever his 

personal sympathies, Morsi stayed within the lines of 

a policy designed to ensure that Egypt was not stuck 

holding the Gaza hot potato.73

Morsi continued to leave the Sinai/Gaza/Hamas 

portfolio largely to Egypt’s military and intelligence 

services. He may have wanted to change policy but 

probably understood that to undercut the military 

and intelligence services’ domination of this portfolio was a bridge too far. He may have also shared the 
26

belief, prevalent among Egyptian political elements, 

that Israel wanted to push the Gaza problem onto the 

Egyptians.74 Given Egypt’s unhappy experience administering the Gaza Strip from 1948 to 1967, and the 

mounting issues of overpopulation, poverty, and terrorism in the Gaza Strip, Morsi may not have wanted 

to take on this headache since he had enough problems in mainland Egypt.

That said, there were always suspicions in Egypt 

from the Brotherhood’s enemies that the Brotherhood 

was actively conspiring with Hamas. Indeed, within 

the anti-Brotherhood camp, it is widely believed that 

Morsi, in jail during the time of the Egyptian revolution in early-2011, had conspired with Hamas to break 

himself free from prison in Egypt. In fact, this claim 

has since become one of many official charges that the 

Egyptian government has leveled against Morsi in his 

on-again, off-again, criminal trial.75

 These beliefs of a nefarious Hamas-Brotherhood 

nexus, however, do not mean that the Egyptian government did not have its own channel to Hamas. Indeed, Egyptian intelligence under Mubarak, which 

was concerned about divisions among the Palestinians, had long worked behind the scenes to try to bring 

about a rapprochement between Hamas and its secular Palestinian rival, Fatah.76 These efforts did not succeed in part because Hamas knew that the Egyptian 

authorities favored the more moderate Fatah, and did 

not want to play second fiddle in a unity government.

Ironically, shortly before the outbreak of the latest Gaza conflict in July 2014, such a Palestinian unity 

government had just come together, at least on paper. 

It appears that Hamas was compelled to agree to such 

a unity government in part because it was becoming 

increasingly isolated in the Arab world.77 Egypt was 
27

not averse to such a unity government because it appeared that Fatah would be the dominant player in it.

However, the Gaza war posed a challenge for alSissi because it had the potential to put the Egyptian 

government in a quandary. Keeping the border with 

Gaza closed and not allowing significant supplies to 

enter ran the risk of looking indifferent to the plight 

of Palestinian civilians, which took the brunt of the Israeli military attacks. On the other hand, the Egyptian 

government did not want to see Hamas emerge as victor by its firing of hundreds of missiles into Israel and 

its ability to withstand the Israeli attacks. For this reason, the Egyptian media, as mentioned earlier, went 

out of its way in characterizing Hamas as reckless 

and irresponsible for putting the lives of hundreds of 

thousands of Palestinian civilians in jeopardy. 

Unfortunately, there have not been any recent polls 

in Egypt to gage the reaction of the Egyptian people to 

what is happening in Gaza, but anecdotal evidence and 

media monitoring suggests that reactions have fallen 

largely along the political fault lines that are apparent in Egypt’s polarized society between supporters 

of al-Sissi and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Pro-government citizens, which at this point are probably a majority, sided against Hamas and supported 

al-Sissi’s policies. They tended to believe the government’s characterization of Hamas as putting Palestinian civilians in danger, and that Hamas, in conjunction 

with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, was aiding 

the terrorism in the Sinai and in mainland Egypt.78

Even a few pro-government media commentators 

praised Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli army for 

trying to crush Hamas, (though such statements were 

probably not shared by the majority of the pro-government supporters).79 Some Egyptian interlocutors 
28

believe that the Egyptians’ generally pro-Palestinian 

position may be changing in the wake of the terrorist 

threats facing Egypt.80 The widespread belief among 

pro-government Egyptians that the Brotherhood and 

Hamas are out to destroy Egypt by colluding in terrorist acts has apparently affected their view toward 

the Palestinian cause and has dampened their support 

for the Palestinian people. Support for the Palestinians 

(not just Hamas) may have indeed dropped, and we 

may be witnessing a period similar to what occurred 

in Egypt after the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian 

peace treaty in 1979 when an emphasis on Egyptian 

nationalism prevailed over all other concerns. This 

anti-Palestinian sentiment, however, is likely to be a 

passing phenomenon, and once the terrorism problem 

in Egypt dissipates, there may be a return to the Egyptian people’s generally pro-Palestinian position.

Not surprisingly, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have been strongly opposed to the Egyptian 

government’s position on Hamas and the Gaza war, 

have laid the blame on Israel for starting it. They have 

charged that al-Sissi’s government has actively colluded with Israel to punish the Palestinians. Because 

Egyptian society is so polarized, the Brotherhood (or 

what is left of the organization after widespread government arrests) would oppose almost anything alSissi’s government does because it considers that government to be illegitimate and a mortal enemy. But 

its supporters probably believe these charges, given 

their ideological outlook. As mentioned earlier, Brotherhood supporters tried to demonstrate in the streets 

in July 2014 during the Gaza conflict, but such protests 

were quickly suppressed. They tried to demonstrate 

again the following month to mark the 1-year anniversary of the government’s severe crackdown on the 
29

pro-Morsi protestors in August 2013, during which 

over 600 people died in a single day, but the government suppressed these demonstrations as well.81

Because the Egyptian government understands 

that most Egyptians want stability and an end to terrorism in their own country, it has been trying to conflate Hamas’ endangerment of the Palestinian people 

to the Brotherhood/terrorists’ endangerment of the 

Egyptian people, not to mention what it sees as assistance flowing back and forth between these two extremist groups. This conflation works up to a certain 

point. However, the government also understands 

that anti-Israeli sentiment rises among the Egyptian 

citizens during such periods of conflict in Gaza, and 

thus it has a vested interest in pushing for a ceasefire 

to dampen public calls that the government needs to 

do more to help the Palestinians under siege. Keeping 

the Sinai border closed to Palestinians (and restricting the shipments of aid to them) over time becomes 

a problem for the Egyptian government. Although 

Egypt has other reasons for brokering a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, namely, returning to an Arab 

leadership role and undercutting the influence of other regional players,82 its domestic reasons for wanting 

the violence to end may be more important.

Although the Gaza conflict ended with a truce, one 

proposal that has been bandied about is for the Palestinian Authority (under the domination of Fatah) to 

control Gaza.83 Such a solution would be welcomed by 

Egypt and probably by Israel—the latter with qualifications, namely that Hamas should be disarmed 

and tunnels into Israel from Gaza be completely shut 

down. Fatah, because of its more moderate position 

and its close ties to the Egyptian government, would 

probably be more receptive to Egyptian government 
30

calls to shut down the training camps of Palestinian 

salafi groups who may be aiding extremists in the Sinai. If Fatah were to be in charge of Gaza (even with 

Hamas’ political wing playing a secondary role in the 

government), Egypt might be amenable to opening 

the border with Gaza to allow for more goods to be 

sent and sold there.

However, this optimistic scenario from Egypt’s 

perspective could have unintended consequences. If 

Fatah were in charge of Gaza and another military 

confrontation with Israel were to take place (perhaps 

being initiated by some salafi militant groups in Gaza 

attacking Israel to embarrass Fatah), Egypt would be 

even more in a quandary than it is now. Fatah would 

then have to defend Gaza against a likely Israeli counterattack, and Fatah’s police and gendarmerie would 

be compelled to fight against Israeli forces. Under this 

scenario, Egypt would not be able to blame Hamas any 

longer for irresponsible behavior, and whatever blame 

it might assign to more extreme Palestinian salafi 

groups for starting such a war, the conflict would soon 

become a conflict between Fatah and Israel that Egypt 

would not be able to manage domestically by media 

manipulation. With Fatah in charge, there would be 

more calls within the broader Egyptian public to come 

to the aid of the people in Gaza. Although some elements of the Egyptian government would probably 

not want to get involved in such a crisis because it has 

the potential to scuttle the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, it might be very difficult for Egypt to keep the Sinai border with Gaza closed under this scenario. And, 

more ominously for the counterterrorism campaign, 

there would likely be diminishing support for Egypt’s 

crackdown on the Sinai-based terrorist groups if such 

groups re-directed their attacks to Israeli targets, espe-
31

cially Israeli soldiers guarding the border. Hence, the 

old adage of “be careful for what you wish for” may 

be applicable in this case.

Public Perceptions of the Government’s Campaign 

against Extremists in the Sinai.

As long as the extremists in the Sinai are seen doing damage to the Egyptian state and people—hitting 

“Egyptian” targets, that is, army, police, and civilians, 

as well as foreign tourists whose spending provides 

revenue to the state and helps to employ Egyptian 

workers—it appears that the majority of Egyptian citizens have no problems with the government’s harsh 

crackdown on the extremists. Moreover, the more the 

extremists show their true colors by employing brutal 

tactics against ordinary Egyptian soldiers and people 

who cooperate with the government, the support for 

the crackdown is likely to increase. As mentioned earlier, most Egyptians desire stability, and the terrorist 

attacks in the Sinai and the Egyptian mainland are a 

threat to this goal. Furthermore, the chaos in Syria and 

Iraq—especially the military advances and the brutal 

tactics of ISIL, as well as the instability in Libya next 

door, makes the Egyptian public even more concerned 

about terrorism and instability. Most Egyptians do not 

want to see their country descend into the morass that 

is now convulsing these and some other countries in 

the region, especially since Egypt also has a sectarian 

issue that it needs to manage carefully. About 10 percent of its population are Coptic Christians who have 

faced sporadic acts of sectarian violence in the recent 

decades; such violence escalated to high levels during 

the summer of 2013 when scores of Coptic churches 

were torched or damaged by supporters of the Mus-
32

lim Brotherhood who were angry that the Coptic community supported the new government after Morsi 

was ousted.84 The Egyptian government under al-Sissi 

and its supporters, like former foreign minister Amre 

Moussa, understand these public fears and have used 

the media to underscore to Egyptian citizens that had 

al-Sissi not intervened to oust Morsi, “We would have 

ended up with groups like ISIS doing the same in 

Egypt.”85 This point is debatable, of course, because 

there is no way to know for sure whether Morsi was 

going to lead Egypt to an intolerant state that would 

support such extremists, but certainly this is how the 

new government and its supporters are framing the 

issue, knowing of the public’s fear of such a scenario.

For the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood—

which at its peak in 2012 held the allegiance of about 

a quarter of the population,86 but has since dropped 

to an unknown percentile—the government’s harsh 

crackdown in the Sinai is symptomatic of the “illegitimate” military regime that used violence against the 

Brotherhood in the summer of 2013 and arrested thousands of its leaders, activists, and supporters since that 

time. In all likelihood, as indicated earlier, the Brotherhood is probably not behind the violence in the Sinai 

and it denies links to such extremist groups, but it is 

now more concerned with the self-preservation of its 

remaining cadres and trying to capitalize on issues 

where it thinks the government is vulnerable—like 

closing the Sinai-Gaza border and cooperating with 

Israel against Hamas. The Brotherhood understands 

that the Egyptian public is not concerned that some 

innocent Bedouin villagers are killed in the government’s counterterrorism operations because the public’s sympathy remains with the military in these operations. The attack by extremists on an Egyptian border 
33

outpost in the Western desert that killed 23 Egyptian 

officers and soldiers elicited broader public anger 

than the deaths of hundreds of Brotherhood supporters and activists in the summer of 2013, at least among 

secular-oriented Egyptians.87

The chief, outspoken opponents of the government’s harsh crackdown in the Sinai are Egypt’s 

human rights activists and a few Sinai Bedouin villagers who have gone to university in the Egyptian 

mainland. They are the ones who have raised the issue 

of a counterterrorism campaign that has gone to excesses—some 300 people killed in the Sinai from July 

2013 to April 2014, most of whom were civilians88—

and have provided such information to the independent and foreign press. While it is likely that Egypt’s 

human rights community will continue to raise this 

issue, which at times becomes an embarrassment for 

the government, it is unlikely that they will get much 

traction, given the general public’s abhorrence of terrorism and its condescending attitudes toward the 

Bedouins. As mentioned earlier, the general public’s 

views on government policy toward the Sinai might 

change if there is a different situation in Gaza—like 

a war between Fatah and Israel. But barring this scenario, it seems that the human rights community is 

not going to sway Egyptian public opinion when it 

issues reports and highlights the government’s draconian policies in the Sinai. Hence, it seems that the 

Egyptian general public has given, and will continue 

to give, the government wide leeway for its security 

crackdowns in the Sinai.

Ironically, the institution that might be the most 

receptive to a change in the Egyptian military’s harsh 

policies in the Sinai may be the Egyptian military 
34

itself, or at least elements of the military’s officer corps. 

This potential for a change in policy is not because of 

the military’s kindheartedness toward the Bedouins, 

nor because of a change in outlook toward the extremists. Rather, it may arise purely out of tactics.89 The 

policy of using helicopters and tanks to destroy dozens of homes, hundreds of olive trees, and even whole 

villages has the potential to backfire by creating more 

extremist sympathizers and more young disaffected 

Bedouin youths willing to join the extremist groups. 

This trend is already underway. While draconian 

counterterrorism policies may temporarily reduce extremist violence—there was indeed a dip in extremist 

attacks in the spring of 2014—such a downward trend 

is unlikely to last. Indeed, after this dip, extremist violence increased in the summer of 2014. Part of this uptick violence may be because some Egyptian extremists who were fighting in Syria may have returned to 

Egypt to bring the fight home, but it also may be because new Bedouin recruits from these damaged villages have finished their training with the extremists 

and are now part of the fight. Countering this trend 

with more effective policies presents an opportunity 

for the United States in Egypt.

Recommendations for U.S. Policy.

The evidence presented herein, albeit largely anecdotal, suggests that the vast majority of Egyptians 

want the terrorism problem of the Sinai to end as soon 

as possible. If the United States can be of assistance 

in this process, it would not only help the Egyptian 

economy rebound because of the likely pick up in 

tourism and foreign direct investment, it will also help 

improve bilateral U.S.-Egyptian relations. Even some 
35

legal opposition parties in Egypt have indicated privately that if the terrorism problem emanating from 

the Sinai were to be eliminated, or at least sharply 

reduced, and U.S. assistance was seen as helpful in 

this endeavor, the U.S. image in Egypt would greatly 

improve.90

Bilateral U.S.-Egyptian relations hit a low point in 

2013 because of the widely held perception in Egypt 

that the United States aided and abetted Morsi’s authoritarian presidency out of some conspiratorial U.S. 

plan to assist radical Islamists.91 U.S. criticism of the 

interim government’s harsh crackdown on Morsi’s 

Muslim Brotherhood supporters in August 2013 and 

the U.S. decision 2 months later to suspend a substantial part of U.S. military assistance package to 

Egypt, including Apache helicopters, further exacerbated tensions in the relationship. Although most of 

this assistance has been resumed and relations have 

rebounded to some degree, tensions still remain.

The key question is how the United States can assist 

Egypt in its counterterrorism campaign that is most 

effective and not counterproductive. U.S. policymakers need to emphasize to their Egyptian counterparts 

the need for a comprehensive approach. This involves 

persuading Egyptian officials that draconian policies 

are unlikely to solve the problem. A more effective way 

to isolate and weaken the terrorist groups in the Sinai 

is to deny them recruits from the Bedouin villages and 

deny them safe haven in such villages. Such a policy 

involves putting more economic resources into the Sinai, providing more jobs for the disaffected Bedouin 

youths (such as in the tourist towns which heretofore 

have recruited mostly mainland Egyptians) so they 

will not rely on smuggling, and changing government 

policies to recruit Bedouins into a local police force. 
36

Egyptian government officials would need to vet carefully the youth who enter such sensitive positions as 

policemen and tourist workers to ensure that extremists would not take advantage of such openings and 

infiltrate these positions.

In addition, a substantial portion of U.S. economic 

assistance should be channeled to the Sinai to help 

in job training programs for the Bedouin youths. For 

example, for Bedouin youths wanting to work in the 

tourism industry, there could be educational programs to teach languages such as English, French, or 

German, as well as certain hotel jobs, followed by paid 

internships in the tourist sector. The United States 

could also help defray the costs of police training for 

Bedouin youths.

There is currently a U.S. Agency for International 

Development (USAID) program in the Sinai called 

“Livelihood and Income from the Environment” that 

seeks to help low-income Bedouins living mainly in 

the central part of the Sinai by promoting projects that 

are environmentally sustainable. It focuses on such 

projects as small infrastructure; public transportation 

systems; and roads, water desalination, and vocational training.92 While well-intentioned, this program 

needs to be expanded to include the substantial job 

training for the tourism industry mentioned earlier, 

expansion of the program to the northern Sinai region, 

and more U.S. Government funding. This program 

has only been funded at $9 million. Given the scope of 

the problem in the Sinai, it should be funded at a more 

substantial level, in the range of $50 million per year. 

Although U.S. economic assistance to Egypt has fallen 

from an annual $800 million more than a decade-anda-half ago to about $200 million today, and $50 million 

for the Sinai might take away from other worthwhile 
37

projects that USAID administers in mainland Egypt, 

a compelling case can be made to the U.S. Congress 

that an increase in overall U.S. economic assistance 

to Egypt that would incorporate $50 million for the 

Sinai is important for U.S. national security interests. 

Given the increased instability in the Middle East in 

such countries as Syria, Iraq, and Libya, the U.S. administration would need to emphasize that such an 

increase in economic assistance to Egypt will help 

Egypt combat terrorism. Given the fact that the Sinai 

borders both the Gaza Strip and Israel, the national 

security argument for such an increase (still small by 

historical standards) for both human and infrastructure development in the Sinai would be compelling.

Besides persuading the U.S. Congress of the merits of this increased support for the development of 

the Sinai, U.S. officials also need to persuade Egyptian officials of the program’s merits. It is likely that 

the current USAID program in the Sinai is limited 

not just because of U.S. financial constraints, but because Egyptian officials are wary about any outside 

programs in the Sinai Peninsula because it is largely a 

closed military zone. 

There have been discussions among U.S. and 

Egyptian officials of resuming a bilateral strategic dialogue between the two countries. Such a dialogue was 

held in the 1990s.93 Because such a dialogue would be 

held behind closed doors, sensitive issues could be 

discussed in this venue outside of the limelight. This 

would be perfect for U.S. civilian and military officials 

to discuss the terrorist problem in the Sinai and more 

effective ways to deal with it. U.S. officials can use the 

opportunity to discuss the merits of an expanded job 

training program mentioned earlier as well as the very 

sensitive issue of creating a local police force made up 

of Bedouin recruits.
38

In such a dialogue, U.S. officials should also mention the need to empower Sinai tribal leaders as a hedge 

against the extremists. Press reports indicate that over 

the past few years, many of the Bedouin residents have 

turned to informal Sharia (Islamic law) courts for the 

adjudication of disputes because the state court system in the Sinai was seen as incompetent and corrupt. 

In the process, however, these Sharia courts have also 

undermined traditional Bedouin tribal law known 

as “urf” which had adjudicated disputes over many 

centuries. Partly because of the proliferation of the 

Sharia courts in the Sinai, “the fragmentation of local 

authorities has been deeply frustrating to tribal leaders seeking the protection of the state.”94 Egyptian officials are well aware of this sentiment but do not seem 

to have a viable plan to deal with it or take advantage 

of tribal leaders’ resentment of the extremists. U.S. officials can share with their Egyptian counterparts their 

experiences in Iraq during the “Awakening” in 2007-

08 when the United States changed its policy toward 

the insurgency by reaching out and empowering the 

Sunni tribes of western and central Iraq to turn against 

al-Qaeda affiliated extremists.

Recommendations for U.S. Landpower.

U.S. military officials, especially U.S. Army officers, should be an integral part of this strategic dialogue dealing with the terrorist problem in the Sinai. 

U.S. Army officers who took part in the “Awakening” 

in Iraq should share their experiences with both Egyptian civilian and military officials. Egyptian officials 

are very sensitive about outsiders, particularly Westerners, telling them what to do, especially on the security front, and for historical and cultural reasons would 
39

not want to be compared with Iraqis. Therefore, U.S. 

Army officers should approach this issue delicately by 

way of a briefing, describing what worked and what 

did not work in Iraq with the Arab Sunni tribes. Moreover, because of the advance of ISIL in Iraq in the summer of 2014 and the need for U.S. and Iraqi officials to 

approach these Sunni tribes once again to entice them 

to scuttle their alliance with extremists, U.S. Army officers should also ask their Egyptian counterparts for 

advice. Such a discussion about Iraq could then lead 

to a discussion about the Sinai and how to entice the 

Bedouins there to move away from the extremists, using a more holistic approach.

U.S. Army officers should also bring up Egypt’s 

successful campaign against the violent extremist 

groups, like the Islamic Group and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, in the 1990s. Egypt first used just the “stick,” 

brute force, against the extremists, but when that did 

not work, it used both the carrot and the stick. The 

former involved more development assistance to poor 

neighborhoods in Cairo and poor rural areas of Upper 

Egypt, from where the young terrorists came from, 

and effective propaganda to show that the terrorists 

were targeting innocent civilians and foreign tourists 

that hurt Egyptian families trying to make a living.95

Although Egyptian officials might argue that the Bedouins are different and require a different approach, 

U.S. Army officers should emphasize that they too 

found that the carrot and stick approach was indeed 

more effective in dealing with disaffected tribes.

In addition, the U.S. Army should offer to provide specialized counterterrorism classes to Egyptian 

military officers at U.S. professional military education institutions. Given that al-Sissi himself was a 

student at the U.S. Army War College, it is likely that 
40

he would approve such training.96 These specialized 

classes should emphasize effective ways to seek out 

and capture extremists in a village without punishing the whole village and creating more extremists in 

the process.

Coupled with this leadership training, the U.S. 

Army should offer to train whole Egyptian units involved in counterterrorism operations through joint 

field exercises, or at a minimum, by specialized U.S. 

Army trainers. Before being deployed to Iraq, many 

U.S. Army units practiced counterterrorism techniques in “mock villages” on U.S. military bases that 

were designed to be as realistic as possible. Training 

Egyptian army units in such a hands-on way would 

not only provide them with effective counterterrorism 

techniques but would move them away from the kind 

of “scorched-earth” practices they have used so far in 

the Sinai.

If Egyptian army units would not want to train in 

the United States, then perhaps they could do so in remote areas of a friendly Arab country like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Jordan, where U.S. 

Army trainers could be brought in. Such countries 

may not be averse to hosting such U.S. training for the 

Egyptian army provided that it is out of the limelight, 

because they all have an interest seeing Egypt succeed 

in its fight against the extremists.

Once these units return to Egypt after their U.S. 

Army training, there may be a tendency among Egyptian military leaders to say, “Thank you very much, 

but now we will deal with the terrorists in the Sinai 

on our own. We know these people, how they think 

and operate.” The danger in this scenario is that the 

Egyptian military might revert to their usual heavyhanded practices. If such a situation arises, the United 
41

States should use its levers to persuade the Egyptian 

military to rethink this position and pursue policies 

that have been learned. If the Egyptian military uses 

its old practices, such as using U.S. Apache helicopters to attack whole villages as opposed to concentrating on such targets as terrorist camps, the U.S. Army 

should favor holding up the transfer of spare parts for 

these helicopters and the delivery of new helicopters. 

The Egyptian military undoubtedly would react very 

angrily to this suspension of military assistance, as it 

has done in the recent past,97 but using such weapons 

for indiscriminate attacks against civilians is a tactic 

that the U.S. Army should counsel its counterparts to 

cease. Given that the U.S. image in Egypt is still problematic, the U.S. Army should avoid even the appearance of being complicit, even indirectly, in such indiscriminate attacks. This “tough-love” approach would 

be a strong signal to the Egyptian military that, while 

the United States “stands by you in your fight against 

the extremists, there are limits to what we will countenance.” Some Egyptian military officers, because they 

understand that the old ways of dealing with the terrorists are not working, may come to understand the 

need for the new approach.

Finally, the U.S. military should continue to provide the Egyptian military with sophisticated equipment and intelligence to monitor extremist activity 

in the Sinai. On August 20, 2002, about 2 weeks after 

extremists killed 16 Egyptian soldiers along the border with Israel, CNN reported that the Pentagon offered to provide Egypt’s army on the Sinai with truckmounted sensors that provide an electronic signal 

identifying which nation is operating the vehicle, even 

from a great distance. The same report stated that the 

U.S. administration offered Egypt more intelligence 

sharing, including satellite imagery, drone flights, and 
42

intercepts of cell phone and other communications 

among extremists suspected of planning attacks in 

the Sinai.98 Such offers of assistance should continue, 

not only to help Egypt thwart terrorist attacks, but to 

underscore the U.S. commitment to Egypt’s security. 

Given the July 2014 attack against Egyptian soldiers 

in the western desert near Libya, such sophisticated 

equipment should be offered to the Egyptian army in 

that region as well.

ENDNOTES

1. Shortly after being sworn in as president, al-Sissi stated: 

“Defeating terrorism and achieving security is the top priority 

in our coming phase.” See “Sissi Says in First Speech to Nation 

Fighting Terrorism Will Be Top Priority,” Reuters, June 8, 2014.

2. In addition, Egyptian authorities have provided overflight 

and refueling stops for U.S. military aircraft headed to the Persian 

Gulf region, especially during times of crisis. “Security Assistance: 

State and DOD Need to Assess How the Foreign Military Finance 

Program for Egypt Achieves U.S. Foreign Policy Goals,” Report 

to the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office 

(GAO), April 2006, p. 17.

3. Interviews with Egyptian political analysts, July 2014. See 

also, Zack Gold, “Security in the Sinai: Present and Future,” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism Research Paper, The 

Hague, The Netherlands, March 2014.

4. “Egypt: Bedouins Begin to Demand Equal Citizenship 

Rights,” IRIN News, June 16, 2011, available from www.irinnews.

org/report/92998/egypt-bedouins-begin-to-demand-equal-citizenshiprights. See also Vivian Salama, “What’s Behind the Wave of Terror 

in the Sinai,” The Atlantic, November 22, 2013.

5. For how the 1967 war was seen internally in Egypt, see Steven A. Cook, The Struggle for Egypt, New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2013, pp. 108-129.
43

6. Abdel Monem Said Aly, “Egypt: A Decade after Camp 

David,” William Quandt, ed., The Middle East: Ten Years after 

Camp David, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1988, 

pp. 70-73.

7. “Egypt: Bedouins Begin to Demand Equal Citizenship 

Rights.”

8. Felice Friedson, “Egyptian Editor: Israel Peace Treaty Will 

Likely be Revised,” Jerusalem Post, February 27, 2011, available 

from www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Egyptian-editor-Israel-peace-treatywill-likely-be-revised.

9. Ehud Yaari, “The New Triangle of Egypt, Israel, and 

Hamas,” Washington Institute for Near East Affairs Policy 

Watch 2193, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East 

Affairs, January 17, 2014.

10. Jodi Rudoren, “Developments in Iran and Sinai Deepen Israel’s Worries about Egypt,” The New York Times, August 22, 2012.

11. Michele Dunne and Nathan Brown, “How Egypt Prolonged the Gaza War,” Foreign Policy, August 18, 2014. See also 

Zack Gold, “Why Israel Will Miss Morsi,” Foreign Affairs, August 

20, 2013, available from www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139835/

zack-gold/why-israel-will-miss-morsi.

12. For an examination of the militant groups’ ideology and 

tactics in the 1990s, see Denis Sullivan and Sana Abed-Kotob, Islam in Contemporary Egypt, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999, pp. 71-95.

13. “‘Mass Arrests’ after Sinai Bombs,” BBC News, February 23, 2005. See also Mara Revkin, “Outsourcing Justice in the 

Sinai: Sharia Courts Thrive in the Shadow of a Weak State,” 

Wordpress, March 11, 2013, available from mararevkin.wordpress.

com/2013/03/11/outsourcing-justice-in-the-sinai-sharia-courts-thrivein-the-shadow-of-a-weak-state/.

14. Harriet Sherwood, “Sinai Explodes into Violence after 

Years of Chronic Poverty and Alienation,” The Guardian, February 

14, 2012, available from www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/14/

sinai-violence-poverty-alienation-bedouin-egypt.
44

15. Maggie Michael, “Egypt’s Sinai Emerges as New Theater 

for Jihad,” Associated Press, September 3, 2013.

16. Gold, “Security in the Sinai.”

17. Ehud Yaari and Normand St. Pierre, “Sinai: The New 

Frontier of Conflict,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

Analysis Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East 

Policy, November 20, 2011, available from www.washington

institute.org/policy-analysis/view/sinai-the-new-frontier-of-conflict.

18. Eric Trager, “Obama’s Big Egypt Test: Sinai,” The Atlantic, 

January 7, 2013, available from www.theatlantic.com/international/

archive/2013/01/obamas-big-egypt-test-sinai/266878/.

19. Ernesto Landano, “Egypt Reacts with Respect to President’s New Power,” The Washington Post, August 14, 2012.

20. “Egypt: Defense Chief Vows to Uproot Militants,” The 

Washington Post, August 21, 2012.

21. Revkin, “Outsourcing Justice.”

22. “Egypt Charges 200 Islamist Militants with Bombings, 

Other Violence,” Reuters, May 10, 2014.

23. Khaled Dawoud, “ISIS at Egypt’s Door,” Washington, DC: 

The Atlantic Council, August 20, 2014.

24. Gold, “Security in the Sinai,” p. 3.

25. Ibid.

26. David Barnett, “The Strategy of Egypt’s Ansar Beit alMaqdis,” Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, February 

10, 2014.

27. Revkin, “Outsourcing Justice.”

28. Thomas Joscelyn,”Al Qaeda’s Expansion in Egypt,” Washington, DC: Foundation for Defense of Democracies, February 

11, 2014, p. 9, available from www.defensedemocracy.org/media-hit/

al-qaedas-espansion-in-egypt/.
45

29. David D. Kirkpatrick and Eric Schmitt, “Jihadist Return 

is Said to Drive Attacks in Egypt,” The New York Times, February 

5, 2014.

30. Ibid.

31. Dawoud, “ISIS at Egypt’s Door”; and Kirkpatrick and 

Schmitt, “Jihadist Return.”

31a. “Egypt’s Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis swears allegiance to ISIS: 

statement,” Al-Ararbiya News, November 4, 2014, available from 

english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/11/04/Egypt-s-AnsarBayt-al-Maqdis-swears-allegiance-to-ISIS.html.

32. Gold, “Security on the Sinai.”

33. David C. Isby, “SAM Used to Down Helicopter over Sinai,” IHS Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, February 11, 2014, available 

from www.janes.com/article/33832/sam-used-to-down-helicopter-oversinai. See also Zack Gold, “Sinai Security One Year after Morsi,” 

Washington, DC: The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, July 

2014, available from timep.org/esw/articles-analysis/sinai-securityone-year-morsi.

34. Dawoud, “ISIS at Egypt’s Door.”

35. Gold, “Security in the Sinai,” p. 9.

36. Ibid.

37. Maggie Michael, “Egypt’s Sinai Emerges as New Theater 

for Jihad,” Associated Press, September 3, 2013.

38. Kirkpatrick and Schmitt, “Jihadist Return.” David D. 

Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, “Egypt’s Interior Minister Survives Assassination Attempt,” The New York Times, September 5, 

2013, available from www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/world/middleeast/egypts-interior-minister-survives-attack.html?_r=0.

39. Salama, “What’s Behind the Wave.”
46

40. Mohammad Daraghmeh, “Leader Says Ranks of Jihadi 

Fighters in Gaza Rising,” Boston Globe, March 10, 2014; Salama, 

“What’s Behind the Wave.”

41. Kirkpatrick and El Sheikh.

42. Alistair Beach, “Cairo Bomb Attacks: Four Killed and Dozens Wounded on Eve of Revolution Rallies in Egypt,” The Independent, January 24, 2014, available from www.independent.co.uk/news/

world/africa/cairo-bomb-attacks-four-killed-and-dozens-wounded-oneve-of-revolution-rallies-in-egypt-9082015.html.

43. “Five Policemen Killed in Gunmen Attack in Beni Suef,” 

Al-Masry Al-Youm, January 23, 2014, available from www.egyptindependent.com//print/2433774.

44. “Egyptian Democracy’s Death Sentence,” Bloomberg 

View, April 28, 2014, available from www.bloombergview.com/

articles/2014-04-28/egyptian-democracy-s-death-sentence.

45. Zack Gold, “Terrorism Now Targeting Civilians in Egypt,” 

Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 12, Issue 16, August 8, 2014.

46. Sarah Sirgany and Laura Smith-Spark, “‘Horrible’: Christian Churches across Egypt Stormed, Torched,” CNN.com, August 16, 2013, available from edition.cnn.com/2013/08/15/world/

meast/egypt-church-attacks/.

47. Gold, “Terrorism Now Targeting Civilians in Egypt.” 

48. “Egypt’s Power Crisis Worsened by Brotherhood Attacks on Pylons: Interior Ministry,” ahramonline, August 16, 2014, 

available from english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/1/0/108572/

Egypt/0/Egypts-power-crisis-worsened-by-Brotherhood-attack.aspx. 

49. “Four Beheaded Corpses Found in Egypt’s Sinai: Security 

Sources,” Reuters, August 20, 2014; “Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis Warns 

Soldiers of Staying in Army,” Al-Masry Al-Youm, August 19, 2014, 

available from www.egyptindependent.com//print/2438034.

50. “Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis Warns Soldiers of Staying in 

Army.”
47

51. Michael, “Egypt’s Sinai Emerges.”

52. “Sinai Residents Complain of Violations by Egypt Army,” 

Al-Monitor, May 7, 2014, available from www.al-monitor.com/pulse/

originals/2014/05/egypt-sinai-war-on-terror-civilians.html.

53. Ibid.

54. Salama, “What’s Behind the Wave of Terror.”

55. “Sinai Residents Complain of Violations.”

56. This report is available from www.facebook.com/Egypt.

O.R.f/posts/1589295377962211?

57. Gold, “Security in the Sinai,” p. 15.

58. Interview with confidential Egyptian sources, August 

2014.

59. Erin Cunningham, “Amid Violence, Egyptians Vote on 

Charter,” The Washington Post, January 15, 2014. 

60. Ibid.

61. Abigail Hauslohner, “Many in Egypt Shrug at Loss of 

Freedoms, Say Stability is Priority,” The Washington Post, January 

9, 2014.

62. These were comments by Egyptian commentator, Osama 

Mounir, on MEMRI TV on July 17, 2014.

63. “Egypt Medical Aid Convoy Reaches Rafah Crossing,” ahram online, July 25, 2014.

64. Ibid.

65. Shibley Telhami, “The War in Gaza Threatens Egypt too,” 

Reuters, July 22, 2014.
48

66. Rana Harbi, “Egyptian Media Wages Incitement Campaign against Palestinians as Gaza Burns,” Al-Akhbar, July 

18, 2014.

67. Telhami, “The War in Gaza.”

68. Per Bjorklund, “Egypt Government Feels Its People’s Ire,” 

The Electonic Intifada, January 5, 2009, available from electronic

intifada.net/content/egypt-government-feels-its-peoples-ire/7925.

69. Telhami, “The War in Gaza.”

70. Mary Ann Weaver, “The Novelist and the Sheikh,” The 

New Yorker, January 30, 1995.

71. Ibid.

72. The Muslim Brotherhood was officially declared a terrorist organization by the Egyptian government in December 2013. 

In August 2014, its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, 

was banned from participating in elections.

73. Dunne and Brown, “How Egypt Prolonged the War.”

74. Ibid. See also Telhami, “The War in Gaza.”

75. Erin Cunnigham, “Egyptian Police Official Slain; Ousted President Appears in Court,” The Washington Post, January 

20, 2014. 

76. “Palestinian Reconciliation: A History of Documents,” 

Al Akhbar, April 28, 2014, available from english.al-akhbar.com/

node/19580.

77. Peter Beaumont, “Fatah and Hamas Agree on Palestinian Prime Minister,” The Guardian, May 29, 2014, available from 

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/29/fatah-hamas-agree-newpalestinian-prime-minister.

78. Mohannad Sabry, “Hatred of Hamas Leaves Egyptians 

Unsympathetic,” Al-Monitor, July 14, 2014, available from www.

al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/hamas-egypt-hate-gaza-nosympathy.html.
49

79. Harbi.

80. Ibid.

81. “Egyptian Police Kill Five Anti-Government Protestors,” 

Alalam, August 16, 2014.

82. Tim Lister, “Egypt Reclaims Role as Arabs’ Indispensable 

Nation with Gaza Talks,” CNN.com, August 7, 2014.

83. For an American perspective on this idea, see Samuel R. 

Berger and Stephen J. Hadley, “The Palestinian Authority should 

return to Gaza,” The Washington Post, August 21, 2014.

84. Sirgany and Smith-Spark.

85. Dawoud, “ISIS at Egypt’s door.”

86. During the first round of the presidential elections in 2012, 

in which there were several candidates with different ideological persuasions and affiliations, Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim 

Brotherhood candidate, received about 25 percent of the vote. 

This percentile is roughly what some Egyptian political scientists 

have in the past claimed was the Brotherhood’s support in the 

population. Because of dissatisfaction with Morsi’s presidency 

and the government’s media campaign against the Brotherhood, 

actual support for the organization is probably much less today.

87. The Egyptian government declared 3 days of mourning 

for the fallen soldiers. “Egypt Army Reveals Details of Al-Wadi 

Al-Gedid Deadly Attack on Soldiers,” ahram online, July 22, 2014. 

See also Eric Trager and Gilad Wening, “Egypt’s Western Security Concerns,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy Watch 

2301, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 

August 8, 2014.

88. Michele Dunne and Scott Williamson, “Egypt: Counterterrorism and the Politics of Alienation,” Washington, DC: Carnegie 

Endowment for International Peace, August 20, 2014.

89. Interestingly, al-Sissi seems to recognize the risks of pursuing draconian policies in the Sinai. He stated in an interview: 
50

“We don’t want killing of innocents so that won’t become an excuse for the expansion of these operations [in the Sinai]. That’s 

what makes it go on. . . .” See “Text of Sissi interview with Reuters,” Reuters, May 15, 2014.

90. This comment was made to the author from an Egyptian 

opposition party leader in April 2014.

91. Abigail Hauslaohner, “Egyptian Group Accuses US of 

Keeping Morsi in Power,” The Washington Post, June 30, 2013.

92. Available from www.usaid.gov/egypt/environment-andglobal-climate-change.

93. The “Strategic Dialogue,” which started under the Clinton administration, was at the ministerial level. It grew out of the 

“Gore-Mubarak Partnership” that aimed to enhance and promote 

commercial relations between Egypt and the United States in 

the 1990s.

94. Revkin, “Outsourcing Justice.”

95. For example, the government spent considerable money 

to improve the Imbaba neighborhood in Cairo, which, in the early-1990s, was considered a hotbed for Islamic Group militants.

96. As Defense Minister, al-Sissi called for expanded counterterrorism training for the military and considered the establishment of a rapid response, counterterrorism unit. See Gold, “Sinai 

Security One Year after Morsi.” 

97. Julian Pecquet, “Obama Administration Holding 

Up Apache Helicopters to Egypt,” Al-Monitor June 3, 2014, 

available from www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/egypthelicopters-apaches-hold-up-leahy-obama.html. 

98. Barbara Starr, “Panetta Tries to Help Secure Sinai with Intel Aid,” CNN, August 20, 2012, available from security.blogs.cnn.

com/2012/08/20/panetta-tries-to-help-secure-sinai-with-intel-aid/.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William E. Rapp

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

and

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven K. Metz

Author

Mr. Gregory Aftandilian

Editor for Production

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil