Israel helps Egypt fight the Islamic State

Israel is involved in a "secret alliance" with Egypt to fight the Islamic State (IS) in the Sinai Peninsula, the New York Times reported Saturday.

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – Israel is involved in a “secret alliance” with Egypt to fight the Islamic State (IS) in the Sinai Peninsula, the New York Times reported Saturday.

“For more than two years, unmarked Israeli drones, helicopters, and jets have carried out a covert air campaign,” the Times explained, “conducting more than 100 airstrikes inside Egypt, frequently more than once a week” against the terrorist organization.

The Times portrayed this quiet collaboration as part of a broader evolution in relations between Israel and several Arab countries.

This is “the most dramatic evidence” of what it called “a quiet reconfiguration of the politics of the region.”

“Shared enemies like [IS], Iran, and political Islam have quietly brought the leaders of several Arab states into growing alignment with Israel,” the paper noted.

This coordination is occurring “even as their officials and news media continue to vilify the Jewish state in public,” it continued.

Israeli support for Egypt’s campaign against IS began following the downing of a Russian airliner in October 2015, killing 212 people.

It was a particularly deadly time, as an IS attack on Paris shortly thereafter killed 130 people—the deadliest terrorist assault in Europe since 2004, when al-Qaeda in Iraq bombed four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people, which was, in turn, the most lethal terrorist attack in Spanish history.

Such are the sensitivities of many Arab populations toward Israel that Egyptian officials were quick to deny the Times’ report, despite the country’s 40-year-long peace treaty with its northern neighbor.

A spokesman for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi asserted, “The claims of coordination between the Egyptian and Israeli sides in this matter are totally lacking in truth and go against sense and logic.”

However, there is a long history of Arab states using Israel against their Arab rivals.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the ideology of Arab nationalism had an appeal similar to that of Islamic extremism today. The main exponent of Arab nationalism was Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser.

In May 1967, after 11 years of quiet between Egypt and Israel, Nasser began to threaten another war.

With hindsight, historians generally consider that Nasser was bluffing—merely trying to improve his standing within the Arab political scene. Of course, the Israelis could not know that, and they felt mortally threatened.

Israel responded by launching a pre-emptive strike, seizing the Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank in six days! It is hard to imagine a bigger miscalculation than Nasser’s, and he died of a heart attack three years later, at the age of 52.

Following the Six-Day War, Egypt was now in desperate need of Arab support, including financial aid.

The fiasco caused Nasser to withdraw Egyptian troops from Yemen, where they had been fighting since 1962 in a civil war, as Nasser tried to establish a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula from where he could threaten Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi ruler, the wily and experienced King Faysal, made any Saudi aid to Egypt contingent on its continuing to fight Israel to recover its territory and not accepting Israel’s peace overtures.

Anwar Sadat, who became president of Egypt following Nasser’s death, had an entirely different outlook. Nasser’s wars had cost Egypt dearly, and Sadat resolved to end them and turn from Russia to the West.

Once Sadat became president, Faysal no longer made aid to Egypt contingent on continuing the conflict with Israel. He had used Egypt’s conflict with Israel to keep Nasser from threatening his own country!

Similarly, in 1970, Israel was instrumental in saving Jordan’s King Hussein from a combination of radical Palestinians within Jordan and the Ba’athist regime in Syria.

Palestinian groups, strengthened in the wake of the 1967 war, sought to overthrow Hussein and take over the country. In September, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked five civilian airliners, forcing them to land in Jordan.

Hussein mobilized the Jordanian army to end the crisis, but there was no guarantee he would prevail, as forces in Syria mobilized to support the PFLP and attack Jordan from the north.

With a green light from Washington, Israel mobilized its own forces. Threatened by the Israeli mobilization, the forces in Syria backed down, and Hussein prevailed.

The event—known as Black September—had consequence for internal politics in Syria, as well. Soon after that, Gen. Hafiz al-Assad launched a coup against the radical Ba’athists governing the country, becoming president himself and resulting in a more calculated policy in Damascus.

Thus, Israel has long exercised significant influence within Arab politics. The difference—50 years later—seems to be that Arab leaders are now prepared to cooperate more formally with the Jewish state, even as they still, apparently, feel the need to conceal such cooperation from their own populations.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany