Egypt–Give Up the Northern Sinai to the Palestinians!

Egypt’s policy to contain the Northern Sinai Peninsula is not working. I think chaos in this region is going to continue and therefore become an even bigger headache for Egypt. Egypt will be better off if it initiates a deal with Israel and the Palestinians to forfeit the Northern Sinai–the region between the Gaza Strip and the Waid el Arish and several miles inland, probably to reach Beersheba and Kadesh-Barnea–in exchange for something that would benefit Egypt. Then let the Palestinians declare their Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and this adjacent Northern Sinai. Better yet, make it include a deal in which Israel forfeits to the Palestinians some of Israel’s territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip in exchange for getting all of the West Bank that Israel would therefore annex. (See my book, Palestine Is Coming, and updated articles at kermitzarley.com.)

Due to its ineffective policies, last Thursday Egypt dismissed its Interior Minister. This move signalled that Egypt’s counter-insurgency efforts in the Northern Sinai are not working. In the past several weeks, Egypt has killed 200 Islamic insurgents, most of them probably belonging to the ISIS affiliate Sinai Province, while also killing 16 civilians. This is making the bedouins, who consist of most of the residents in this region, extremely angry at the Egyptian government, its military, and police.

Also this week, for the first time the Sinai Province launched a missile from land that destroyed an Egyptian naval vessel along the Mediterranean coast, yet there were no fatalities. And on July 29, Sinai Province assasinated Egypt’s top prosecutor who had been getting many members of the Muslim Brotherhood imprisoned and executed. Its leader, Mahmoud Morsi, was Egypt’s elected president for two years until General El Sissi engineered a military coup to become Egypt’s current president. And then there is the very high poverty and unemployment in Egypt. Egypt proper has enough troubles of its own without trying to hang on to the ever-increasingly restive Northern Sinai, which never belonged to ancient Egypt since it’s northeastern border was usually the Wadi el Arish basin. Egypt needs to do with the Northern Sinai like the Israelis finally did with the Gaza Strip in 2005–GIVE IT UP.