Early Friday morning an Aerojet commercial airliner crashed in the North Sinai, forty-six miles southeast of its capital and largest city, El-Arish on the Mediterranean coast. All 224 people were killed, and all but three of them were Russians. The airplane departed from Egypt’s primary resort city, Sharm El-Sheikh, headed for St. Petersburg, Russia. It is the worst aviation disaster in Russian history.
Hours later, an affiliate of ISIS, called Sinai Province of the Islamic State, claimed to have shot it down. It explained that it was because Russia recently had entered the civil war in Syria on the side of Syrian President Assad. The Islamic State is battling this Syrian government and has overtaken a substantial portion of the country. This civil war is largely sectarian since Assad is Alawite, a religious sect connected to Shite Muslims. The Islamic State is Sunni.
The French-made Airbus airliner was flying at 31,000 feet when all of sudden it began losing altitude at 6,000 feet per minute. This is a very fast descent which would make it more likely that the aircraft was struck down with a missile or exploded due to a bomb on board rather than that the trouble was caused by mechanical failure. Nevertheless, both Russian and Egyptian aviation authorities dismissed the possibility of this ISIS branch shooting the plane down. It is because they do not believe that Ismlamic terrorists have weapons that can shoot down an airplane flying any higher than 20,000 feet.
So far, it seems more likely to me that this ISIS affiliate did it. My main reasons are that nothing like this has ever happened, it was an airplane carrying 221 Russian people, only weeks ago Russia entered this very complex Syrian civil war by using warplanes attacking ISIS, and ever since then Russia has been saying that it has entered this war only for the purpose of destroying ISIS in Syria and thereby propping President Assad and his government.
Why am I blogging about this? The rather lawless North Sinai is increasingly becoming a problem for Egypt. Hamas, which is an Islamic organization that governs the nearby Gaza Strip, has been responsible for some of chaos against Egyptian military and police in North Sinai. But in about the past two years, this ISIS affiliate has joined Hamas in causing the turmoil. Just like the Gaza Strip and Israel, Egypt doesn’t need the North Sinai. It needs to make a deal with Palestinians and Israelis to get rid of it.
I keep posting on this blog that the North Sinai was almost never a part of ancient Egypt. Rather, it often belonged to the ancient Philistianes, from whom today’s Palestinians derive their name. I wrote a book, published in 1990 and entitled Palestine Is Coming, in which I said there are at least ten prophecies in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament) that I think indicate that there will be a Palestinian state, and it will not be in the West Bank. Rather, the subtitle of this book is The Revival of Ancient Philistia. Thus, I claim that the future Palestinian state will be located pretty much where ancient Philistia was located. Philistia was located on the Mediterranean coastal plain stretching rectangularly north and south, often from the Nahal Sorek about ten miles south of Tel Aviv to the Wadi el Arish in the south, where the present city of El-Arish is located.
Many people have criticized my proposal to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because my proposal is based on historical precedent. It’s because I’m saying that Egypt ought not have the North Sinai because it didn’t belong to ancient Egypt. The northern border of ancient Egypt was usually the Wadi el-Arish. These critics argue that it is foolish to say that Egypt is not entitled to the North Sinai on the basis of historical precedent. Well then, why don’t these critics make the same criticism against Israel’s Proclamation of Independence which caused the war in 1948 and ended with the State of Israel. The primary and repeated argument of that document is that ancient Israel used to exist in the land between the Mediterranean and Dead seas and that Jews in those times were entitled to settle in that land and reestablish their nation there. That, folks, is an argument based on historical precedence.
In my opinion, the main reason from human viewpoint for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the present State of Israel is not located in the ancestral land of the Jewish people. In fact, only about half of Israel of less is located in its ancestral land. Throughout the existence of modern Israel, its political and religious leaders generally have avoided a public discussion about the question “What is the land Israel.” This is an important question that needs to be discussed in order to solve this conflict. And if Egypt would have the same discussion about “What is the land of Egypt,” I think the conflict could be solved by Israel getting all of the West Bank and the Palestinians getting all of “the land of the Philistines” in which to establish their independent, sovereign state. And I think an arrangement could be made in which Egypt would benefit for its forfeiture of North Sinai. As I have said repeatedly on this blog, this real estate arrangement would result in the Palestinians getting a land that would be comparable in total square miles to all of the Gaza Strip and all of the West Bank.
If this ISIS affiliate shot down this Russian airplane, there may be more serious attention on trying to solve the chaos in North Sinai that is being caused almost entirely by Islamic militants.
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