EGYPT WAS LEFT with far more questions than answers as the dust from last month’s triple bombing of Israeli tourist hotspots in Sinai the first Islamist violence to hit Egypt in seven years began to settle: Who did it? Is the insurgency staging a comeback? How will Egyptian-Israeli relations be affected?

Late in the night of October 7th, the Taba Hilton was struck by a vehicle laden with an estimated 600 kilograms of advanced plastic explosives detonated in front of the building’s lobby. The hotel’s façade collapsed as another charge went off near the swimming pool. Nearly half an hour later, similar explosions hit tourist camps in Nuweiba and Ras Shitan, 60 kilometers south of Taba.

All three sites catered heavily to Israeli tourists seeking cheap and peaceful vacations away from the violence that has besieged their own country since the outbreak of the Aqsa intifada four years ago. Thirty-four people are believed to have died, including at least 10 Israelis, 13 Egyptians, two sisters from Italy and one Russian. Many of the bodies remain unidentified; sources close to the investigation expect forensic scientists will have to resort to DNA profiles to identify some of the bodies.

Four groups have claimed responsibility for the blasts, including the World Islamist Group; the Islamic Tawhid Brigade; Mohamed’s Army Group, which claims to be a military wing of the Palestinian resistance; and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which claims affiliation with the Al-Qaeda network. All four were previously unknown, and analysts have raised questions about the credibility of the competing claims.

Investigators have since said they believe three cars were used in the bombing. At least eight terrorists are believed to have carried out the blast, two of whom died in the assault, according to a statement from the Ministry of Interior.

At press time, five of the eight alleged perpetrators had been taken into custody by State Security investigators, the ministry said. All five were Egyptian Bedouin; dozens of their tribesmen had earlier been detained for questioning. A source close to the investigation claims one of them admitted selling explosives that could have been used in the attacks. Despite some speculation in the local press, investigators have yet to draw a link between the charges used in the attack and the theft of more than 1,000 kilograms of plastic explosives from an oil exploration company near Marsa Matrouh in early August.

Associated Press Egyptian (left) and Israeli rescue personnel the morning after

Both Egyptian and Israeli security officials have ruled out the involvement of Palestinian militants, saying they believe Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, or a group inspired by it, were behind the bombings.

“Whoever is trying to connect the Palestinians to this is simplifying his life,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. “Our reports show that the type of attack, the fact that it was carried out in multiple locations, with a large amount of explosives point more in the direction of Al-Qaeda. The attempt to move it to the Palestinian side is wrong. This was meant to be a mega-terror [event] that was supposed to collapse the whole hotel and kill hundreds of people. This sort of thing is usually carried out by a certain organization called Al-Qaeda,” Shalom claimed.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the two leading militant factions in the Occupied Territories, denied responsibility for the blasts, although spokesmen for both groups said they believed whoever was behind them was provoked into action by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

“I believe Palestinians [had] nothing to do with this operation,” Khaled Al-Batsh, a senior Jihad leader, told Agence France Presse. “Palestinians are victims of the Israeli occupation and this operation might have been carried out to avenge the [suffering] of Palestinians. Sharon and his government are responsible for crimes of murder, destruction and occupation against our people and that prompt our Arab and Muslim youth to take revenge,” Al-Batsh added.

Moushir Al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, was quoted in the local press as saying, “our battle against the Zionist enemy is carried out [only] within the borders of occupied Palestinian territories.”

Associated Press Israeli emergency staff wait at the Eilat border checkpoint for permission to cross.

Most Israeli experts appear to share Shalom’s belief that Palestinian militant organizations had nothing to do with the attacks.

“I don’t believe they were at all involved because they have too much to lose from jeopardizing their relations with Egypt,” says Dan Rabinowitz, an anthropologist at Tel Aviv University and analyst with the respected daily Haaretz. “Moreover, Hamas was very consistent in refusing to carry out attacks on Israelis outside Israel. This looks more like an international Islamic terror organization than a Palestinian organization.”

The bombing came just one month after Israel’s anti-terror taskforce issued a travel warning described by the nation’s press as “the most severe” of its kind ever made public calling on Israelis not to travel to Egypt in general, and Sinai in particular. The warning, posted on two official internet sites and widely publicized in the media, said intelligence reports raised a “concrete possibility” of a terrorist strike against Israelis at Egyptian tourist sites over the Yom Kippur and Sukkot holidays.

Thousands of Israelis failed to heed the warning; Egyptian Minister of Tourism Ahmed El-Maghrabi estimates that some 15,000 Israelis were vacationing in Sinai when the bombings took place.

While some in the Israeli press wondered incredulously how the nation’s citizens could have ignored such a clear warning, Rabinowitz says there’s nothing shocking about it at all. “[Israelis] think that these government officials and intelligence agencies are trying to protect themselves from criticism and just do it in a routine way. Israelis are confident they can look after themselves,” he says, adding that they always perceived Sinai as “a haven of peace.”

Associated Press Civil Defense and Egyptian Red Crescent workers remove the body of a dead Israeli.

“I do not think Israelis will boycott Sinai [in the wake of the attacks, but] it will take a number of years before Israelis go back to Sinai in the same numbers. There are now Israeli tourists there, [but] in small numbers,” Rabinowitz says.

As car rental agencies closed down and hotels moved to skeleton crews, the eastern Sinai economy began to feel the pinch last month.

Among the few weathering the slump was the local Hyatt, which Thierry Bertin, a senior spokesman for the chain’s Middle East operations, says was never “particularly dependent” on the Israeli market. Bertin noted, however, that several international conferences slated for the Hyatt in the coming months have been canceled.

An estimated 300,000 Israelis visited Egypt this year, with most of them staying in Sinai.

In the chaos immediately after the blast, Israeli rescue forces tried to cross the border a few meters from the Taba Hilton to respond to the scene, but were blocked by Egyptian border security forces. Although some were allowed across, it took a telephone call from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to President Hosni Mubarak to open the border completely.

Associated Press Cutting through the wreckage

When all was said and done, Israeli civilian rescue and military units were allowed to cross the border almost at will. Although some in the Israeli press later denounced Egypt for the delay, a senior Israeli intelligence official said the process was unprecedentedly smooth.

“If it had been in Israel, would we have rushed to let the Egyptian army in?” he asked, noting that Israeli Defence Force (IDF) helicopters and rescue aircraft were granted landing rights at Egyptian bases during the crisis and that Shin Bet, the Jewish state’s domestic security service, was allowed to participate in the investigation.

Emad Gad, an expert on Israeli politics at Al-Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies (ACPSS), says Egypt’s relaxation of its sovereignty was unprecedented and would not likely have been reciprocated if the shoe had been on the other foot. “If the incident had taken place on the other side of the border,” Gad claims, “Israel would have never have allowed an Egyptian to set foot into its territories and this is acceptable practice under the code of international relations.”

Egyptian border security forces also allowed Israeli tourists to move out of Egypt into Eilat, a few meters away on the Israeli side of the border, without passing through Egyptian passport control, a move Gad says may have hampered the investigation into the atrocity by possibly “allowing some of the perpetrators to sneak in among Israeli tourists moving out of Taba.”

Whatever the bombings’ impact on domestic security may prove to be, Gad says they also revealed weaknesses in Egypt’s civil defense infrastructure in Sinai. Egypt had to give in to Israel’s request to send rescue personnel, he says, because Sinai was simply unprepared to deal with a disaster of this magnitude.

Associated Press Egyptian and Israeli investigators at the scene.

“These bombings underscored the absence of a logistics [base] capable of dealing with such circumstances, to say nothing of the lack of hospitals [with adequate trauma facilities] to treat the injured. Ultimately, people had to go Eilat. In Egypt, we act after the disaster happens, so I believe that Sinai will be safer in the future,” says Gad, who is also the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram’s scholarly journal Israeli Studies.

The Taba strikes were hardly the first to target Israelis in Egypt. In 1985, the administrative director of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo was shot dead by an unidentified gunman while driving in downtown Cairo. A year later, the wife of an embassy employee was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the Israeli pavilion at the annual Cairo Book Fair. In another incident, an Egyptian police officer fired on Israeli tourists in Ras Barakeh on the Red Sea coast near the Egyptian-Israeli border, killing four women, two children and one man. Authorities on both sides agreed it was an individual act carried out by a mentally disturbed man. In 1990, nine Israelis were killed and 19 injured in an attack on a bus on the road between Cairo and Ismailia.

Israeli tourists also survived a number of attacks plotted by Egypt’s two major Islamist militant organizations. In 1986, Egyptian authorities thwarted an Egyptian Islamic Jihad-sponsored attack on Israeli tourists in Old Cairo’s Khan El-Khalili market. A similar plot by Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya killed 18 Greek tourists at a Cairo hotel who were mistaken for Israelis.

While the nature of the Taba bombing clear to most, some Egyptian analysts turned to conspiracy theories to explain the attacks, saying the bombings bore the fingerprints of Israel’s intelligence agency in a plot designed to detract international attention from a bloody IDF incursion into the Gaza Strip underway at the time.

Uri Bar-Joseph, chair of the division of International Relations at Haifa University, says such claims were the “most striking” feature of the incident. “This is such an absurdity for us that we can’t even respond to it,” Bar-Joseph says.

Associated Press Police guard a workshop in El-Arish owned by Mohamed Abdullah Raba Abdullah, accused of fastening explosives to the cars.

Israel had launched the military operation “Days of Penitence” in Gaza in late September as retribution for the firing of homemade Qassam rockets from northern Gaza into the southern Israeli city of Sderot, killing two children and injuring 11. The IDF operation killed at least 139 Palestinians and demolished 100 homes. The United States vetoed a UN Security Council Resolution condemning the Israeli operation.

Al-Qaeda’s fingerprints

Egyptian investigators now believe the attacks were plotted by a Palestinian fundamentalist living in Sinai who led a cell of at least eight Egyptian Bedouins. Alleged Palestinian ringleader Ayad Said Saleh was killed in the attack on the Taba Hilton along with one of his Bedouin followers, Suleiman Saleh Flayfil, when their explosives detonated before they could flee the scene.

Five of the remaining perpetrators have been arrested, while two remain at large, say Egyptian authorities.

According to a Ministry of Interior statement, Saleh, who worked as a driver in the town of Al-Arish, had a lengthy criminal record before turning to “religious fanaticism.” The statement added that Saleh is believed to have carried out the attacks in reprisal for “the deteriorating situation in the occupied territories.”

Associated Press A second exodus from Sinai

Nabil Abdel Fattah, an ACPSS analyst and one of the nation’s top experts on religion and politics, says it was the first time Egyptian Bedouin have been involved in an operation by Islamist militants.

“The Bedouin culture is governed by tribal laws; they are not the same religious concepts and ethics that shape people’s culture in the Nile Valley,” says Abdel Fattah. “They were never known for religious fanaticism; rather, they were always known for prioritization of their vested interests and never for their involvement in political activities.”

The nation’s Bedouin minority, which prospered in Sinai during the Israeli occupation that ended with the Begin-Sadat peace treaty, has always been viewed with suspicion for their absolute loyalty to their tribes rather than to a broader Egyptian identity. Bedouin in the Taba area, which was only returned to Egyptian control after an international tribunal ruling in 1989, have had rocky relationships with Egyptian property developers in the area and have been accused of smuggling drugs and weapons. Ten semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes have long tried to balance good relations with Israel and Egypt alike.

“The fatal political vacuum that exists in Sinai could be the reason behind the formation of such cells among Bedouins,” suggests Abdel Fattah, who believes the “highly-sophisticated” operation bears the stamp of international Islamist groups, particularly Al-Qaeda.

The perpetrators’ methodology, he says, suggest connections to (or inspiration from) the infamous network, which has most famously gone after soft targets on 9/11 and in the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid. The use of car bombs is another Al-Qaeda hallmark.

“This operation was carried out against soft targets, which include tourists or citizens frequenting restaurants, nightclubs, coffee shops etc, and the objective is to instill the maximum level of terror and fear among civilians. It also aims to show the vulnerability of the political regime. Even if the suspects deny having links to Al-Qaeda, it would be hard to confirm their independence from that network because the mastermind could have been in touch with it without letting the rest of the perpetrators know about these connections. Generally, not every member of a cell is aware of the group’s wider connections,” Abdel Fattah suggests.

The attacks also served Al-Qaeda’s wider interests in the Middle East, the analyst suggests.

“By attacking Israelis on Egyptian soil, Al-Qaeda wants to gain more sympathizers among Arabs or Muslims [outraged by the Israeli occupation of Arab land], which opens the door for the recruitment of new members inside every Arab or Muslim country. Israel is not the only target; rather, Al-Qaeda is trying to extend the parameters of its war against the US, proving that no country is out of its reach and that the US war against terror is ineffective.

“By targeting Israelis this time, Al-Qaeda is also trying to defer claims made by critics blaming it for focusing only on American targets and ignoring the Israelis,” Abdel Fattah adds.

Are they back?

With the identification of the Palestinian Saleh and his Bedouin cell as those behind the blasts, it seems clear that members of mainstream Egyptian Islamist militant groups Al-Jihad and Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya were not involved.

The arrests quelled the concerns of many who, in the days immediately after the bombings, wondered whether they signaled the resurgence of Islamist militarism in Egypt. The assault was the first terror attack carried out in Egypt since the 1997 massacre of some 60 tourists at the temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, which prompted a decisive Interior Ministry clampdown on militarism that broke the back of the insurgency.

The most spectacular of those attacks, which began with the assassination of President Anwar Sadat on October 6th, 1981, were carried out by Al-Gama’a Islamiyya and Al-Jihad.

Al-Gama’a claimed responsibility for an attempt on the life of President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia in 1995 as well as a 1993 assassination attempt on Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz in Cairo. It was also responsible for the assassinations of People’s Assembly Speaker Refaat Al-Mahgoub, who was killed in traffic in 1990, and the secularist writer Farag Fouda in 1992. The group also carried out multiple attacks on the nation’s Coptic minority.

In the security clampdown that followed the Al-Gama’a-led Luxor massacre, the group quickly declared it was unconditionally ceasing armed operations. In 2002, Egyptian authorities allowed its top leaders to tour prisons and preach non-violence to Al-Gama’a members behind bars. Thousands were released last year.

In the same period, Al-Jihad claimed responsibility for three failed assassination attempts in 1993 targeting then-Minister of Information Safwat El-Sherif, former Interior Minister Hassan Al-Alfy, and then-Prime Minister Atef Sedki. The Interior Ministry rolled up the group in 1993, when it seized a computer on which the group had stored the names of its active members.

Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiyya issued a statement condemning the Taba bombings that simultaneously held Sharon responsible for continuing instability in the Middle East.

The Sinai bombings, Abdel Fattah says, “shows that there are still some Egyptians who can be recruited [by Islamist militant groups].” Although early speculation suggested those behind the attacks were unrepentant militants or sleeper cells that had allied themselves with Al-Qaeda, those arrested “might have been recruited for the first time in their lives,” the analyst speculates.

Either way, Abdel Fattah says, the bombings raise questions about what tools the state should use in its bid to pull out the remaining roots of the insurgency.

“This kind of religious and ideological group [must be countered by] a reform movement that starts from within to bring real change,” he suggests. Like many, Abdel Fattah is concerned that the state’s highly effective campaign against militants has still not addressed the fundamental causes of rebellion and violence.

“Stability and security are not only achieved by force, but also by a regime that has real political legitimacy. I believe it is dangerous to say that militant Islamist organizations disappeared completely after the Luxor massacre in 1997.” To think that way, he says, is to let down your guard. “It is true that the level of violence declined and that the security apparatus hampered the growth of these organizations, but this achievement lacked serious political backup.”

The attacks thrust the ruling National Democratic Party’s still-developing plans for domestic reforms into an even brighter spotlight given that both parliamentary elections and a national presidential referendum are slated for next year.

Regardless of whether the NDP responds to the attacks by stepping up the pace of change, most analysts expect the bombings sounded the death knell for attempts to repeal the 23-year-old emergency laws enacted after the assassination of Sadat. The law has repeatedly been extended on the grounds that it is necessary to protect the nation from Islamist extremism.

In statements condemning the bombings, Egypt’s opposition parties and human rights activists renewed their calls for the abolition of the laws.

“Of course, we are worried about the renewal of the emergency law, but this incident proves that this law failed to prevent the occurrence of terrorist bombings [today] and the terrorist operations that took place in the 1990s. This incident should not be used to justify the renewal of the emergency law,” says Hafiz Abu Saeda, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

Essam El-Erian, a senior spokesman for the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, expects the attacks will both make it easier to renew the law and provide grounds for a new clampdown on Islamists of all stripes. The Brotherhood stopped short of clearly condemning the Sinai bombings, describing them as “the direct outcome of the brutal massacres committed by the Zionist enemy” and America’s occupation of Iraq.

Gad, meanwhile, says it is too early to draw a conclusion from the fact that the attacks were organized by a Palestinian.

“The engagement of one Palestinian does not mean anything as long as it is an individual act,” says Gad. But if investigators prove Saleh was acting with the approval of a Palestinian faction, “this would definitely have a negative impact on the mediating role played by Egypt with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.”

Relations with Tel Aviv

Scenes of Egyptian and Israeli rescue workers and security officers working side-by-side to save lives and investigate the bombings raised interesting questions about the future of the fragile bilateral ties between the two countries. Although cooperation clearly improved in the short term, it will only become clear in the months ahead whether the two sides have built up enough goodwill from ongoing operations to start thawing out relations at the strategic level.

The Israeli press said the bombings proved Egypt and Israel face a common security threat that demands a high level of cooperation between the two countries.

In an editorial headlined “A Shared War Against Terror” published on October 10, the online English edition of Haaretz, suggested, “Israel and Egypt have a shared interest to defeat the fundamentalist groups that seek to spread death and destruction. The leaders of Al-Qaeda who sent the murderers to Sinai did not distinguish between the Israeli hotel guests and the Egyptian staff, or between their effort to kill as many Israelis as possible and the severe damage they caused to the tourism sector of Egypt. In order to carry out an effective fight against terrorism, which struck both sides this time, there must be a strengthening of intelligence [sharing] and cooperation between the security services and an improvement in shared emergency procedures.”

The conservative English-language daily The Jerusalem Post carried an editorial the same day dubbing Taba “Egypt’s 9/11” and equating the attacks with Palestinian bombings carried out against Israelis. “For Israel, these attacks would have been our 9/11 our own branch of global jihad if we had not been experiencing the equivalent of dozens of 9/11s drawn out over the past four years,” the editorial read.

Gad says Tel Aviv is pressuring Cairo to subscribe to the Israeli definition of terror, which includes Palestinian Islamist factions. Egypt has always refrained from labeling these groups as terrorists, instead calling them “national resistance movements.”

“Israel is trying to use these bombings to prove to the international community that it is Islamic fundamentalism not the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories that threatens regional stability,” Gad says. “It wants to say that we should all unite to confront terrorist groups, which include Hamas and Jihad. Ultimately, Israel would be giving the fight against Islamist fundamentalism priority over the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Egypt seems set to rebuff Israel’s bid. In Italy after the bombing, Mubarak said the elimination of global terror cannot be separated from the end of Israel’s occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Although Israeli and Egyptian intelligence agencies worked together on the investigation, Gad thinks it unlikely that the improved cooperation will outlive the incident.

“Despite the peace treaty, Egyptian-Israeli relations suffer many problems. Each sees the other as a primary threat. This doesn’t mean the eruption of war, but Israel sees Egypt as the biggest Arab country with the largest army in the region, while Egypt sees Israel as the only country in the region that has nuclear weapons, still occupies Palestinian territories, and still believes in the use of force to resolve conflicts. There will always be limits,” Gad says.

Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979 stipulating the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Sinai and the dismantling of all Israeli settlements built in the peninsula after the 1967 war. In return, Egypt agreed to demilitarize Sinai and normalize political and economic relations with the Jewish state.

Israeli experts agree the two sides are unlikely to soon see more cooperation on security matters, saying each ignores the other’s concerns.

“Being part of the Arab world, Egypt is committed to the Palestinian cause, while Israel uses quite drastic measures to crush the Palestinian Intifada,” says Bar-Joseph, the Haifa University political scientist. “It is difficult to improve cooperation under these circumstances, even behind the scenes. But terrorism constitutes a threat not only to Israel, but also to other countries in the region; cooperation will help all states involved.

“It seems that this divergence of opinions stems from the definition each sides uses,” Bar-Joseph continues. “The Egyptians term Hamas and Jihad according to their goal [ending the Israeli occupation], but ignore methods such as the bombing of civilian buses or coffee houses in Israel proper [as recognized by Egypt under the peace deal], which are clearly terrorist methods. Moreover, these organizations declare that their goal is the destruction of the Israeli state, not the liberation of territories occupied in 1967. Israel defines Hamas and Jihad as terrorist organizations precisely because of what Egypt ignores, but it also ignores the fact that their immediate goal is to put an end to the occupation of the territories.”

Egyptian officials used the bombings to bring up the issue of the nation’s limited control over its borders with Israel. Osama El-Baz, a senior advisor to President Mubarak, was quoted in the local press as saying that although it seemed unlikely that explosives were smuggled into Egypt through borders with Israel, there is a need to tighten Egypt’s control over Sinai’s area C by deploying Egyptian armed forces.

Both Taba and Nuweiba are located in demilitarized Area C under the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which divided Sinai into three zones. Egypt’s military presence is strongest in Area A, where the most-heavily armed troops are deployed, while Area B is limited to four lightly armed infantry battalions. Only Egyptian civil police and the United Nation’s Multinational Force and Observers can be stationed in Area C, which is bounded by Sharm El-Sheikh, the Gulf of Aqaba, Rafah and Taba.

Israel has repeatedly complained of weapons and explosives smuggled in to militants in the Gaza Strip via tunnels dug underneath the Egyptian-Israeli border in Area C. Egyptian authorities counter that the low troop levels stipulated by the peace treaty give it little control over Area C.

The two sides have had extensive talks about Egypt’s border control since Sharon unveiled his disengagement plan last year, which calls for the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Egypt claims it can tighten border security with at least 750 border guards armed with light weapons, a demand Israel has consistently rejected. Two weeks after the Taba bombings, a senior Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that Israel now accepts, in principle, Egypt’s demand to deploy armed forces along the Egypt-Gaza border. The official said the arrangement could be accomplished by an exchange of letters between Sharon and Mubarak without re-opening the peace treaty.

Gad, however, warns “Whenever the two parties have agreed to have Egyptian armed forces along the borders, Israel changed its mind.”

The analyst says Israel has little to fear from the deployment of a mid-sized battalion of lightly armed infantry.

“This force would not be sufficient to launch an attack on Israel there are also multinational forces that monitor the situation along the borders.”

While he acknowledges Egypt’s right to deploy armed forces in Area C, Bar-Joseph expects more cooperation from the Egyptian side to guarantee stability in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal.

“Practically, the Israelis would like to see a bigger role for Egyptian security forces in Gaza to prevent it from becoming a Hamas state. I hope the bombing will boost Egypt’s mediating role in Gaza in the near future. There is a growing right-wing opposition to Sharon’s disengagement plan, and this opposition might succeed if the plan is not supported by enough Israelis.

“Most Israelis, about 75 percent [according to the most recent opinion polls], want to get out of Gaza and most of the West Bank. But they also want to know that once we evacuate these areas, they will not become bases for terrorist groups. A firm Egyptian commitment and we Israelis respect Egypt’s commitments to take firm action in order to prevent such a development would increase Sharon’s ability to get out of Gaza. And if Gaza does not become a terrorist base controlled by Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the Israeli motivation to get out of the West Bank will increase as well. Concrete Egyptian support for this plan may contribute a lot to its success and to the evacuation of other Palestinian territories,” Bar-Joseph concludes.

Sharon has been calling on Egypt to take responsibility for security in the strip after the withdrawal, but then-Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said in March that Egypt would be solely responsible for securing its own side of the border, which might entail a possible amendment to the peace treaty.

Egypt has also offered to train Palestinian security forces.  et