CAIRO, 9 October 2004 — Egypt, in a state of shock over three terror attacks in its Sinai Peninsula, yesterday was weighing up the fallout on its relations with Israel, with the Palestinians and on its tourist industry. “It’s an action directed against Egypt,” said Abbas Tarabili, director of the daily El-Wafd, in a statement to Egypt’s public television channel. Tarabili said the attacks were a “well-planned operation” to destabilize Egypt and, he raised the possibility of a Palestinian link, without specifying who was behind it.
The two major radical Palestinian groups, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, said yesterday they had “nothing to do with this operation”, according to Jihad spokesman Khaled Al-Batch. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said it was “a terrorist operation” whose masterminds were still not known.
A previously unknown group calling itself Islamic Unity Brigades claimed responsibility, saying the attacks were in revenge for Israel’s murder of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last March.
Another group calling itself Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) also claimed the Taba attack in a telephone call to AFP in Jerusalem to avenge “the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq”.
Israel, without offering specific reasons, accused the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden, whose hallmarks the attacks bore. And hours later, a group calling itself Brigades of the Martyrs Abdullah Al-Azzam, claiming to be part of Al-Qaeda, said in a statement on an Islamist website that it was responsible.
As recently as Oct. 1, the Egyptian-born No. 2 of Al-Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, specifically mentioned Egypt in a broadcast appealing for a “preventative war” against the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry, in a statement yesterday, limited itself to accusing “suspect elements” seeking to “hinder the efforts (being made) to contain the negative consequence of events currently occurring in the occupied (Palestinian) territories.” The statement referred to the struggle between Palestinian factions jockeying for position in anticipation of taking over from aging leader Yasser Arafat. But it did not single out any of these factions, nor give more weight to a “Palestinian trail” over any other.
An Arab diplomat, asking not to be named, said “it is not an internal Egyptian affair, nor an Al-Qaeda operation”. According to him, the attacks aimed to undermine relations between Egypt and Israel on the one hand, and relations between Egypt and the Palestinians, on the other.
Cairo has for several months been trying to get a “Palestinian political consensus” to prepare for a possible unilateral Israeli train Palestinian police to maintain order in the overpopulated area after the Israeli withdrawal — a commitment that has provoked animosity among Palestinian Islamic organizations.
Egyptian analysts believe that if a “Palestinian link” should be proved, Cairo would “drastically revise” its relations with Israel and the Palestinians. Egypt’s Tourism Minister Ahmed Al-Mahgrebi pullout from the Gaza Strip, proposed for 2005. Egypt has pledged to said he did not believe the country’s tourism was being targeted.
