When It Comes to Camels, Egypt Means Business

I mentioned in a post yesterday, that according to BBC news Egypt was building its own secuity fence in Sharm Al-Sheikh, complete with checkpoints and displaced Bedouins.

Now it seems that after the bombing in July that killed 67 and the attack in Taba that killed 32 in October 2004, Egypt's measures are aimed not at terrorists...but at camels:

Mustafa Afifi, governor of south Sinai, said authorities were building concrete walls no more than 80 centimeters high near junctions to stop camels straying on to the road and causing accidents, the official MENA news agency said.

80 centimeters comes out to about 2.6 feet--which we can only hope will be enough to hold those camels at bay.

It's not clear if the number killed in July--67--comes from Haaretz or Reuters, but according to the list of terrorist attacks at thereligionofpeace.com there were 88 killed and 119 injured and a quick Google search also shows a 67 vs. 88 discrepancy across the internet.

These are the same Egyptians who assure us that Al Qaeda has no base in the Sinai and had no part in the Sharm Al-Sheikh attack:

An Egyptian security official denied on Monday claims by Israel’s military intelligence chief that the al-Qaeda network had established a base in the Sinai peninsula. "There is absolutely no al-Qaeda base in the Sinai. We’ve made this point again and again," said the Egyptian official who asked not to be named.

"We excluded from the start any link between the perpetrators of the Sinai bombings and al-Qaeda," he added, referring to deadly attacks targeting tourist hotspots in the Sinai last October and this July.

Of course, it might be easier to believe them that there was no link between the Sinai bombings and Al Qaeda, if the Egyptians had investigated the possibility instead of excluding it "from the start."

In any case, there is little likelihood that Egypt will have any better luck the flow of camels than the flow of the Palestinian Arabs to and from Gaza.

Technorati Tag: Israel.