The Issue Of Egyptian Tanks In The Sinai Appears To Only Get Murkier

The YnetNews article starts off promising enough with the headline Israel, Egypt reach understandings on Sinai:

Egypt's newly-appointed Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stressed Cairo's commitment to the 1979 peace treaty in a telephone call with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper reported Friday.

That's all well and good for al-Sisi to assure Israel that Egypt is committed to the treaty.

The issue, however, was that Egypt was sending in additional troops to Sinai without consulting Israel. It was also reported that Israel asked Egypt to remove tanks brought into the Sinai without it's agreement.

General assurances do not address the question, though YNetNews does report that an understanding with Israel was reached -- without giving details of what that understanding was.

So basically:

• We don't know what kind of understanding was reached between Israel and Egypt
• We don't know for sure if Egypt has brought anti-aircraft missiles in without Israel's consent
• We don't know to what degree the Egyptian military is really out of the picture
• We don't know the details of the operations Egypt has taken against the terrorists there
• We don't know if Egypt will relax restrictions on the Rafah crossing -- and if Hamas will be able to smuggle weapons through

But other than that, things appear pretty clear.
As clear as they appeared the day before Morsi consolidated power by taking control of the Egyptian military.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Egypt and Sinai.