Israel's Tunnel Vision

A very interesting article by David Horovitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, on why the Israelis should have been tougher on the Egyptians...

Israel's deference to Egyptian sensitivities enabled Hamas to build up its military strength. If the diplomats fail again, the next confrontation will be far worse.

In late December 2007, at a meeting with a very senior Israeli defense official, The Jerusalem Post was told about a videotape, compiled by the security establishment, which documented Egypt's failure to effectively seal its border with Gaza.

The tape, the Post was told, featured evidence of Egyptian assistance in arms smuggling and included footage of Egyptian security personnel aiding Hamas terrorists crossing illegally into Gaza. At one point, Egyptian border policemen were seen helping a group of some 80 Hamas personnel slip into the Strip through a hole cut in the border fence.

The Post was told that the tape was being sent to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and we reported this. The security establishment's intention and expectation was that the tape would be made available on Capitol Hill. The aim was to encourage Congress to use the leverage of US financial aid to Egypt to press for more effective controls.

In the previous four months alone, according to information then compiled by the IDF, more than 100 tons of explosives had been smuggled into the Strip, as well as 20,000 rifles, 6,000 anti-tank missiles and immense supplies of ammunition. Only days earlier, Israel had also filed an official complaint with Cairo for unilaterally opening the Rafah crossing - ostensibly for Palestinians travelling to the Haj. In fact, Israel charged, this freedom of access was abused by a significant number of Hamas personnel to travel to Lebanon and Iran for military training.

Egypt ridiculed the IDF's arms smuggling figures.

"To get those quantities [of weaponry] into Gaza," scoffed an Egyptian official at the time, "you would need to have a tunnel every 10 meters."

Despite the extraordinary gravity of the arms smuggling, and despite the most senior defense echelon's profound interest in alerting US legislators to the danger in the hope of prompting economic pressure on Cairo, the security establishment's videotape was not, in fact, swiftly made available in Washington.

Reading the Post's report on the tape, several US legislators contacted Israeli diplomats to ask why they hadn't received it. In response, in some cases, they were told that there was no such tape, and that the Post's story was untrue.

In fact, as the Post then established, the tape was shown only to some US administration officials and not made available to Congress because Israel's political and diplomatic leaders decided it did not want to infuriate the Egyptians by distributing it more widely.

A senior defense official had noted to the Post that "if key congressmen and senators see this, then it will provide a clear picture of the situation and ensure that [part of] the [US military aid] money is withheld. When this happens, [Egypt's President Hosni] Mubarak will feel that he has no choice but to stop the smuggling."

The political-diplomatic echelon thought differently. As we reported, "The perception that won the day this time was that over-involvement would be seen by Cairo as an infringement of certain diplomatic 'rules' between the two countries and could lead to a major crisis."

Read the whole thing...there's a lot more...