Analysis

Egypt destroys Hamas arms depots in Sinai

Cairo in recent months eliminated Islamist group’s weapons warehouses, factories in Sheikh Zuweid, as relations with Gaza sour

By Avi Issacharoff 11 December 2013, 7:50 pm

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Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. He is also a guest commentator on many different radio shows and current affairs programs on television. Until 2012, he was a reporter and commentator on Arab affairs for the Haaretz newspaper. He also lectures on modern Palestinian history at Tel Aviv University, and is currently writing a script for an action-drama series for the Israeli satellite Television "YES." Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies and then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the Arab countries between the years 2003-2006. Avi directed and edited short documentary films on Israeli television programs dealing with the Middle East. In 2002 he won the "best reporter" award for the "Israel Radio” for his coverage of the second intifada. In 2004, together with Amos Harel, he wrote "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." A year later the book won an award from the Institute for Strategic Studies for containing the best research on security affairs in Israel. In 2008, Issacharoff and Harel published their second book, entitled "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War," which won the same prize.

Egyptian army soldiers patrol in an armored vehicle, backed by a helicopter gunship, during a sweep through villages in the northern Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, in May 2013. (AP)

Egyptian security forces destroyed a number of Hamas arms warehouses near the northern Sinai Peninsula in recent months, Israeli officials told The Times of Israel.

The weapons depots constituted the Islamist group’s logistic rear front, and the Egyptians reportedly also shut down arms workshops in Sheikh Zuweid which produced arms for Hamas.

Near those workshops, Hamas also operated firing ranges for testing rockets in the months before the Egyptian campaign, the officials said.

According to the Israeli sources, before the Egyptian revolution in 2011, whole sections of Sheikh Zuweid were considered extraterritorial for the Egyptian military, and Hamas therefore decided to locate its warehouses, test ranges and workshops there. Being in Egyptian territory, they would also be impervious from Israeli attack. The Israelis noted that the workshops were not large in scale and only a small portion of Hamas’s arms were produced there.

Egyptian security officials confirmed that there were storehouses in Shiekh Zuweid containing arms destined for Hamas, but they denied the presence of any workshops.

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Bedouin tribes in the northern Sinai recently surrendered a stockpile of dozens of anti-tank missiles to the Egyptian authorities.

Relations between Hamas and Cairo broke down in recent months following the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi by the military.

Egypt even referred to Hamas in the charge sheet against Morsi as a “terror organization.” Meanwhile, amid sour relations between Cairo and Gaza, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said that the Islamist terror group had renewed its relations with Tehran, in part due to the change in government there.