Egypt began this week flooding smuggling tunnels along their border with the Gaza Strip with water from the Mediterranean Sea — a move being condemned by Hamas and other Palestinian factions as a “disturbing nightmare.”
The Egyptian army’s move is another sign of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s determination to destroy the tunnels that were used to smuggle weapons, people and merchandise from Sinai to the Gaza Strip and the other way around.
This act is also a sign of Sisi’s resolve to pursue his military campaign against Islamist terror groups that are waging war against the Egyptian authorities in Sinai. The Egyptians are convinced that Hamas and other Palestinian groups have been providing aid to the terror groups in Sinai.
Since the beginning of the year, dozens of Egyptian soldiers and police officers have been killed in a spate of terror attacks launched by Islamist groups in Sinai.
Earlier this week, Egypt’s Interior Ministry announced that terrorists shot dead an Egyptian general in Sinai. In another similar shooting a few days earlier, a terror group killed General Khaled Kamel Osman.
The decision to pump water into the smuggling tunnels is seen as a severe blow not only to the terror groups in Sinai, but also to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions inside the Gaza Strip.
Read more at Gatestone Institute
