Egypt border attack which killed three Israeli soldiers last Saturday is still in the news, with Israeli security and military commentators voicing concerns over the “systemic” failures that contributed to the deadly attack staged by an Egyptian policeman.
Investigations into the “operational and systemic perception of defense of Israeli peaceful borders” as well as the occupation troops’ conduct during the attack were launched on Sunday, Israeli media reported.
5-Hour Attack
According to an initial probe by the occupation military, the Egyptian cop Mohammad Salah, 22, infiltrated the border through an emergency gate early Saturday morning.
The policeman walked some five kilometers (3 miles) from his guard post in Egypt and climbed up a cliff to reach the emergency gate, which indicated his knowledge of the area and the security barrier, according to the Israeli probe.
He cut through the zip ties with a combat knife, opened the small entrance to the occupied territories, and walked around 150 meters to the guard post where he killed 2 Israeli guards between 6 and 7 a.m. on Saturday.
The pair did not fire their weapons, according to the military investigation, indicating that they were caught completely by surprise by the attacker.
The occupation military was not aware of the incident until 9 a.m.. After 11 a.m., an Israeli army drone identified Salah, the Israeli army announced in the investigation, noting that the Egyptian cop managed to stay five hours in the occupied territories
Salah then engaged in a clash with occupation soldiers, killing the third soldier, before being martyred.
“Series of Failures”
Israeli commentators said the attack raises several questions over the extent of failures that led to the incident and the fate of some military officials in light of the investigation, as well as the future of ties with Egypt.
“We are talking about a series of failures, starting by the infiltration and not ending by the lack of pre-attack safety alarms,” Or Heller, a military correspondent on Israeli Channel 13 said, as quoted by Al-Manar Hebrew Department.
The Israeli veteran military correspondent described the time during which the Egyptian cop stayed in the occupied territories as “unimaginable,” slamming how the clash between the occupation military and the Egyptian policeman “was tragically ended by the killing of the third Israeli guard.”
Heller also wondered whether the investigation will be followed by the sacking of Israeli military officials and whether those officials will be high-ranking.
For his part, Arab affairs commentator on Israeli Channel 13 Hezi Simantov said: “Anti-Israel instigation has been widespread and transboundary as it is not limited to Gaza and the West Bank.”
“We saw that one guy managed to break the mould on the Israel-Egypt border,” Simantov said, as cited by our Hebrew Department,
He added: “Taking into consideration that the attack was individual, it had harsh ramifications.”
#Video shows the scene of the attack on the #Zionist occupation forces on #Palestine’s border with #Egypt
🔴 3 #Israeli soldiers dead so far#الجيش_المصري #الحدود_المصرية #الجيش_الإسرائيلي pic.twitter.com/Q7FhjF08jP— ManarWeb (@WebManar) June 3, 2023
Meanwhile, Nir Dvori, Israeli Channel 12 military affairs commentator, said the Israeli post was just 50 meters away from the border with Egypt, noting that the Egyptian officer had the full opportunity to observe the activity of the Israeli guards.
Dvori added that “the Egyptian policeman identified the crossing points of the Israeli military, managed to infiltrate through one of them, and he took the Israeli guards by surprise.”
“Completely Caught by Surprise”
The surprise, that had been for decades the major strategy through which the Zionist occupation managed to dictate the course of wars against Arabs, is the same weapon used by the Egyptian cop to kill the three Israelis.
Some 56 years earlier, on the early morning of June 5, the Israeli occupation launched a surprise attack against Egypt’s airbases and destroyed the Egyptian air force while it was still on the ground, a move that unleashed the six-day war, which ended up to be known as Arab’s Naksa (setback).
Today, and after 56 years an Egyptian policeman infiltrated the border with the occupied Palestinians territories and took three Israeli soldiers by surprise.
Away from the aforementioned military analysis, the Egypt border attack can be seen as an evidence that Arab popular sentiment remains opposed to the so-called Abraham accords and other forms of normalization agreements clinched between the Zionist entity and some Arab regimes.
This 5-hour “stay” in the territory, which had experienced one of the major ethnic cleansing in the history, echoes the resonant post-victory speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah in 2006: “Era of defeats has gone!”
Source: Al-Manar English Website
