[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:
Let's walk through what we have here:

#1. The Egyptians are bulldozing everything within 1 kilometer of the Gaza
Strip so that a tunnel starting from Gaza can't pop up inside the cover of a
house on the Egyptian side. The Egyptians are going to watch what's
happening and if it turns out that the Gazans dig tunnels long enough to
extend beyond the 1 kilometer sterile zone Egypt will simply extend the
sterile zone to 1.5 kilometers followed by 2 kilometers, etc.

#2. The reason that this system works so well in sharp contrast to all the
other operations is that when you give an order to bulldoze clear an area
all the bribe money in the world can't keep a covering house intact. All
the other anti-smuggling operations hinge on the absurdly naïve proposition
that the offer of bribes equal to several YEARS salary (that's years - not
months) will fail to recruit enough Egyptian security men to conspire and
cooperate with the smugglers.

#3. So while people aren't going to be happy getting relocated, they won't
be able to get weapons from Gaza.

#4. There is absolutely no alternative to a physical solution to the arms
smuggling problem. And bulldozing a sterile zone is the only low tech
reliable solution. Want an example of a failed idea from the past? A small
fortune was spent driving sheets of steel into the ground. It didn't take
long before the tunnel teams brought in very expensive metal cutting
equipment and simply cut holes in the steel deep beneath the surface.

So what's the policy recommendation? If you are concerned for the welfare
of the people being displaced you can advocate that the world community help
with special relocation funding. Help put them in housing AND fund projects
to employ them in legal economic activity.

But you most certainly should not argue that it's a mistake for Egypt to
actually stop the arms smuggling.]


The Egypt-Gaza Buffer Zone: More Harm than Good for Sinai Security
INSS Insight No. 632, November 20, 2014
Zack Gold .
http://www.inss.org.il/index.aspx?id=4538&articleid=8124

SUMMARY: The Egyptian military announced recently that it would put in place
a long-planned “security zone” on its eastern border, where the Sinai
Peninsula abuts the Gaza Strip. Egyptian forces began evacuating eight
hundred homes in Egyptian Rafah, all within 500 meters of the Gaza border,
displacing an estimated ten thousand Sinai residents; the size of the
proposed secured area was subsequently doubled to 1000 meters. Policymakers
in Cairo believe this buffer zone will stop the infiltration of weapons and
militants through tunnels from Gaza. However, unless handled skillfully,
such a move could drive an already marginalized population into the arms of
Sinai-based militants, further complicating Cairo’s counterinsurgency
operations.

The Egyptian military announced recently that it would put in place a
long-planned “security zone” on its eastern border, where the Sinai
Peninsula abuts the Gaza Strip. Egyptian forces began evacuating eight
hundred homes in Egyptian Rafah, all within 500 meters of the Gaza border,
displacing an estimated ten thousand Sinai residents; the size of the
proposed secured area was subsequently doubled to 1000 meters. Policymakers
in Cairo believe this buffer zone will stop the infiltration of weapons and
militants through tunnels from Gaza. However, unless handled skillfully,
such a move could drive an already marginalized population into the arms of
Sinai-based militants, further complicating Cairo’s counterinsurgency
operations.

A Drastic Move

Egypt has made major efforts to counter Sinai militants, and yet attacks
against security forces in the peninsula continue. Recent months have seen
the unfortunate trend of five to fifteen military and police casualties each
week. The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has staked its
reputation on restoring security in Egypt; and while the terrorism threat
across the country is in many respects more manageable, the situation in
Sinai does not present the image of a military “winning” a self-described
“war on terror.”

Smoke from a house blown up by Egyptian security forces, as Egypt began
setting up a buffer zone along the border with the southern Gaza Strip;
November 2, 2014; AFP/Getty Images
Cairo’s decision to implement a closed-off security zone on the Sinai-Gaza
border follows a horrific attack outside the North Sinai city of Sheikh
Zuweid on October 24, 2014. In a multi-pronged attack that involved a
suicide car bomber and rocket-propelled grenades, militants attacked a
military checkpoint, killing at least 31 soldiers. The attack took the
highest casualty toll since the 2004 simultaneous bombings in Taba and other
resort cities, and took the single highest toll on Egypt’s military in
decades. Egypt’s population, most of which lives far from Sinai, asks few
questions about operations in the peninsula, and there is little independent
reporting from the cities and villages in which security forces hunt down a
shadowy threat. The government decided, however, that such a massive attack
required an equally massive response.

The shock of the October 24 attack can be compared to the August 2012 “Rafah
massacre,” in which sixteen soldiers were slaughtered on their base near the
Gaza and Israeli borders. In 2012, then-President Mohamed Morsi responded to
the attack by firing the defense minister and chief of staff, promoting
el-Sisi to head the armed forces. Following this latest massacre, el-Sisi
needed a drastic move of his own. For the retired field marshal, creating a
buffer zone on the Gaza border was preferable to the prospect of ousting his
former military colleagues.

The Gaza Connection

On November 14, 2014, in a 30-minute video, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM), the
most organized and most lethal jihadi group in Sinai, claimed responsibility
for the attack. Although made up primarily of Egyptians, ABM, whose name
means “Supporters of Jerusalem,” likely had its origins in a Gaza jihadi
camp, and it has maintained close ties with Gaza-based jihadi groups. ABM
also recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organization, and the
recent video was the first since the Sinai-based group’s rebranding as the
“State of Sinai.”

As in August 2012, the Egyptian government claimed that the perpetrators of
the October 24 attack received foreign assistance. Pointing the finger at
Gaza justified the planned security zone. Although no evidence has appeared
to prove Gaza’s links to the attack, Egyptian security sources claim that
through the Gaza tunnels Hamas provides ABM with weapons in order to attack
Egyptian security forces. Israeli intelligence sources concur that there is
a connection between ABM and Hamas, although the Israeli view is that Hamas
provides ABM with rockets to attack Israel, not Egypt. Yet in any event,
given the precarious position of Hamas since the summer of 2013, and
especially after the war of July-August 2014, it is unlikely the
organization would want to provoke Egypt right now, shortly before a planned
ceasefire follow-up meeting in Cairo. Another possibility is that a
Gaza-based jihadi group or even a Hamas faction assisted the attackers
specifically in order to spoil the planned ceasefire meeting, but this
scenario is highly unlikely.

Indeed, the attack continued a trend in Sinai and was not necessarily an
escalation: the target and method of the attack are familiar. Because
attacks on checkpoints, even those using suicide bombers, are not new,
foreign assistance was not necessary in the planning or execution of this
attack. Internal terrorist groups, especially Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, could
carry out such an attack on their own. Moreover, the broader insurgency in
Sinai is based in the peninsula and not dependent on outside assistance, and
therefore a buffer zone along the Sinai-Gaza border is unlikely to make a
significant difference to the number of attacks in Sinai. In addition, since
February 2013 the Egyptian military has cracked down on the smuggling
tunnels under the border, and it has sustained this campaign by regularly
returning to destroy them upon their restoration. However, these measures
did not affect the exponential increase in attacks Egypt has suffered since
the summer of 2013.

Increasing Local Grievances

A buffer zone is likely to further damage the smuggling industry: any tunnel
will have to be at least 1000 meters longer, and once discovered and
destroyed would take more time to restore. However, what Egypt gains in
further halting militant infiltration from Gaza would be wasted if the
policy feeds the insurgency in Sinai itself. According to a press release
from the Egyptian embassy in Washington, el-Sisi “stressed the need to
provide the residents of this area time to evacuate and relocate,” although
witnesses on the ground have described the expediency with which they were
displaced.

Many residents of the border zone may be happy to leave an area prone to
insurgent attacks, counterinsurgency operations, and the activities of
smuggling gangs. Others may be less prepared to leave their homes,
especially if proper compensation is not disbursed immediately. Sinai’s
population is already marginalized from Egyptian society, and by driving
residents from their land the Egyptian military risks driving them into the
waiting arms of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis and other violent anti-state groups.

ABM was eerily quiet last month, not commenting at the time on the “buffer
zone” policy. However, ABM propaganda has previously decried displacement in
Sinai to gain sympathy and recruits among the local population. In March
2014, an ABM video accused the Egyptian military of “creating a buffer zone”
to “secure the Zionist enemy.”

Conclusion

For Gaza’s population, the buffer zone may signal further isolation, but the
trade in smuggled consumer goods has already been halted to the point that
this latest effort should have limited impact on the Strip’s already dire
humanitarian situation. Israeli policymakers, therefore, need not worry
about serious backlash from the Palestinian enclave, and indeed for almost a
decade successive Israeli governments have encouraged more Egyptian activity
on the Gaza border. However, Israel should be concerned that Egypt’s move
could prolong instability in Sinai, which continues to bleed across the
border.

Egyptian leaders, from the president down, repeatedly state that defeating
the terrorist threat in Sinai will require cooperation from the local
population. As such, the government in Cairo, with encouragement from its
international partners, should enact policies that separate the Sinai
population’s legitimate grievances from the irreconcilable grievances of
Sinai-based jihadis. Evacuating law-abiding citizens from their homes goes
against such efforts and may make it even harder for Egypt to extinguish the
Sinai threat.