Stratfor says the attacks are all about al Qaeda destabilizing Egypt:
In light of recent unrest in the Arab world and the new political and security reality in Egypt, these latest attacks in Israel potentially represent a new kind of threat — one posed by transnational jihadists who have long wanted to undermine Egypt without operational success. It is quite possible that al Qaeda is trying to exploit the post-Mubarak political environment to mobilize its Sinai- and Gaza-based assets in order to create an Egyptian-Israeli crisis that can (potentially) undermine Cairo’s stability.
That still leaves the rocket attacks from Gaza to be part of Iran's ploy, of course. But the really significant attacks were the infiltrators.
Egypt does appear to be reacting as al Qaeda wants:
Egypt said Saturday it would recall its ambassador from Israel to protest the deaths of at least three Egyptian troops killed in a shootout between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants who had launched a deadly attack on Israel from Egyptian soil.
The decision sharply escalated tensions between the neighboring countries, whose 1979 peace treaty is being tested by the fall of Egypt's longtime autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak.
This despite a report I read somewhere that Israel approved an Egyptian request to augment their Sinai forces troop ceiling (restricted under their peace treaty) by 1,000 troops to deal with potential problems. (That seems like a Strategypage type of detail, but I don't remember.)
The article itself notes that the Egyptians are using thousands of additional troops to quiet the Sinai down. So the government is taking action to prevent attacks while also responding to public anger at Israel that the government is too weak to simply ignore as they did in the past under Mubarak (which Mubarak also stoked, of course, to distract attention from his authoritarian rule, in a double game that made him seem indispensable for stopping what he cultivated). So al Qaeda hasn't done more than sow additional tensions rather than force a complete break in relations.
It is always easy to look at events like this and think if only we had the "stability" of the autocrat, things would be fine. But things were never fine--just quiet. And an explosion would happen anyway. We're lucky the fall of the autocrat hasn't just flipped Egypt to a hostile, pro-jihad orientation after decades of that double game.
I hope we and our European friends are closely involved in making sure that Egypt's next election isn't just a way to put a stamp of approval on the next autocrat by being a one-time election. If we succeed, al Qaeda's attempts to be the catalyst to spark a world-wide jihad (as 9/11 was supposed to spark the big conflict that they would then lead from their side) will fail. By targeting Egypt, al Qaeda has lowered their ambitions.
We can at least be thankful that al Qaeda's campaign of terror in Iraq that killed so many Moslems greatly tarnished the image of al Qaeda, jihadis more generally, and the appeal of the grand jihad--or even a local one--that al Qaeda wants.
