Former Sinai MP: ‘Mubarak Was a Treasure to Israel. Sisi is Much More Than That’

• Former Sinai MP: ‘Mubarak Was a Treasure to Israel. Sisi is Much More Than That’
  by https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/
  In 2014, fresh from the coup they led against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the government offered Yehya Okail the position of deputy mayor of North Sinai. He wasn’t the most obvious choice. The 2011 revolution had elevated Okail to Member of Parliament for the Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, within the Sinai Province where he was leading demonstrations against the new military-backed government.
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  Okail’s path to politics wasn’t exactly conventional though he had held a string of high profile positions, including Secretary of the Development Fund in his village and President of the Association for the Development of Bedouin Women. He studied mathematics, received a high diploma in Islamic studies and then in 2010 was arrested and detained for seven months on charges of espionage and colluding with Hamas.
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  He declined the offer for deputy mayor, a counter offer to become a minister, and left Egypt three days later. He hasn’t returned since.
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  Okail’s departure coincided with the start of the war on terror in North Sinai, which began in October 2014 and culminated at the start of this year when the government announced Operation Sinai 2018, which promised to use brute force to restore security in the region after an attack on a mosque killed over 300 people. Okail was outside the country, watching events unravel within, regularly receiving news from people on the ground.
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  Brute force is an understatement for what has unraveled in the province under this campaign. Sinai was placed under a seven-month blockade, which has never really been lifted. Civilians suffered acutely from the restrictions placed on travel, food, medicine, cooking gas and water and some days survive on just two hours of electricity and internet a day.
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  Whilst the army’s PR machine is in overdrive to portray their mission there as heroic and successful, recent figures compiled by the Tahrir Institute tell a different story. By August 2018 182 terror attacks had already killed 520 people, whereas throughout 2014 363 people were killed. Terrorism in Sinai is getting worse.
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  Egyptian authorities have razed homes near the airport south of the city of Arish and have started demolishing areas surrounding the port, explains Okail, despite the fact that the government has said it is winding down operations there. Rafah, the city along Egypt’s eastern border with the Gaza Strip, has been wiped out, as has 40 per cent of nearby Sheikh Zuwaid and the town centres of Al-Qasima and Al-Husna in Central Sinai. Up to 20,000 families have fled.
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