TEL AVIV, Israel, April 26 (UPI) -- Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Wednesday, bringing to five the number of attacks on Egyptians and foreigners in the past three days.
Wednesday's first attack was launched near the headquarters of the peacekeeping Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) at el-Gorah in the desert, south east of El Arish. The Israelis had build an airbase there, when they occupied the Sinai, and the 11-nation MFO that monitors compliance with the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement developed it as one of its two camps.
The bomber blew himself up when an MFO vehicle passed nearby. The second attacker was killed at Sheikh Zuweid near Al-Arish. No other fatalities were reported.
No one claimed responsibility for Wednesday's bombings, just as no one did following Monday's triple attack in the costal resort area of Dahab in the southern Sinai. That one claimed the lives of 24 people.
Israeli intelligence had several warnings that terrorists were planning attacks in Egypt and the head of Israel's Counter-Terror Staff, Dani Arditi, said Tuesday the signs led to "small organizations linked to al-Qaida in one way or another."
"Sinai is a dangerous place according to our information. It is dangerous to tourists in general and to Israelis in particular," he said in an interview with the Ynet news Web site.
Wednesday's strike was the first in northern Sinai. All the others, since October 2004, were directed at tourist resort areas from Taba adjacent to Israel's southernmost town of Eilat to Sharm el-Sheikh at the peninsula's southern tip. They brought total number of dead (not including the bombers) to at least 122. Many of the victims were tourists.
Local Bedouins carried out the attacks in Taba, Ras e-Shitan and Sharm el-Sheikh. The Egyptian daily al Aharm said Wednesday the authorities have identified the Dahab bombers as Bedouins from northern Sinai.
Israeli intelligence initially suspected a bigger organization was involved in the 2004 and 2005 attacks but eventually acknowledged the Egyptian intelligence had been right when it said the organization was "local," reported Yediot Aharonot. The newspaper's intelligence specialist, Ronen Bergman, did not identify his source but his article implied he had a not-for-attribution conversation with Arditi.
The belief that al-Qaida and local Bedouins were involved in Monday's attack goes back to al-Qaida's history and its number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is Egyptian.
Lt. Col. in the reserves Moshe Marzuk, who served in Israel's military intelligence before joining the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism as a researcher, told United Press International that al-Zawahiri retained a small power base in Egypt and that its members established contacts with Bedouins. The Bedouins are receiving money from al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden and their hard-core numbers a few dozen people, Marzuk estimated.
Bin Laden had considered moving to southern Egypt when he was forced out of Sudan in 1996. He checked the possibility, discovered Egyptian intelligence had the area under control with "good counter-terror networks" and therefore moved to the caves between Pakistan and Afghanistan, continued Marzuk.
The Egyptians have been cooperating with foreign intelligence services -- and with Israel -- according to Israel's ambassador to Cairo, Shalom Cohen.
"We know of successes in preventing terror attacks and arrests of terrorists, but sometimes they don't succeed," Cohen said.
The last success was reported Monday. The Egyptian State Information Office said security agencies had arrested an organization of 22 terrorists residing in and near Cairo. They planned to attack tourist sites and a natural gas pipeline near the capital, and to assassinate Islamic and Christian clergymen, the government alleged.
The Sinai desert has proved to be difficult to control, partly due to its rough topography with many caves and desert tracks and partly because of the grudge borne by the local Bedouin population.
Haaretz newspaper noted that many Bedouins have been suffering, economically, in the past two years because the government resettled people from Cairo and the Nile Delta in the area. The newcomers won rights to taxi services and work in the seaside hotels and restaurants and edged out Bedouins for whom those jobs had been major sources of income.
The authorities tried to gain intelligence cooperation with the Bedouins after last July's attack in Sharm el-Sheikh. However, tribesmen who signed up were considered to be "collaborators," did not get much support in their tribes and have not been very useful, Haaretz reported. The Bedouin community was difficult to penetrate.
Marzuk said he believed Monday's attack was also part of radical Islamists' -- in no way all Muslims' -- global struggle against the West's "corrupting" influence. It is a desire to return to Islam's glorious days and a feeling that secular Arab governments, such as President Hosni Mubarak's, are collaborating with the West and ought to be toppled.
"They don't want the West in Egypt," he said. "The West comes with money, power and it suggests Christianity is beating Islam, that they are inferior ... and they want to continue this war of civilizations. It is a war that must be settled with blood, murder, terror, until Islam subdues the non-Muslims," Marzuk said.
The authorities have responded strongly to these attacks. Enforcing emergency laws, the government made a number of arrests without trials and violated human rights, noted Yoram Meital of the Herzog Center. Its investigations and collective punishment methods may have led some Bedouins to turn against the government as an act of revenge. In Israel too, some suicide bombers said they were prompted by a desire for revenge.
The attacks were thus designed to weaken the regime partly by hitting the tourist trade, the second most important source of income in Egypt.
The timing of the attacks seemed like an attempt to strike at symbols the government highlighted. The first attack in Taba and Ras e-Shitan was on Oct. 6, 2004, the anniversary of the October 1973 War in which Egyptian troops reoccupied the East Bank of the Suez Canal and pushed into the Sinai. Last year's attack in Sharm el-Sheikh was on July 23, the anniversary of Revolution Day in which young officers toppled the monarchy in a bloodless coup. Monday was the eve of the anniversary celebrating Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula.
The explosive charges used Monday were smaller than those used in previous attacks in Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh and Marzuk concluded it was a sign that the government was making some headway in fighting the terrorists.
Ambassador Cohen said he did not believe the terror attacks endangered Mubarak's regime.
Meanwhile, in Dahab, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif led a protest march condemning terrorism and stressing support for the tourism industry, the BBC reported.
A Ynet reporter there said Egyptians and Bedouins chanted to the tourists, "We love everybody here" and foreigners applauded.
The three blast sites have been badly damaged, but in areas that were not hit people were sitting in restaurants and businesses were back renting bikes, Ynet said.
