Word: gaza
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...northern half of Egypt's arid Sinai Peninsula - and is well aware of its challenges. As a military general and former chief of Egyptian military intelligence, he's already well acquainted with his friends and foes in the region. (Watch a video on the tunnel smugglers of the Gaza Strip...
...appointment is no accident. North Sinai is not a territory the Egyptians take lightly. Bordered on the west by the Suez Canal Zone and on the east by Israel and the volatile Gaza Strip, North Sinai is home to a thriving cross-border smuggling trade and a sometimes rebellious local Bedouin population. Mwafi says the skills of his previous job have come in handy in governing Egypt's wild east. "As the director of military intelligence," he explains, "I had very good relations with the director of Israeli military intelligence." He adds that representatives of the two forces meet "every...
Smuggling along Egypt's border with Hamas-ruled Gaza via underground tunnels has skyrocketed in the past two years, driven by an Israeli blockade on the Strip. Smuggled goods have become the Palestinian territory's only lifeline outside of aid and a valuable source of income to Sinai's marginalized Bedouin. But from a security standpoint, the trade is a round-the-clock law-and-order concern - particularly guarding against the transport of weapons and persons - and one that Mwafi says yields daily intercepts and arrests. "We are always in a situation because we are near Gaza and Israel," says...
Indeed, the governor likens his Egypt-Gaza border to the U.S.-Mexican border, and his security challenges to U.S. terrorism challenges. That may be a stretch. Gaza, a tiny, densely packed territory fenced in by Israel and run internally by the militant Islamist group Hamas, is hardly Mexico. But North Sinai's significance in the broader scheme of Egyptian national security is huge. Egypt fears spillover from Gaza's internal crises and has warned of foreign-terrorist infiltration via the tunnels. Asked about a recent protest outside a state security center by several dozen Bedouin women who were demanding trials...
...pictures of life under Hamas in Gaza...