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Did Israel coordinate warships in Suez with Egypt?
By Amos Harel, Anshel Pfeffer and Jack Khoury
Tags: egypt, israel news, gunboats 

For the second time in as many weeks, two Israel Navy gunboats openly sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea Tuesday.

The move, which was apparently coordinated with Egypt, is seen as a warning message to Middle Eastern radicals, first and foremost Iran.

According to news agency reports, the ships that passed through the Suez Canal Tuesday were two Sa'ar 5 gunboats, the Hanit and the Eilat.
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This follows a similar incident in late June, when an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine passed through the canal, later returning the same way. Subsequent media reports, including one on an Egyptian Internet news site, said the submarine had been accompanied by two gunships.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, when asked Tuesday about the boats' passage through Suez, confirmed the report and said that Egypt's agreements with Israel permit Israeli military ships to transit the canal. He declined to speculate on whether the voyage was meant as a warning to Iran or anyone else.

But while Israeli naval ships have gone through Suez before, the last such occurrence was at least a year ago.

It therefore seems unlikely that Israel would have embarked on such a public maneuver now - the ships were easily visible from the shore - on a day when diplomats from the Nonaligned Movement were holding a conference in Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh, in the Sinai Peninsula - without prior coordination with Cairo.

Though neither side says so publicly, there is ongoing security coordination between Israel and Egypt, which could be expanded if necessary in the future.

Israel has an interest in a naval presence in the Red Sea for two reasons: the effort to halt arms smuggling from Iran to the Gaza Strip - which, according to international media reports, mainly takes place by sea from Iran to Sudan, and then overland via Egypt, and the effort to bolster its deterrence against Iran in the event of a direct conflict breaking out.

In March, American media outlets reported that Israel Air Force jets had attacked a large arms convoy heading from Sudan toward Gaza two months earlier.

The passage through Suez significantly shortens the time it would take Israel Navy ships to reach the Persian Gulf as compared to the only alternative - going all the way around Africa. Because Israel's submarines, according to foreign reports, are armed with missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, a shorter Israeli route to Iran may worry the regime in Tehran.

Cairo vs. Tehran

Tuesday's voyage also reflects two broader Middle Eastern developments - Cairo's open opposition to Iran, especially following the discovery of a Hezbollah spy network operating in Egypt, and a decline in Iran's regional status due to mass demonstrations against the disputed results of its presidential election last month.

The Sa'ar 5 gunboats are the most advanced in the Israel Navy, capable of attacking several targets on land, at sea and undersea simultaneously, even from fairly long distances. While small naval patrol boats regularly patrol the Gulf of Eilat, at the northern tip of the Red Sea, submarines and Sa'ar 5 gunboats both usually stay in the Mediterranean Sea. The presence of either in the Red Sea is very rare.

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman said that "as a rule, for obvious reasons, the IDF does not usually comment on reports of this nature."

Also Tuesday, Hagai Hadas, the government's new chief negotiator on a deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, paid his first visit to Egypt since taking up his post. He met with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has been the chief mediator between Israel and Hamas on this issue.

Related articles:
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