One hundred masked gunmen attacked a police station in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing a policeman, a soldier and three civilians, on July 29, before going on to attack part of the cooling system of the pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel. Islamists have attacked the pipeline five times in the last six months.

No wonder the head of Israel’s military intelligence recently observed that Egypt’s security forces “are losing control over the Sinai region.” The Jerusalem Post recently summarized the violence in the area:

In early January, Bedouin armed with anti-tank missiles attacked the police station in Sheikh Zawid, near the Gaza border; four days later, the headquarters of Amn a-Dawla (Egyptian state security) in Rafah was attacked and burned down, and in May, it became known that dozens of armed Bedouin had taken control of the Nuweiba port and prevented the transit of passengers and goods. There was also a report about the involvement of 400 al Qaeda activists in planning terrorist acts in Egypt and Sinai.

The conditions have been great for smugglers. The number of rockets in the Gaza Strip has doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 since the end of 2010. Smugglers this year have already brought in three times more standard explosives than they did in all of 2010.

The attacks on the gas pipeline are part of a growing Egyptian hostility to Israel in general. The pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper wrote on August 2: “The repeated attacks on Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel, the most recent of which occurred on Saturday, and the low-key reaction this elicited from public opinion, suggest that the existing gas deal with Israel is highly unpopular in Egypt. In fact, the Egyptian government … should take steps to either amend or cancel the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Israel.”

As Courcy’s Intelligence Brief points out, this puts Israel in a catch-22 situation. Former President Hosni Mubarak controlled the Sinai through his police. Since his downfall, the Bedouin have thrown the police out, and chaos reigns. To try to stop these Islamist attacks, Israel could relax the Camp David accords that require the Sinai to be demilitarized and allow Egyptian troops in to restore order. But with Egypt on the brink of becoming an Islamic state, such soldiers could quickly become merely a more disciplined version of the Islamists.

As indicated by the protesters who recently gathered in Egypt’s Tahrir Square shouting “Islamic, Islamic. Neither secular nor liberal,” Egypt is bound to shift further in the Islamist direction. The absence of a strong ally in Cairo is already hurting Israel. For more information on what is coming now to Egypt, see our article “Betrayed.”