Is Egypt Shielding the Terrorists in Gaza?

Yasser Othman, Egyptian envoy to the Palestinians, told Ma'an, the Palestinian news agency that Egypt forbade Israel from launching a large scale operation in Gaza in response to the terrorist attacks on tourists near Eilat and the indiscriminate rocket fire into southern Israel.  If true (there really is no way to tell at this point),  this is a very disturbing development, though it does explain why Israel has barely responded to the Palestinian attacks on innocent people.  This reinforces the fact that Egypt, with it's US funded military, which includes M1 tanks, can no longer be trusted to honor the commitments made under the old regime and Israel needs to start preparing for the southern front to become active again (after all, there must have been some threat of force or active assistance to Hamas involved for Israel to stand down).  IDF Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz has instituted increased security measures along the border, but more needs to be done as the border with Egypt is barely defended after over 30 years of peace between the two countries.  Clearly, Israel was caught flat footed and unprepared.  This flare up happened in August when most people are on vacation and it would have been difficult for Israel to deal with such a sudden crisis right now, especially if Egypt was making threats.  Things may be different next month though as reserves were already being called up to deal with any trouble stemming from the Palestinian gambit at the UN.  If the rocket fire continues, I'm not sure Israel will back down next time it wants to retaliate.

On another note, if this Egyptian threat is true, this just shows once again that Tzipi Livni, is nothing but a lying opportunist who only has her own interests at heart.  She recently attacked the government for not responding harshly enough.  It would be one thing if she was known as a hawk as a hawk would have a legitimate beef with the impotent response to the attacks.  However, she is very much a dove and usually attacks from the left.  So I think she knew about the threat and attacked from the right knowing the government would be helpless, at least for the time being, and not be able to up the response.  God forbid she ever takes power.