Global SITREP D1-15: The Sinai Peninsula and Greater Egypt (The War of Isaiah 19)

UPDATE 24 July 2015: I decided to bring SITREP A20-13 forward and relabel it as Global SITREP D1-15 because the events that have continued to tear at Egypt make it clear that the Isaiah 19 prophecy remains in the process of literal fulfillment. 

These current events are reported in our media as pitting terrorist organizations such as HAMAS, the Muslim Brotherhood. the al-Murabituun and Wilayat Sinai of the Islamic State against the Egyptian Government, but make no mistake, this is civil war exactly as prophesied by Isaiah 19:2 pitting Egyptian against Egyptian.

The current government of Egypt faces an expanding Sunni insurgency and finds itself in a situation where its closest military ally is actually the State of Israel. Egypt's Egyptian enemies are four-fold, yet the same as they are all Sunni Muslims waging jihad against the State. A brief look at each may serve us as this civil war progresses in the future.

We're already very familiar with the Sunni militants of the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimuun), but we're not so familiar with the insurgent force known as the al-Murabituun. They are terrorists of crossed wires led by a former Egyptian special forces officer who has in recent times been directly linked to both Al-Qaeda and its original Egyptian-born half known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and the Islamic State in Sinai (Wilayat Sinai). Wilayat Sinai is the former al-Qaeda affiliate in the Sinai, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which this year pledged itself to the Caliphate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. There has always been a certain number of jihadists within the Egyptian military as evidenced in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat 34 years ago. And then there's the off-shoot of the Ikhwan in Gaza, HAMAS. These are the Egyptians set against Egyptians of Isaiah 19:2.

Remember this map from September 2014?

So severe is the existential threat facing the Egyptian government that it today extended the long-standing state of emergency declared for Sinai through October 2015. The northern Sinai is a virtual no-go zone for the Egyptian army these days with both HAMAS and Wilayat Sinai in total military control between Al-Arish and Rafah, Gaza. If you will recall, this entire area was offered about a year ago to the PA and HAMAS by the Egyptian government to combine with Gaza for the purpose of creating a territorial state of their own as a part of an overall peace deal following HAMAS' war with Israel (Operation Protective Edge). If you need a memory re-fresh on this particular issue, see the map above which I specifically created for Global SITREP D7-14: THE NEXT WAR.  

The "Next War" has begun. It is the War of Isaiah 19. Some times things take a year or more to come to a point of boiling over and the activities of the Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai along with the other Sunni jihadists in Egypt have managed to do just that. In the end the State of Israel will have to pacify the whole of Sinai as Egypt's military will have its hands full with Islamic State aligned jihadists on the Libyan border and in southern Egypt where yet another insurgency grows.

By the way, Israel will not only have to pacify the Sinai, but they also have a very firm military commitment to defend the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from the Islamic State. The acquisition of this knowledge very recently brought me to a reading of Jeremiah 49 and the realization that the expansion of Israel into Jordan (as is clearly seen in Ezekiel 39:11) is closer than we may currently may think it is.

13 October 2013:  My original assessment below on Egyptian-Israeli military cooperation against the Islamists in Gaza, Sinai and even in the Nile Delta region has been confirmed 100%. 

This confirmation comes via a report issued on October 2, 2013 by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy entitled "Israeli-Egyptian Peace: 40 Years After the 1973 War and Holding."
 

EXSUM OF THE REPORT:

Egyptian Defense Minister Abdul Fatah Sisi, in a reversal of state policy that has lasted since the 1979 peace treaty, has authorized the Egyptian military and intelligence community to maintain direct communications and coordination with their counterparts in Israel.

Previously this type of liaison with had been permitted only through the heavily Islamist MB-staffed Egyptian Foreign Ministry. However, with the purge of the Islamist MB from the ministry and Egyptian government on the whole the Defense Minister directed the military and intelligence community to work directly with Israel due to their shared mutual interest in curbing the terrorist factions that have emerged in Sinai over the past decade, threatening both the Israeli border and Egyptian control over the peninsula.

This liaison is now direct with high-level staffing of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (GID) at the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv. The GID has overall responsibility for maintaining the new relationship and Embassy senior consul is actually the senior resident GID representative. Israel has a reciprocal staffing arrangement in Egypt.  Both nations now have the shared view that HAMAS is a primary threat to the region, the United States under President Obama is not to be trusted, and Iran and its regional proxies are the major threat to the Middle East.

14 August 2013: The interim government of Egypt today declared a "State of Emergency" would exist beginning at 4 PM local time throughout the nation.  Approximately 1,000 Egyptians have been killed or wounded in the most recent hours of the civil war. It appears as if Egyptian security forces responded with lethal force after the Islamists opened fire on them at both the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque and Nahda Sqaure makeshift but fortified protest camps. Both camps were then bulldozed into oblivion by Egyptian security forces.

11 August 2013:  The map of the Sinai Peninsula above illustrates where the southern front of the coming Psalm 83 War, the fulfillment of Isaiah 19 and the subsequent Daniel 11 war of conquest of the Roman Antichrist will be focused.  This most strategic aspect of the entire region can roughly be defined as including the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, the Suez Canal and the Nile Delta. It is further defined by the three major bodies of international water which surround it: the Gulf of Aqaba, the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea.

An Assessment of the Present Situation

The northern Sinai, from Port Said to Gaza along the Mediterranean Sea, is virtually lawless. This is "Lower Egypt." Fundamentalist Islam as manifest in a plethora of Islamic Jihadist groups runs rampant here. The Egyptian military is just beginning to execute an operation designed to bring this area firmly back under the control of the interim government in Cairo. That will require the annihilation of all jihadists out posts in the Sinai. Israeli assistance from an intelligence and mutually beneficial covert military perspective are essential for the success of the Egyptian operation.

Egypt, however, has a bigger problem to tackle than terrorism running rampant in the Sinai. In Egypt democracy, as we understand it, and fundamentalist Islam are mutually exclusive just as they are anywhere on planet Earth. This is just an undeniable fact and the source of Egypt's bigger problem. Through the current events clarifying lens of  Bible prophecy we can see both the origin and the outcome of this problem through the text of Isaiah 19, Ezekiel 29 as well as Daniel 11.

Firstly, Egypt embroiled in full-blown civil war, as described by Isaiah 19, is the only logical outcome of the current situation, just as it has been in Afghanistan and any other majority Muslim country where fundamentalist Islam is not the supreme political determinant.

Secondly, rampant Islamic fundamentalism in the Sinai is not a problem requiring American and/or European Union military intervention at this time. Foreign intervention will occur in the future of the 70th Week.  I believe that the person identified as a "cruel lord/master" (qasheh 'adown) and "fierce king"  ('az melek) in Isaiah 19:4 is a direct reference to the Antichrist who will conquer Egypt during the 70th Week as revealed in Daniel 11:43.

At the present time Islamic jihadism in the Sinai is an Israeli and Egyptian problem. Through their existing peace treaty the these two nations will solve the problem together, or through the Egyptian military's preoccupation with the civil war in the Nile Delta region, Israel will once again impose a security solution in the Sinai exactly as they have done several times previously. Israel will do this not to conquer the Sinai, but to secure it and free the Egyptian military to deal with the bigger problems in Egypt proper. 

Regarding the full map above. Another problem which will distract the Egyptian military is the Ezekiel 28 aspect which is focused along the Nile River, and particularly from the Aswan High Dam (Syene) to the frontier of Sudan and Ethiopia (Kuwsh).  This is "Upper Egypt" and the conflict described in that prophecy appears to emanate from an ongoing Ethiopian-Sudanese project to build a dam above the existing Egyptian High Aswan Dam.

Finally, the long-term aspects of the Egyptian civil war, which will eventually adversely impact essential commercial shipping through the Suez Canal, will force NATO (US/EU) to intervene to secure the entire length of the Canal Zone/Red Sea choke point.  This is, again, the Daniel 11 aspect and it will occur during the 70th Week under the reign of the Roman Antichrist.

What all of this illustrates is just how close this Earth is to the start of the 70th Week.

Global SITREP E4-14: A Psalm 83 Link to the Islamic State?

UPDATE 17 November 2014: According to a knowledgeable Kurdish military leader, the Western nations have severely underestimated the fighting strength and physical numbers of the Islamic State's forces.  The West (think Obama Administration) is operating under a false assessment that IS forces number in total about 31,500 men. However, Fuad Hussein, chief of staff of Kurdish president Massoud Barzani, makes the highly supportable assessment that the West's assessment is seven times lower than the true strength of the Islamic State forces. Kurdish field commanders say the true figure is closer to 200,000 that have joined, been assimilated through baya, or actively recruited from among the Sunni populace.

The Kurdish assessment is backed by the fact that IS is able to muster thousands of troops for major assaults simultaneously from Kobani in northern Syria, to Baghdad in Iraq and in several different locales in Kurdistan in between.  Based upon the territory under IS control in Iraq and Syria (2,500,000sq.km.) there are between 10 and 12 million Sunni men of fighting age in the pool of manpower IS can draw from. A Western commitment of boots-on-the-ground would have to be closer to the numbers of Desert Storm in 1991 (500,000 to 600,000) in order to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State as the Obama Administration's plan exists today. Five bombing mission per day ain't gonna cut it.

16 November 2014: According to Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's just released public communique, the list of Islamic State wilayat (provinces) based upon the baya (an Islamic binding oath of allegiance) received from these locales. In addition to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sinai and the Nile valley of Egypt (detailed below) the other acknowledged baya have come from al-Baghdadi's devoted followers in Saudi Arabia; Yemen; Algeria (Army of the Caliph); Libya (Majlis Shura Shabab al-Islam). Interestingly, some received baya have been ignored, particularly those received from non-Arab nations such as Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines.

This would indicate a distinct Arab supremacist nature is involved with the initial growth of the Islamic State. The acknowledgement of these baya is found in Islamic State references to these various places as, for example, Wilayat Sinai.  Next on the expansionist agenda are Wilayat Jordan and Wilayat Palestine, meaning all of Israel beginning with Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.  The "liberation" of Jerusalem and the rest of "Palestine" is the primary task assigned to Wilayat Sinai, and their brethren in the Nile Valley who will wage war on the Egyptian government currently led by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi whom they have identified as "Zionist collaborators." The Islamic State war against Egypt from within Sinai and the Nile Valley is to take precedence over the Liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem. (See Isaiah 19 and Ezekiel 29 for related Bible prophecy).

The Islamic State also has declared another of its objectives is to annihilate the Shi'a sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and, obviously, Iran and Lebanon. They will leave the jihad against the "Crusaders" to their core jihadist partners in Al Qaeda and its veterans in Syria, the newly identified Khorsan group.

15 November 2014: Exactly one month ago today in the first paragraph of Global SITREP D8-14: General Observations  I posted information regarding the Sunni terrorist group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and how they had sworn their jihadist allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and who are largely funded by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood - the same Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that was so steadfastly supported by the Obama Administration in their uprising against former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government. Remember this because it is both very instructive about a president with two years remaining in the White House and who has long been at war with the government of the State of Israel.

I now report to you that Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, (a/k/a Ansar Jerusalem and 'Supporters of the Holy House' - which is the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount) has gone well past declaring their allegiance to the Islamic State, they have begun declaring that the Sinai which they control is a wilayat (an Arab word meaning an administrative division, a province, a state) of the Islamic State. This is what the Islamic State's twitter feed banner above illustrates, that Sinai is a wilayat under the control of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis and is an official province of the Islamic State Caliphate.  

It may well be important for us to begin to understand this development in strictly prophetic terms and thus signalling the closeness of the coming final fulfillment of Psalm 83. At this time it does appear  that the Sinai Wilayat of the Islamic State represents the seventh of the ten groups identified by Asaph in Psalm 83 being an integral part of the confederacy of one consent seeking to destroy the State of Israel. The Sinai Wilayat of the Islamic State are  the Amalekites identified by Asaph in Psalm 83:5-8. There is also a branch of the Islamic State now active in the Nile Valley of Egypt as well.

The Amalekites were the very first enemy Israel encountered going back to antiquity when Israel wandered the wilderness of present-day Sinai and western Saudi Arabia in the days of Moses and Joshua after the exodus from Egypt. Exodus 17:8-16 provides a brief description of the first day-long battle between Israel and the Amalekites at Rephidim. Verses 14-16 foretell the final destruction of the Amalekites in the coming final fulfillment of Psalm 83.

As discussed in the previous series of Operation Protective Edge SITREPs, and as stated many times over by Israel's current leadership, HAMAS is Islamic State and Islamic State is HAMAS. Sunni jihadists are Sunni jihadists. HAMAS is born of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood; the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is HAMAS. Islamic State is in Gaza. At some point HAMAS may announce this themselves, but that would merely a confirmation of what we already know. Also at some point the Obama Administration may have to throw their support for the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood under the proverbial bus because it has recently declared war on the Islamic State. Or has it? A few bombing sorties does not a "degrade and destroy" mission make, especially without a serious commitment of American boots on the ground to take and hold territory.

In the north, in Lebanon, the Islamic State has made its presence known in a very big way recently. And along the entire length of the Israel-Syria border in the Golan Heights the jihadists known as Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) are now in full control and face the IDF directly across the DMZ after having defeated Syrian and Hezbollah forces seeking to regain control of the border town at Quneitra. Jabhat al-Nursa (Al Qaeda) and the Islamic State, as reported here in previous SITREPS, agreed to a merger of their forces and smaller Sunni jihadi militias into a unified Sunni jihadist force to coordinate their strategic war plans for the expansion of the Caliphate, most likely into Jordan. 

Without any significant opposing military force on the ground other than the outnumbered Kurds, it may only be a relatively brief amount of time before the Islamic State Caliphate is either composed of all ten groups identified by Asaph in Psalm 83 or it consults with their Shi'a enemies, perhaps after an unprecedented catastrophe has occurred in Damascus, to turn their weapons upon Israel for the final engagements of Psalm 83. It may well be that Psalm 83 finds its final fulfillment in a final regional war from Lebanon to the Sinai, with strong arm military hardware assistance from the Islamic State-controlled region of ancient Assur, between Israel and the new Caliphate. Keep watching as this develops.