Last week, Sinai-based extremists targeted the North Sinai security headquarters with a massive blast, causing damage, but no injuries. Thankfully it wasn’t a replay of the attack last month that killed 33 security personnel in some of Egypt’s worst violence since the overthrow of former president, and Muslim Brotherhood member, Mohamed Morsi last summer. That combined car-bomb and shooting attack capped a week that also saw seventroops killed by a roadside bomb and two Israeli soldiers wounded in a cross-border shooting. Even though the latest attacks give the lie to Cairo’s assurances that it was bringing jihad in Sinai to heel, they presage closer security cooperation with Israel, are already close.

The first embers of the Sinai insurgency were lit by the general security breakdown that accompanied the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. The uprising’s current, blood-drenched phase, however, was sparked by the army’s July 2013 overthrow of Morsi