Source: Huff Post.
By Dan Williams
ISRAELI-EGYPTIAN BORDER, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Breaking cover from a lookout point disguised as a dune, four soldiers storm into the open, ploughing through the sand with rifles aloft. Their battle cries are like seagull calls, and from under their helmets, ponytails flap.
Team Mor is a spotter unit on Israel’s fenced-off border with Egypt, deployed at night to intercept would-be infiltrators from the lawless Sinai desert. Like dozens of others along the tense divide, it is all-female.
“We make a real contribution to protecting the country,” team commander Lieutenant Mor Dafna said during training drills at Sayarim field intelligence headquarters, marching distance from the frontier.
Any trespass in the Sinai would outrage Egyptians, many of whom resent having signed a peace treaty with Israel that largely demilitarised the peninsula in 1979. That makes spotting Islamist guerrillas or illegal African migrants well before they reach the razor-wire border fence a strategic priority for Israel.
Categories: Asia, Israel, Middle East, Military