After a bloody attack on a Sinai police station earlier this month, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was crowing about it as vindication for demands for a crackdown on anti-Israel militants, saying it would serve as a “wake-up call” to President Mursi for the need for such an operation.

Now that Mursi has ordered tanks to the region to follow through with the crackdown, Israel is fuming again, insisting that the deployment violates the peace treaty between the two nations and demanding Egypt remove the tanks immediately.

One of the conditions in the 1979 Camp David Accords was the demilitarization of much of Sinai, but militant factions have been using the area around the border with Israel as a staging area for attacks.

Theoretically Egypt could make such deployments with Israel’s explicit approval, but after endorsing early moves into the region they have stopped and have now turned against the crackdown.