Many people believe that the Camp David accords ended the confrontation between Egypt and Israel forever. The reality of the situation though is that the war is continuing but in the form of a Cold War between the US and then Soviet Union.
Egypt viewed the peace treaty as a civilized way of ending military confrontation and for the return of Egyptian land occupied by Israel without the need for any more bloodshed.
On the other hand, Israel views the treaty as an effective means of marginalizing Egypt’s role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. The treaty also gives Israel the right to impose a geographical siege of Egypt by influencing the political systems of the African countries especially those that lie in the Great Lakes area. This would eventually enable Israel to control the sources of the Nile River and to pressure Egypt into delivering water from the Nile to Israel through the Suez Canal.
However Egypt’s considerable political weight and history has dashed the first hope. But Israel, by taking advantage of political turmoil and border conflicts between African nations has managed to infiltrate some African countries and besiege Egypt from the south.
History shows the Zionist ideology was never averse to using Africa and its natural wealth aside from the idea of blockading the Arab countries, especially Sudan, Egypt and Libya, from the south. Egypt is considered the principal enemy of the Jewish state.
The general view is that Israeli ambitions began in the 1950s, but the Zionist greed was there even before the establishment of the Jewish state on occupied Palestinian land.
In 1893 four years before the first Zionist Conference in Basel, Switzerland, Theodore Hertzel, the father of Zionism, wrote: “In view of the history of the Jews in various parts of the earth and of the blacks in Africa, we can observe a number of shared experiences, especially as it relates to the hardships both have suffered throughout history which means that the two may share some common interests.”
No one stopped to ponder the deeper meaning of what Hertzel said. Two years later leaders of the Zionist movement suggested that Uganda be the national home of the Jews. Britain, Uganda’s colonial master at the time, refused. Was this refusal solely based on Great Britain’s wish not to surrender one of its colonies? Or where there other reasons?
The events that followed showed that there were other more important reasons. Britain, which ruled the world at that time, saw that it was important to place a political roadblock between the Arab countries in the Middle East, especially between Egypt on the one hand and Lebanon, Syria and Jordan on the other. History had taught them that Egypt’s power always spreads to the east uniting with those countries and that Egypt’s power is what prevented the European Crusaders from retaining Palestine. So they chose the Jews, known for their deep enmity toward Islam and toward Egypt.
This was the first stage of the blockade of Egypt; after handing over Palestine to the Zionists, UK supported this new entity until it became a powerful roadblock between Egypt and the Arab Middle East. France also contributed its support followed by the United States which further entrenched this Zionist entity. Once this was done, Israel undertook the second part in the blockade of Egypt by infiltrating Africa. Israel went straight into the heart of Africa in slow consecutive steps beginning in the fifties and reaching a peak in the end of the seventies of the last century.
Israel set up cooperation agreements with twenty African countries, especially in the military field. Israel also had a long history of relations with South Africa when that country was a European colony going as far as collaborating in the nuclear field. It also courted Ethiopia paving the way for the transfer of Falasha Jews from Ethiopia to Israel as well as water projects in order to gain control of three of the Nile’s most important tributaries.
In the last few years Israel has sought to use its friendship with Eritrea to establish military bases on some of the islands at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
The ultimate aim is to tighten its siege on the source of the Nile River and further weaken Egypt. This as well as the plans to create friction between Egypt and African states and divide Sudan all form part of an Israeli and American plan to break up the Arab countries to ensure Israel’s hegemony in the region.
Arab News Opinion 20 January 2003
