CAIRO, 14 December 2004 — Egypt, tired of the saying “The Arabs are willing to fight Israel down to the last Egyptian”, may have signed a peace treaty with its neighbor on March 26, 1979, but, in real terms, the ink has never truly dried. However, signs are that the hitherto frosty relations between the two nations are becoming more cordial.
Although, Egypt withdrew its ambassador from Israel at the start of the second intifada in September 2000, the hot line between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been veritably glowing over the past few months.
Most importantly, Cairo and Tel Aviv are working closely together planning the logistics of Sharon’s controversial project, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and the dismantling of settlements, next year.
Egypt, which administered Gaza until the 1967 conflict, has agreed to commit some 750 soldiers to police the troubled Philadelphia Route (buffer zone), and will assist in the training of a Palestinian police force, despite an absence of agreement over the future of the illegal settlements in West Bank, Israel’s snaking apartheid wall, and the ongoing Israeli derailment of the “road map”.
Middle East observers were either pleasantly surprised or vehemently outraged, depending on their political convictions, to hear Mubarak recently praise the Israeli leader as the best hope for a Palestinian state.
“He (Sharon) is capable of pursuing peace, and he is capable of reaching solutions, if he wants to,” Mubarak told reporters, adding, “Israel’s prime minister said he was ready to do what the Palestinians want, to facilitate the elections and help in removing the checkpoints. He only asks for one thing: The end of the explosions, so they can work together on a solid basis.”
To this end, Mubarak pleaded with Palestinian militants to turn away from violence and threw his weight behind former Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas — a favorite of Washington and Tel Aviv — to win the Jan. 9 leadership contest
Such is the obvious thaw in relations between the two countries that when facilities frequented by Israeli vacationers in Taba were attacked on Oct. 7, Sharon publicly thanked Mubarak for promptly allowing Israeli ambulances, rescue teams and firefighters to cross the border into Egypt from the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat.
On Nov. 18, when three Egyptian security officers were mistaken for Palestinian gunrunners and killed by the IDF on the Israeli-Egyptian border, Sharon immediately called his Egyptian counterpart to apologize and promise a full investigation. According to Sharon’s office, the apology was accepted, with Mubarak acknowledging the incident was a genuine accident.
Yet another obstacle to normalizing relations between the two countries was removed on Dec. 5 when Azzam Azzam, an Israeli Druze — convicted by an Egyptian court of spying in 1997 and sentenced to 15 years — was swapped for six Egyptian students accused by the Israelis of plotting to kidnap Israeli soldiers.
Following a call to Azzam, who said he was “fortunate and proud to have been born in Israel”, Sharon rang Mubarak and said he hoped they would be able to work together “to reach great achievements for future generations”.
Signaling a further rapprochement, Egypt, Israel and the US are poised to sign an agreement in Cairo today, designed to facilitate Egypt’s export of goods containing Israeli-made components to the US on a duty-free basis. The Office of the US Trade Representative says the agreement is designed to encourage regional economic integration in the Middle East and calls for the setting up of “Qualified Industrial Zones” in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. A similar arrangement already operates in Jordan.
In a press release US Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick says: “This is the most important economic agreement between Egypt and Israel in two decades.
It is a concrete, practical result of President Bush’s plan to promote closer US ties with the Middle East so as to strengthen development, openness and peaceful economic links between Israel and its neighbors...”
Reflecting the apparent turn-around in Egyptian attitudes was a Dec. 8 column by writer Hazem Abd Al-Rahman in the government daily Al-Ahram, which promotes the development of Egypt-Israel ties and suggests negative attitudes toward Israel should be reassessed.
Al-Rahman believes enhanced relations with Israel will give Egypt more leverage over Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, saying, “It is obvious that under conditions of a “cold peace” no such opportunity exists.
He further expresses the hope that Egypt’s relations with Israel “will be strong, self-sufficient and completely independent from relations with the US.”
However, searching for an ordinary Egyptian actively seeking warm relations with either Israelis or Americans, given current events in Palestine and Iraq, would be akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. There is no doubt that Egypt’s new attitudes and policies vis-à-vis Israel are not popular with the man in the street and neither those who attend the full to overflowing Friday mosques.
Yet, there appears to be a new pragmatism among Egyptians. Many do recognize the reality of Israel’s existence and role as the region’s sole nuclear power. They further realize, with some distaste, that the US, the world’s lone superpower, is biased toward the Jewish state, a situation unlikely to change as long as George W. Bush is in the Oval Office.
Whether the Egyptian government’s seeming “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” philosophy will eventually filter down to opinions on the street has yet to be tested.
When Anwar Sadat signed the historic peace treaty with Israel, Egypt, then considered the mother of the Arab world, was ousted from the Arab League and condemned throughout the region. Although Mubarak appears to be tentatively following in Sadat’s footsteps, he may be lauded as a wise, or even wily, peacemaker, but this depends on his success in helping to engender a viable Palestinian state.
The bottom line is this. If a Palestinian state is created in the foreseeable future and, due to the improved regional climate, Egypt’s economy benefits from renewed foreign investment the Egyptian people may vindicate their leader’s policies.
On the other hand, if Israel fails to support the Egyptian initiative, then the gap between the government of Egypt and the people will further widen, while extremist and anti-government groups will gain more recruits. The Egyptian people are currently waiting patiently to see which way the scenario is destined to play out.
— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback.
