Egypt
and Israel : Feeling the heat of isolation
The
Economist , Sep 17th,
2011
ISRAEL
has diplomatic relations with only three nearby countries. In the
space of ten days its ambassadors have been humiliatingly forced out of two of
them: Turkey and Egypt. The king of the third, Jordan’s
Abdullah, commented without apparent displeasure that Israel was “scared”.
A
week after the Turkish démarche, and linked to it in the eyes of many Israeli
commentators, a Cairo mob attacked
the Israeli embassy, housed on three floors of a high-rise building in
the suburb of Giza. Policemen did little as demonstrators with hammers battered
down a wall of concrete slabs put in place to protect the building. The embassy
had recently been menaced by protesters in the wake of an incident along
Egypt’s border with Israel in Sinai, when several Egyptian soldiers were
killed, apparently by Israeli troops engaged in a battle with Palestinian
fighters.
Even
more troubling for Israel, Field-Marshal Muhammad Tantawi, Egypt’s
top man for the time being, and others in Egypt’s interim
military government were unavailable
to take calls from Israel’s prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, until
Barack Obama intervened directly with them. Six Israeli security men
stuck in the embassy were eventually rescued by Egyptian commandos who
scattered the crowd with gunfire. Some 80 Israeli diplomats and their families
were driven to the airport under military escort and ferried home by an Israeli
air-force plane.
Mr
Netanyahu says his ambassador will soon be back. Egyptian officials have voiced
embarrassed regret. But even if Israel can find and fortify an alternative less
vulnerable location, it sees the episode, with its display of deep antipathy
towards Israel on the Egyptian street and the perhaps deliberately slow
reaction of the Egyptian authorities, as ominous. And it looked on grimly
as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, flying into Cairo on
September 12th, was feted as a champion of the Palestinian and Muslim cause.
Mr
Netanyahu speaks almost fatalistically of the ferment in the region. His aides
bemoan Mr Erdogan’s ambitions of regional leadership. They seem to have
concluded, however, that they should be as reluctant as ever to give any ground
to the Palestinians. In particular, Mr Netanyahu and his friends in the
pro-Israel lobby in the United States are inveighing vehemently, albeit with an
undertone of panic, against the campaign by the Palestinians to win a vote in
the UN later this month to grant them statehood, at least on paper. Most
wretched, from Israel’s point of view, is the possibility of an emerging
consensus among Europeans on the Palestine vote at the UN; they may offer the
Palestinians some kind of statehood (“the Vatican option” is a widely
touted compromise), albeit without full membership at this stage.
At
street level,
many Egyptians were delighted by the assault on the embassy. Last month a young
man called Ahmed al-Shahat, dubbed “the flagman”, was hailed as a national hero
for scaling the Israeli building and replacing the Star of David with a
Palestinian banner. But reaction to the burning of the building on September
9th was more nuanced. Most prominent political groups, from the
left-liberal April 6th Movement to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and even the
more extreme Salafists, condemned
the violence, though the Islamists were evasive about the entry into the
building. And the interim military government took advantage of the assault to
threaten a crackdown against street protesters continuing to call for faster
reform.
Yet
Egyptian attitudes to Israel are rarely simple. A bit of anti-Israeli theatre
goes down well. But when incidents such as the embassy break-in become an
international affair and foreign governments question Egypt’s ability to
protect diplomats, whoever they may be, people become edgier. Opinion polls
suggest Egyptians want peace with Israel but not necessarily under
the terms of the 1979 treaty.
All
the same, anti-Israeli feeling is growing. Some political parties want to close
the Suez Canal to the Israeli navy and to block the sale of natural gas to
Israel. The new Freedom and Justice Party, an offshoot of the Muslim
Brotherhood, says the 1979 treaty should be “revised”.
But
most groups dread the prospect of actual war. One of the few good things
that many Egyptians have to say of Hosni Mubarak, their deposed and generally
reviled president, is that he kept Egypt out of war with Israel. The military
government says that policy towards Israel should be left to an elected
government. Still, the embassy incident serves as a warning to Israel that a
democratically elected Egyptian government may be a lot less friendly.
