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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Wed May 11 01:51:22 2011, in response to Egypt Revolts!, posted by JayZeeBMT on Fri Jan 28 16:01:55 2011.
edf40wrjww2msgDetailOT:detailStr fiogf49gjkf0d O rly. Who woulda thunk it even after all those polls showing what the popular sentiment was.
Courcy's Intelligence Brief
Courcy's Intelligence Brief — 4 May 2011Israel facing strategic squeezeThe Arab Spring, it is argued by many, demonstrates that for most Arabs the Palestinian cause is a red herring. What they most want is democracy and prosperity. There is some truth in this, but post-Mubarak Egypt is also demonstrating that the Palestinian cause is very far from dropping off the pan-Arab agenda.
Amongst the millions of words written about the slaying of Osama bin Laden and its significance, the comment that most caught our attention was made by Zakaria Mohammad on the Palestinian arabs48.com website. He said: “Bin Laden died notionally the day that Mubarak fell. The people in Tahrir Square pushed him aside before Obama announced his victory against him. Since January 25th he was no longer a necessity for ordinary Arabs. What he advocated was no longer a necessity.”
Zakaria Mohammed’s point was this: Bin Laden flourished because President Hosni Mubarak adhered to the Camp David treaty signed with Israel by his assassinated predecessor. Now, with the ouster of Mubarak, Egypt is reverting to its pre-Camp David anti-Israel orientation — and so the need for bin Laden has evaporated. We would not go so far as to agree with Mohammed’s implied assertion that al-Qaeda is finished, but we do agree that Egypt’s dramatic anti-Israel shift is of huge significance.
Almost from the first day of the post-Mubarak era, Cairo has been moving strongly away from Israel and the moderate Palestinian tendency towards Hamas. For instance, in March the new government immediately allowed a Gaza delegation led by the senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Zahar to travel from Gaza on a trip to Khartoum, Damascus, and Ankara. This would not have been allowed by the Mubarak regime. In a statement posted on the Hamas Government website, Youssef Rizqa, political advisor to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said: "For the first time in the history of the relationship, Palestinian and Egyptian ministers are communicating. This is a substantial development that did not take place in Mubarak's era."
At a meeting on 30 March between al-Zahar and secular opposition figures in Egypt, strong support was expressed for the Palestinian cause. Egypt’s secular Al-Wafd Party leader Dr Al-Sayyid al-Badawi said that he was the first party leader to declare his party’s stance on the Camp David treaty. According to the Palestinian Information Centre, he said that Israel was violating its terms and that “treaties do not last forever”. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the 25th January Revolution movement who “affirmed that Egypt’s youth support the people of Gaza and the whole of Palestine with their entire hearts and souls, until liberation”.
Since then, the rapprochement has continued apace despite the strongly expressed concerns of Israel. Last month Zahar again visited Cairo for talks with Egyptian intelligence and military officials. And then on 28 April, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil Abdallah al-Araby announced that the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza would be reopened on a permanent basis.
Now Cairo’s latest move has been to engineer a rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas represents the Islamist trend in Palestinian affairs, and it controls the Gaza Strip. Fatah is the mainstream secular faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Hamas is supported by Syria and Iran and is treated as a terrorist organization by the United States. It is, of course, totally anathema to Israel.
In addition to the post-Mubarak reorientation of Egyptian policy, two other factors have been at work to bring about the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation. The first is the upcoming attempt in September to gain UN General Assembly recognition of a Palestinian state. The PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas knows that this attempt would be undermined if opponents were able to say that the PA is not in control of the Gaza Strip. The second is that Hamas may be feeling vulnerable because of events in Syria, where it is by no means certain that President Assad will survive.
The Egyptian-brokered Fatah-Hamas deal agrees to an interim unity government, combining security forces, and a general election to be held within a year. It does not include any provision for negotiations with Israel.
The immediate response of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was that the Palestinian Authority needed to chose between peace with Hamas or peace with Israel. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was even more forthright, saying: “This is the situation: Hundreds of armed terrorists will flood Judea and Samaria. I don’t think we need to go into details of what this means...Hamas is a terror group.”
In one sense, the move is a bonus to Israel as it can now resist pressure for an immediate restart of talks with the Palestinians on the grounds that it must wait at least until the outcome of the new Palestinian elections. In all other senses, however, it is a negative development — and the most worrying aspect for Israel is the confirmation it provides of Egypt’s new orientation.
The London-based pan-Arab al-Quds al-Arabi is in no doubt. Writing on 28 April, the paper’s editor-in-chief Abdelbari Atwan argued: “Egypt has returned forcefully to playing its leading role in the Arab region in support of the central Arab cause [Palestine]...The inter-Palestinian reconciliation agreement will stand its ground. This is not only because it embodies the Palestinian people’s aspirations; it is also because it relies on the solid ground provided by revolutionary Egypt, the new Egypt, the Egypt of dignity and honor, the Egypt of the youth of Tahrir Square for which we have waited for over 40 years. It is now returning to us, young and fit, rising like a giant from amidst the ruins of corruption and slavery to Israel and the US.”
What Atwan didn’t mention, but is equally significant to Israel, is that Egypt is matching this strong move back into the Palestinian arena with a rapprochement with Iran.Israel’s strategic squeezeAll of this confirms our view, most recently expressed in our Special Alert on the killing of Osama bin Laden, that Israel faces a strategic squeeze. Broadly speaking, the danger is that Egypt is turning hostile (or, at the very least, unfriendly) while the Iranian regime looks certain to survive the Arab Spring unscathed but with increased influence in the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Jordan could also be forced into a less friendly orientation by popular demand, while further afield post-bin Laden al-Qaeda could find space to regroup in Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan.
The old Middle East dictum is that the Arabs cannot make war without Egypt or peace without Syria. For the moment, whether Assad is ousted or not, it is a stretch of the imagination to see Damascus joining the peace camp. Egypt, on the other hand, is continuing to move away from its Camp David commitment to Israel. Much has been written about the threat of Egypt coming under the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood, but the notable point about the present shift in Cairo’s orientation is that it has taken place under an interim secular administration, before the transition from the Mubarak era is completed. It would seem that the peace treaty with Israel could be under threat with or without the Muslim Brotherhood — and if that is so, then Zakaria Mohammad is probably right: Osama bin Laden’s time had already passed and what really matters is what's happening in Cairo. JdeC.
Note: Commenting on the death of bin Laden, the head of the Hamas in Gaza, Ismael Haniyeh said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood."
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