The contours of the Egyptian-Is-raeli relationship have been tested in the Gaza Strip. It is Israel’s abil-ity to conduct military operations in Gaza that stands to be the most consequential casualty of the revo-lution. Although Israel has proven itself to be nearly impervious to public outbursts against its poli-cies in the past, the facts of the new political situation in Egypt have not been lost on some Israeli offi-cials and observers.

One of these observers is profes-sor Yoram Meital, the chairman of the Chaim Herzog Centre for Mid-dle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben Gurion University. He said, switching between Hebrew and English: “Since the toppling of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, the most significant change for Israel has been its ability to manoeuvre

militarily in Gaza. The capacity has been very significantly limited and operations such as Cast Lead are still possible but, to my mind, Israel would be taking a huge risk since any major campaign in Gaza would severely hurt Israeli-Egyp-tian peace.

“In the past, Israel operated in a bilateral way, between Israel and the Palestinians, but it is no longer bilateral, it is multilateral to in-clude Egypt. For the past 30 years, Israel has built its economy and military around the peace with Egypt. Any operation in Gaza today would put that at risk.”

Furthermore, the American ob-server Geoffrey Aronson of the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, pointed out that since the fall of Mubarak, Isra-el actually has had more ability to

destabilise the situation in Egypt if it chooses, but this fact increases the incentive for caution.

“On the one hand, Israel has, in a sense, more power to affect the domestic political environment in Egypt,” he said. “Were it to em-bark on an operation in Gaza, the Egyptian political environment would be more responsive to that today than it would have been five years ago.

“Now, ironically, they may feel more constrained today despite the fact they have more power. Be-cause of the inherent volatility of the environment in Egypt they may not want to push it over the edge,” he added in an interview in the gar-den of a Cairo hotel.

However, the primary source of worry for Israelis is not the slo-gan-shouting protesters in Tahrir

Square, nor the stricken Palestin-ians of Gaza. Rather, it is Egypt’s newly elected Muslim Brother-hood-affiliated President Morsi, who appears to be the very embodi-ment of what one government of-ficial recently called the “Islamic winter” that Israelis see following the Arab Spring.

One reason these remarks are so pervasive in Israeli media is that the brotherhood has consistently pledged to support what it calls the “legitimate rights” of the Pal-estinians, a promise reiterated in Morsi’s inaugural address.

However, when one looks be-yond the predictable populist anti-Israel language, the Muslim Brotherhood lacks impetus or the desire needed to seriously fracture the relationship that has been a cornerstone of Egyptian foreign

policy for three decades. Rather, party officials have offered confus-ing and sometimes contradictory statements that appear tailored to the prevailing political sentiments of the day. Amid these shifting cur-rents, one thing is now clear: the peace treaty will remain in place.

In fact, Morsi himself has re-peatedly promised to honour the treaty. In a televised speech the night he was declared the winner, Morsi said he would “respect in-ternational agreements”, a widely understood reference to the Israel treaty.

Egyptian officials and security experts agree that Morsi is sincere in his commitment to the treaty. Namira Negm, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a councillor on leave from the Egyp-tian foreign ministry, said that any Israeli concerns about Morsi’s in-tentions are unfounded.

“I think most of those who even run for presidency or the people who ran for parliament, even with the political rhetoric in the cam-paign, no one said: ‘We are going to wage war with Israel today’,” she said.

Other Egyptian officials also dismiss aggressive brotherhood rhetoric as hot air. Egypt’s former US ambassador El Reedy added: “I believe that Morsi and the Muslim brothers are aware of the impor-tance of maintaining the peace treaty. They may talk differently but they talk about Israel and they talk about Israel’s aggression against Arab countries and its oc-cupation of the land and its poli-cies contrary to human rights and regarding the Palestinians – all that,” he said.

The National thereviewSaturday, July 21, 2012 www.thenational.ae Saturday, July 21, 2012 www.thenational.aeThe National thereview04 05

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Egypt-Israel, continued on 6 →

Late last August, the aftershocks of the Egyptian uprising reached the Israeli Embassy in Cairo. Urged on by a crowd of demonstrators an-gered over Israel’s killing of several Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai bor-der after militants had carried out a bold attack inside Israel, Ahmed Al Shehat scaled the 22-storey build-ing in Cairo’s Giza neighbourhood and snatched the Israeli flag down, replacing it with Egypt’s.

Three weeks after the so-called “flagman” incident, protesters marched from Tahrir Square to the embassy, tearing down a con-crete security wall. After clashing all night with police amid a haze of tear gas, demonstrators stormed the embassy, seizing classified documents and flinging them from the windows. As this drama was unfolding in Cairo, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime min-ister, convened his security cabi-net in Jerusalem and anxiously awaited information on the fate of the embassy’s stricken staff.

These protests were sparked by a chain of events that had begun with a pair of routine but deadly Is-raeli attacks in Gaza. Two days af-ter those strikes, Egyptian gunmen launched a three-pronged attack using Kalashnikovs and a roadside bomb near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat, killing six civilians and one soldier. Israeli forces pursued the attackers across the Egyptian border, killing several soldiers in the process. Three nights of Israeli air raids on Gaza, killing 14 Pales-tinians, followed this cross-border violence. Further stoking Egyptian anger, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak refused to apologise for the deaths.

The ransacking of the embassy, one of only two that Israel main-

tains in the Arab world, was a stark illustration of a new political real-ity: Israel could no longer rely on its stalwart ally, the ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, to sup-press Egyptian opposition to Is-raeli military action in Gaza, in the Sinai or elsewhere.

Any overreaching by Israel risked the safety of its diplomatic staff and the stability of its diplomatic position in Egypt, Israel’s largest and most important neighbour. Political instability in Egypt, cou-pled with a deepening sense of isolation in Israel, creates a situ-ation in which radical posturing can be used for cheap political gain. The flagman episode aside, both governments will respect the peace treaty between the two, but resentment of Israel will remain a fixture of Egyptian political re-ality, while fear will continue to dominate the discourse in Israel. Several officials confirmed the embassy protests marked a turn-ing point. Egypt’s former ambas-sador to Washington, Abdel Ra-ouf El Reedy, said in an interview in his high-rise overlooking the Nile: “I think the Israelis are going to be more careful about shoot-ing, because it demonstrated that it could grow into a big problem

for both sides. And it cannot be guaranteed that they [Egyptians] will be controlled. It was a lesson.”

Through conversations with the generals, ambassadors, secret policemen and intellectuals who have been at the crossroads of this uneasy marriage between Egypt and Israel for the last 30 years, a picture emerged of a relation-ship built on steady foundations despite the shift in dynamics and the overheated rhetoric emerging from the mainstream press in both countries. Contrary to dire predic-tions from some Israeli officials as well as right-wing commentators in the United States playing on fears of a hardline Islamist admin-istration in Egypt, the country’s newly elected president, Moham-ed Morsi, will not withdraw from the peace treaty with Israel, nor can he afford to curtail security co-operation, given the two countries’ mutual interest in maintaining calm along their shared border. The question now is whether Isra-el’s leaders understand that while the treaty is safe, their military op-tions have changed.

During the embassy protest, Egyptians were in the streets in their thousands, emboldened by the toppling of Hosni Mubarak. By

contrast, Israelis recoiled in fear, interpreting the new Middle East reality as one even more hostile to their country. “Israelis just see Is-lam in front of their eyes. We just see green banners and green flags which makes us very afraid. It is hard to convince people that Egypt has a system of checks and balanc-es,” said Zvi Bar’el, a senior writer for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in an interview describing Israelis’ reaction to Morsi’s election.

Israeli fears, while exaggerated, are not entirely unfounded. Egyp-tian support for the Palestinian struggle, and opposition to the old regime’s collusion with Israel, has long been a point of unity among the very revolutionaries who oust-ed Mubarak. A deal brokered by his cronies to sell natural gas to Israel has provoked anti-regime

invective for years. A host of other policies added to the discontent, including the 2004 creation of US-backed Qualifying Industrial Zones for processing Israeli ma-terials. Ultimately, the regime’s complicity in the Israeli siege of Gaza, its acquiescence in the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon and the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza ce-mented the widespread impres-sion of Mubarak as a lapdog of the US and Israel. In fact, some of the activists of the 2011 revolution had cut their teeth clashing with Mu-barak’s police in Cairo during the early days of the Second Intifada. Since the revolution, some protest-ers have called for a reformulation of Egypt’s border policy with Gaza, resulting in a slight relaxation of some restrictions at the Rafah bor-der crossing.

An uneasy relationship

Egyptian protesters try to dismantle and climb over a concrete wall in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last year. Mohamed Omar / EPA

Benjamin Netanyahu, top, and Mohamed Morsi, above. Both politicians stress the importance of the long-standing peace accord. EPA / AFP

In light of the recent upheaval in Egypt, many in Israel fear the rise of Islamist rule, but the longstanding peace treaty between the two countries is strong, so Tel Aviv should regard the post-revolution era as an opportunity, write Joseph Dana and Jared Malsin