Our World: The legacy of a teetering peace

One of the first casualties of the Egyptian revolution may very well be Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. The Egyptian public’s overwhelming animus towards Jews renders it politically impossible for any Egyptian leader to come out in support of the treaty.

Over the weekend, the junta now ruling Egypt refused to explicitly commit itself to maintaining the treaty. Instead, under intense American pressure they sufficed with stating that they would maintain all of Egypt’s international obligations. According to news reports, the generals themselves are split in their positions on Israel. One group supports maintaining the treaty. The other supports its abrogation.

Ayman Nour, the head of the oppositionist Ghad Party and the man heralded as the liberal democratic alternative to Mubarak by Washington neo-conservatives has called for the peace treaty to be abrogated. In an interview with an Egyptian radio station he said, “The Camp David Accords are finished. Egypt has to at least conduct negotiations over conditions of the agreement.”

The Muslim Brotherhood has been outspoken in its call to end the treaty since it was signed 32 years ago.

Whatever ends up happening, it is clear that Israel is entering a new era in its relations with Egypt. And before we can begin contending with its challenges, we must first consider the legacy of the peace treaty that then prime minister Menachem Begin signed with then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat on March 26, 1979.

What was the nature of Israel’s agreement with Egypt? What was its impact on Israel’s strategic vision? What were the strategic assumptions that formed the basis of its component parts? How did all of these issues impact Israel’s perception of the longterm prospects for its relations with Egypt? WHEN BEGIN and Sadat signed the peace treaty, their act was the culmination of 15 months of negotiations catalyzed by Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and his speech before the Knesset in November 1977.

Sadat’s visit to Israel’s capital was an extraordinary gesture. Here was the man who just four years earlier had waged an unprovoked, brutal war of aggression against Israel that placed the country in mortal danger and killed some 2,600 of its finest sons.

Here was the leader of the country that had fought five unprovoked wars of aggression against Israel in 29 years.

And yet suddenly, here was this man, Israel’s greatest foe standing before the Knesset and declaring that he was not seeking a ceasefire, but peace. As he put it, “I have not come to you to seek a partial peace, namely to terminate the state of belligerency at this stage…

I have come to you so that together we might build a durable peace based on justice, to avoid the shedding of one single drop of blood from an Arab or an Israeli.”

The effect of Sadat’s visit on the Israeli psyche generally and on Begin’s mindset in particular was profound.

A new book of the two leaders’ correspondence, Peace in the Making: The Menachem Begin-Anwar Sadat Personal Correspondence edited by Harry Hurwitz and Yisrael Medad of the Begin Heritage Center presents readers with a portrait of the Israeli leader enthralled with the belief that he and Sadat were embarking their nations on the road to a peaceful future.

But it was not to be. Whether Sadat was purposely deceptive or whether he was simply blocked from implementing his vision of peace by an assassin’s bullet in 1981 is unclear. True, he committed Egypt to peace. The peace treaty contains an entire annex devoted to specific commitments to cultivate every sort of cultural, social and economic tie imaginable.

But both Sadat and his successor Mubarak breached every one of them.

As the intervening 32 years since the treaty was signed have shown, in essence, the deal was nothing more than a ceasefire. Israel surrendered the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and in exchange, Egypt has not staged a military attack against Israel from its territory.

The peace treaty’s critics maintain that the price Israel paid was too high and so the treaty was unjustified.

They also argue that Israel set a horrible precedent for future negotiations with its neighbors by ceding the entire Sinai in exchange for the treaty. Moreover, the Palestinian autonomy agreement in the treaty was a terrible deal. And it set the framework for the disastrous Oslo peace process with the Palestinian Authority 15 years later.

For their part, supporters of the treaty claim that the precedent it set was terrific for Israel. The treaty cites the borders of the Palestine Mandate as Israel’s legal borders. And since the Mandate envisioned a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan River, at a minimum the peace treaty sets a precedent for a future annexation of the west bank of the Jordan.

Precedents don’t matter in politics. Interests, not precedents determine how states and non-state actors operate. As for whether or not the deal was justified given the exorbitant price, it is unclear what choice Begin had.

In 1977 Jimmy Carter was president of the United States. And he was the most hostile president Israel had faced. His negative attitude toward the Jewish state made it all but impossible for Begin to walk away from the table. When Carter’s antagonism was coupled with Sadat’s romantic pledges of everlasting peace and brotherhood, it is easy to understand why Begin agreed to overpay for a ceasefire.

WHILE BEGIN’S behavior during the negotiations is relatively easy to understand, Israel’s behavior since the peace with Egypt was signed is less comprehensible, and certainly less forgivable. Since Israel withdrew from the Sinai in 1981, it has been the state’s consistent policy to ignore Egypt’s bad faith. This 30- year refusal of Israel’s leadership to contend with the true nature of the deal this country achieved with Egypt has had a debilitating impact both on Israel’s internal strategic discourse as well as on its international behavior.

As the US-backed demonstrators in Tahrir Square gained momentum, and the prospect that Mubarak’s regime would indeed be overthrown became increasingly likely, IDF sources began noting that the IDF and the Mossad will need to build intelligence gathering capabilities towards Egypt after 30 years of neglect.

These statements make clear the debilitating impact of Israel’s self-induced strategic blindness to our neighbor in the south.

Under the ceasefire, with Israeli approval and encouragement, Egypt has built a modern, US-trained and armed military. And for 30 years, that military has been training to fight Israel.

On the other side, Israel stopped training in desert warfare and stopped gathering intelligence on the Egyptian military. As far as IDF commanders and successive defense ministers have been concerned, there was no reason to prepare for war or care about Egypt’s preparations for war because we were at peace.

On the international stage, our leadership’s refusal to acknowledge that Egypt had not abandoned its belligerent attitude against Israel was translated into an abject refusal to admit or deal with the fact that Egypt leads the international political war against Israel.

Rather than fight back when Egyptian diplomats at the UN initiate anti-Israel resolution after anti-Israel resolution, Israeli diplomats have pretended that there is no reason for concern.

Before the peace treaty, the Foreign Ministry prepared regular reports on anti-Semitism in the Egyptian media and school system. These reports were distributed at embassies and consulates throughout the world. After the treaty was signed, the reports were filed away and never spoken of.

In his speeches, Sadat repeatedly claimed that he was channeling the hopes and beliefs of the entire Egyptian people. But the fact is that Sadat was a military dictator.

Israel failed to consider the implications of signing a deal with a military dictator on the prospects for the deal’s longevity. In an interview with Der Spiegel last week, the Muslim Brotherhood’s puppet Mohamed ElBaradei explained those implications. As he put it, Israel has “a peace treaty with Mubarak, but not one with the Egyptian people.”

The advantage of having a good relationship with a dictator is that he can deliver quickly. The disadvantage is that once he is gone no one is bound by his decisions because he doesn’t represent anyone.

There are other problems with making deals with dictators. Due to the repressive nature of authoritarian regimes, they have no mechanisms in place for peaceful changes. And yet change in dictatorships, like change everywhere else, is an historic inevitability.

In the absence of a mechanism for peaceful change, as a general rule, change in authoritarian regimes is revolutionary rather than evolutionary. The revolution in Cairo is the clearest example of this.

ANOTHER PROBLEM with the deal that Israel made with Sadat is demonstrated by the current unrest in the Sinai. In 1977 Egypt’s was the strongest regime in the region. So when Israel thought about the threat emanating from Egypt, it thought about the Egyptian army barreling toward Beersheba. That is why the Egyptian military was barred from operating in the Sinai.

The last thing on Israel’s mind in 1978 was the Beduin tribes in the Sinai. Back then Sinai’s Beduin were pro-Israel and bitterly disappointed when it withdrew. But a lot has changed since then.

Over the past 20 years or so, the power of Egypt’s central authority in its hinterlands has weakened.

The strength of the Beduin has grown. And over the past decade or so, the Beduin of Sinai, like the Beduin from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Israel have become aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and its al-Qaida and Hamas spinoffs. The Beduin attacks on Egyptian police and border guard installations in El-Arish and Suez over the past three weeks are an indication that the fear of a strong state, which was so central to Israel’s thinking during the peace process with Egypt, is no longer Israel’s most urgent concern.

Transnational jihadists in the Sinai are much more immediately threatening than the Egyptian military.

But the peace treaty – signed with a military dictator – provides neither Israel nor Egypt with tools to deal with this threat.

As Israel moves into the uncharted territory of managing its relations with the post-Mubarak Egypt, it is imperative that our leaders understand the lessons of the past. Fantasies are no match for reality.

Aggression must be fought, not wished away. And the world is a dynamic place. Today’s solutions will likely be irrelevant tomorrow as new challenges eclipse the current ones. Our strategies must be rational, flexible and sober-minded if we are to chart a forward course rather than be thrown asunder by the coming storm. And we must never put all our eggs in anyone’s basket.

No land. No peace.

The View from Israel

Monday, 14 February 2011

The problem with the land for peace policy is that you are only a regime change away from no land and no peace.

This glib proverb took on the hauntingly realistic feel of a bucket of freezing water to the face with the rapid deterioration of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the daunting future of an increasingly influential Muslim Brotherhood ably assisted by a radical left wing minority based in Cairo.

They tried to assure us that the uprising had nothing to do with the Israel-Palestinian deadlock but, as success reared its head, we began to see signs and slogans shouting anti-Israel hatred. Posters of the now-hated Mubarak appeared with the Star of David smeared on his forehead displayed the in-built demonisation passionately felt by the mob.

The so-called international experts, caught short by events throughout the Arab world as they have by every major event in the Muslim world, insisted that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was not radical, would not attain influence, and only had the best intentions for Egypt and the Middle East.

The Cairo demonstrations were not as spontaneous as the media would have us believe. Neither did they represent the majority of the Egyptian people. Even if the number of people reached half a million at its maximum, a figure I doubt, this is a fraction of the total Egyptian population of eighty four million.

The problem for any regime is that it cannot be seen brutally putting down an insurection live on television.

Neither was the uprising peaceful, as the media again tried to convince us. They attempted to tell us that violence only began when the "ugly big-bellied Mubarak thugs", as described by Roger Cohen of the New York Times, took to the streets. This is incorrect. By then the "peaceful, young, modern, intelligent" demonstrators had wrecked the National Museum stealing invaluable heritage, torched buildings, looted stores, attacked the police, and terrorised citizens to the extent that they had to raise vigilanty groups to protect private lives and property.

Let us be clear of this. The revolution in Egypt was crafted by the far left and Islamists. Put together by students smart enough to communicate by cell phones, facebook, twitter, and other social media methods, backed by numbers sent out of the mosques, the success was the civil unrest of international Socialism, Marxism, and Islamic nationalism.

Social justice and civil liberties were the slogans of people like 32 year old, Sally Moore, a Coptic Christian and "an avowed leftist" as described in the global edition of the New York Times of February 11, 2011 in which they quoted her as saying "I like the Brotherhood most. They are very good at organising." She was joined, according to this report by Islam Lofti, a lawyer and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, and Zyad el-Elaimy, a 30 year old lawyer who is a leader of a Communist group.

When we saw the trade union groups take to the streets this confirmed, for me, the combined agenda of the left and the Muslim party. The Arab Doctors Union have several branches led by Muslim Brotherhood members.

The reverie of Europeans and America to the new voice of freedom, liberty, and democracy does not translate well in the only liberal democracy of the Middle East.
At the recent major IDC Herzlia Conference we heard the clashing voices of the visiting think tank experts and the local talking heads. This can be summed up succinctly by the comment of one of the Israeli panelists when he asked what was the difference between an American Jew and an Israeli Jew when it comes to Middle East politics. The American has more hope than concern. The Israeli has more concern than hope.

Israelis frown on the optimism being expressed by overseas observers to events in Israel. Israelis see the half empty glass. They cannot be faulted for their pessimism. They have experienced the disappointing results of democracy in the Arab world. They have seen a Bush-imposed democratic process in the Palestinian territories that saw a Hamas rise to power. They are not impressed by Muslim Brotherhood protestations that they do not seek control of Egypt. They heard the same story just a couple of years ago from Hizbollah in Lebanon, and look what is happening there. They are quick to point out that the Iranian Islamic Revolution began as a student's protest against the Shah, and now the world quakes with fear from a nuclear Tehran.

Israel is right in predicting the rise and rise of an Islamic Egypt on their southern border. It is, for Israeli planners, inevitable.

Anti-Israel, anti-American statements will become more frequent and louder. They will be excused as being the voice of a minority that will not take power in the September elections. Western nations will line up to give aid to Egypt and to compete for lucrative business contracts. America will pump billions of dollars into the new Egypt in a futile attempt to hold on to a shrinking influence as Iran will develop ties to the incoming regime.

Expect to see a combined force of just under the majority level as Muslim and leftist parties garner slightly under fifty percent of the votes. Should they steamroller their way to a majority coalition this will speed up the inevitable change in international politics.

Egypt will not immediately rip up the peace accord with Israel. What they will do is to reach out to their Palestinian brethren and open the gates to Gaza. The effect will be to strengthen the Hamas regime and weaken the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. There will be no control of what will flow into the Gaza Strip and into the hands of Hamas and the other terror organisations. One thing will be for certain, Hamas gaza will be wealthier, better equipped militarily, and have a closer liason with Iran.

The Sinai has been over run by the Bedouin during the uprising. They violently took over at least twenty police stations killing many Egyptian policemen. The Sinai is a huge and porous desert region that has been a major smuggling route. The length of the open border has now become a significant security headache for Israel. It leaves the Jewish state no other option but to rapidly construct a long fence in the vain hope that weapons and terrorists can be kept at bay.

Just as Iran uses Hizbollah as their proxy for attacks against Israel so will Egypt become a facilitator and open channel to Hamas for Iranian mixing in the region.
True, the Egyptian army will go through the motions of preventing such incursions but they will increasingly feel indebted to the people as they become defanged by Turkish-style constitutional rulings.

This dire prediction highlights the waning Western influence in the region, despite the bleatings and verbal hopes for smooth transition and democracy in the Arab world.
Israel would be advised to ignore the cries to make further radical concessions to an intransigent and stubbornly rejectionist Palestinian leadership. Other harsh lessons that have been learned by the Jewish state is that land for peace is not an option. As they saw in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon withdrawals from territory only resulted in the installation of extremely hateful Islamic regimes, rockets, and death. This increasingly looks likely on its southern border.

Can anyone doubt that Israel will end up with no land and no peace? I thought not.

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