US 'Muddled' Approach to Egyptian Aid Needs Reassessment
The freeze on aid shows the United States is missing the message on Egypt.
When the Barack Obama administration announced a "modest and temporary freeze on military assistance to Egypt," according to The New York Times, this prompted Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the subcommittee that appropriates aid to Egypt, to say "the message is muddled."
The term “muddled” is a valid description, because the US administration has not clearly understood or wanted to understand the transformative nature of events that took place on June 30. It is not because of a deficiency of knowledge, but an eagerness to avoid.
What Egypt is experiencing at this moment — besides the unfortunate bloodletting that is taking place in the Sinai, the capital or various governorates — is, among other matters, an expression of latent frustration among Egyptians caused by the peace treaty with Israel. The loss of Egypt’s deterrent power, combined with the failure to achieve any serious steps that guarantee Palestinian national rights, constitutes a profound sense of resentment among Egyptians that was suppressed during Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak’s tenures and marginally addressed by President Mohammed Morsi’s regime. This resentment is now surfacing as a complex, perhaps embarrassing problem for the new Egyptian regime, which directly or indirectly can be encapsulated by the notion that US aid to Egypt is “a vital ingredient in holding the peace [between Israel and Egypt] together,” according to The New York Times.
This dilemma, which the Egyptian people — whether the Muslim Brotherhood or secular-liberal forces — share, leads the Egyptians to feel that the leading role of Egypt among the Arab states has been neutralized as the principal factor in securing the national rights of the Palestinian people.
