Israel Cannot Count on Egypt To Deal with Hamas
As Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is preoccupied with the political crisis in Egypt, Israel should take the initiative in jump-starting talks with the Palestinians, writes Shlomi Eldar.
“And it is coming to pass that in these days there is no king in Egypt.” There is no strong leader and no guiding hand either. There isn’t a single person with the same power that former President Hosni Mubarak had in his heyday.
The revolution in Egypt created chaos. The waves of protests and anger that led to the downfall Mubarak are now threatening to overwhelm the Morsi government that replaced Mubarak. It may well be that what is happening today is a necessary step in the Land of the Nile’s political evolution after decades of totalitarian rule. Now, however, the Middle East is left without any outstanding leader who can actually take the lead and set policy. Syria is in flames. Jordan’s King Abdullah has his eyes raised beseechingly to heaven, praying that the “Arab Spring” will pass without inciting his country to violence. We have already mentioned how, in Egypt, Morsi is having a hard enough time restoring order. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is entering his final months in office and will not compete in the next elections.
According to one hypothesis, “When chaos reigns (in the Middle East), Israel benefits.” In other words, this hypothesis claims that the international community, and especially the U.S. and Europe, realizes how unlike its neighbors Israel really is, and by unlike them, it means, “for the better.” The perfect iteration of this hypothesis is a famous statement that outgoing Defense Minister Ehud Barak made a few years ago: “Israel is a villa in the jungle.” Many people regarded this as a sign of Israel’s typically condescending attitude to its surroundings (i.e., “more advanced,” “more sophisticated,” and “more enlightened” than the surrounding countries), which dates back long before Barak described it in his own picturesque way.
But beyond the underlying condescension, the hypothesis is simply incorrect. Reality has proved again and again that Israel is very much influenced by events in that surrounding jungle. When push comes to shove, Israel is still a part of the Middle East, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains unresolved, and the loss of the region’s leaders and leadership could be to Israel’s detriment too.
