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Was Morsi’s brief presidency an opportunity lost for Israel?

The late Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi hated Israel, but his relationship with Hamas held the promise of negotiating a long-term truce between the organization and Israel and potentially altering the landscape in Gaza.
Deposed President Mohamed Mursi greets his lawyers and people from behind bars at a court wearing the red uniform of a prisoner sentenced to death, during his court appearance with Muslim Brotherhood members on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, June 21, 2015. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/File Photo - S1AETCRHIPAB
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The child born 68 years ago in the village of Adwah, in northern Egypt, might have been a lot like the peers with whom he grew up, receiving a very limited education and becoming enthusiastic consumers of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. Mohammed Morsi was a gifted child who abandoned his village for the big city of Cairo, where he would earn a BA and an MA from Cairo University and then receive a rare scholarship from the Egyptian government to pursue advanced studies in the United States. After earning a PhD in materials science at the University of Southern California, Morsi spent the early 1980s working with NASA as a consultant on the design of a new engine for the Space Shuttle.

Most people in Morsi's position would have stayed in the United States and built a career for themselves there. That is what some other famous Egyptians did, such as Omar Sharif, but not Morsi, who returned and began teaching at Zagazig University in 1985. He also became an enthusiastic supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and their positions, including vehement opposition to the existence of the State of Israel and consequently to the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Morsi was still teaching at Zagazig when he was elected to the Egyptian parliament in 2000. He had run as an independent candidate because the Islamist movement he supported was banned.

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