{"id":6645,"date":"2011-05-05T18:14:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T14:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=6645"},"modified":"2011-05-09T08:24:39","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T04:24:39","slug":"new-world-egypts-back-palestinians-unified-israel-worried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/new-world-egypts-back-palestinians-unified-israel-worried\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt’s Back, Palestinians Unified. Israel Worried"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s response to the Hamas-Fatah deal in\u00a0Cairo was both swift and predictable. \u201cThe Palestinian Authority must choose either\u00a0peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both,\u201dhe said, in a televised speech shortly after the Palestinian political rivals\u00a0reached a reconciliation agreement under Egyptian sponsorship on April 27.<\/p>\n

Despite numerous past attempts to undercut Mahmoud Abbas, stall peace talks, and\u00a0derail Israel\u2019s commitment to previous agreements, Netanyahu and his rightwing\u00a0government are now arguing that Palestinians are solely responsible for the demise\u00a0of the illusory \u2018peace process\u2019. Israeli bulldozers will continue to carve up the\u00a0hapless West Bank to make room for more illegal settlements, but this time their\u00a0excuse may not be \u2018natural expansion\u2019. The justification might instead be Israel has\u00a0no partner. US and other media will merrily repeat the dreadful logic, and\u00a0Palestinians will, as usual, be chastised.<\/p>\n

But frankly, at this juncture of Middle East history, Israel is almost negligible.\u00a0It no longer has a transformative influence in the region. When the Arab people\u00a0began revolting, a new dimension to the Arab-Israeli conflict emerged. As the chants\u00a0in Cairo\u2019s Tahrir Square began to adopt a pan-Arab and pro-Palestinian language, it\u00a0became obvious that Egypt would soon venture outside the political confines of\u00a0Washington\u2019s patronizing labels, which divide the Arabs into moderates (good) and\u00a0radicals (bad).<\/p>\n

A day after the handshakes exchanged by chief Fatah representative, Azzam al-Ahmed,\u00a0and Hamas\u2019s leaders, Damascus-based Dr. Moussa Abu Marzoug and Gaza-based Mahmoud Al\u00a0Zahar, the forces behind the agreement in Cairo became apparent. While Israeli\u00a0leaders used the only language they know for these situations \u2013 that of threats,\u00a0intimidation and ultimatums – the US response was flat, confused, and extraneous.<\/p>\n

Aside from the outmoded nature of US officials\u2019 remarks, the focus was largely\u00a0placed on the only leverage the US has over Abbas and its Fatah allies. Jennifer\u00a0Rubin wrote in her Washington Post blog on April 29: \u201cThe Obama administration is\u00a0reluctant to articulate clearly a position that if a Hamas-Fatah unity government\u00a0emerges as Mahmoud Abbas has been describing, the U.S. will cut off aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The temporary reluctance is not pervading, however. \u201cCongress is an entirely\u00a0different matter,\u201d Rubin wrote, quoting an angry, unnamed official: \u201cThe only\u00a0acceptable answers (to whether the US should fund the new Palestinian government)\u00a0for most Americans would be no or hell no.\u201d<\/p>\n

But how effective will such financial arm-twisting be, especially with the\u00a0possibility of other donor countries following suit?\u00a0If the question had been asked prior to the Arab Spring – and the Egyptian\u00a0revolution in particular – the answer would have been marred by uncertainty. A whole\u00a0class of Palestinian politicians had arranged their stances almost exclusively\u00a0around funding issues.<\/p>\n

What really allowed Israel and the US to control the outcome of political events,\u00a0even internal Palestinian affairs, was the lack of any real political balance\u00a0surrounding this conflict. The US and its allies defined the will of the\u00a0\u2018international community\u2019, and the region was trapped in Washington\u2019s \u2013 and Tel\u00a0Aviv\u2019s \u2013 political designations of friends and enemies. It was a political stalemate\u00a0par excellence, and only Israel benefited.<\/p>\n

This analysis is not merely relevant to recent events. The greatest Israeli gain of\u00a0the Camp David agreement (1979) was not of bringing peace to the region – for no\u00a0regional peace truly followed. It was the total marginalization of Egypt as a\u00a0powerful Arab party from virtually all Arab affairs of concern to Israel. The\u00a0absence of Egypt in the process made it possible for Israel to repeatedly attack\u00a0Lebanon, and also to further its colonization and destruction of the occupied\u00a0territories.<\/p>\n

Now Egypt is back – not merely in terms of a return to the \u2018Arab fold\u2019 – but as the\u00a0party that will increasingly define the new Arab reality. The signing of the\u00a0Hamas-Fatah deal may have come as a surprise in terms of media coverage, but it was\u00a0really a predictable consequence in a chain of events that signaled the remaking of\u00a0a region. Now the Middle East is spearheaded by a powerful Arab country, secure\u00a0enough to reach out to multiple partners – other Arab countries, as well as Iran,\u00a0Turkey and others.<\/p>\n

Not only did both Turkey welcome the deal, it was also one of the main sponsors of\u00a0the Palestinian rapprochement. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has been\u00a0instrumental in pushing for Palestinian unity. As for the Iranian position, Iranian\u00a0Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi hailed the \u201causpicious\u201d agreement, which he\u00a0described as \u201cone of the achievements of the Egyptian revolution,\u201d according to the\u00a0Tehran Times (April 30).<\/p>\n

The Israeli vision for the region was to keep it politically divided at any cost.\u00a0Without such a division, Israel is likely to be on the defensive, and the US will be\u00a0consumed in crisis management. A Palestinian unity in post-revolution Egypt, with\u00a0the blessing of all Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, and many others, is an extremely\u00a0worrying prospect for Israel. Of most concern is the rise of Egypt as a political\u00a0party, one that is capable of making decisions on its own. Aside from sponsoring the\u00a0unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah, without Israeli or US permission, Egypt\u2019s\u00a0new foreign minister, Nabil al-Arabi, also described the decision to seal off Gaza\u00a0as \u201cshameful\u201d, and he promised to lift the siege (as reported by Aljazeera on April\u00a029).<\/p>\n

\u201cEgypt is charting a new course in its foreign policy that has already begun shaking\u00a0up the established order in the Middle East, planning to open the blockaded border\u00a0with Gaza and normalizing relations with two of Israel and the West\u2019s Islamist foes,\u00a0Hamas and Iran,\u201d wrote David D. Kirkpatrick in the New York Times (April 30). Such\u00a0language was, at one time, unthinkable. Now, thanks to the will of the Egyptian and\u00a0Arab peoples, it is likely to define the new Arab political discourse. Not even a\u00a0fiery speech by a discredited Israeli Prime Minister could prevent this powerful\u00a0paradigm shift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAMZY BAROUD: With Egypt reaching out to Israeli foes and the Palestinian agreement to work together Israel’s policy of division is in tatters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":6646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,83,60],"tags":[3037,6678,2275,378,2279,2453,703,18300,575,278,227,18306,2825,18311,4711,18309,192,2883,191,6681,2317,690,6641,2204,2904,2278,18325,18302,6687,2020,2624,580],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}