With Egyptian ties already so cold, many Israelis believe they won’t get much worse under Morsi
While the far right argues that only conquering the Sinai will rescue Israel from Islamist aggression, most analysts say Cairo has more pressing worries than Israel
One day after an Islamist became the president of the most populous Arab nation, opinions in Israel over the historic transition range from cautious hopefulness to pessimism and profound anxiety. Yet most politicians and analysts agree that Egypt’s new president has more pressing issues than picking a fight with Israel — if he’s able to stand his ground in the face of the still powerful military rulers.
“The darkness of Egypt,” screamed the headline of mass daily Yedioth Ahronoth, referring to the ninth biblical plague. Maariv, another tabloid, announced the creation of a “a new Middle East,” now that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi can call himself president-elect of Egypt. “The fear has become reality,” the paper wrote, mentioning that Morsi was a member of the “Committee to Fight the Zionist Enterprise.”
“Everybody is terrified, they fear that Morsi will turn Egypt into a theocracy,” said Mira Tzoreff, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. But Tzoreff argued that the fear is misplaced. “Most people who are terrified, if not all, don’t know the history of the Muslim Brotherhood. If you delve into it you will find that with one exception, Sayyid Qutb, they were all first and foremost patriotic Egyptians and only then religious Muslims,” she said.
‘The Muslim Brotherhood, both in ideology as well as in practice, are not fundamentalists at all’
Many of the Israeli talking heads currently dominating the airwaves predict that Egypt is going to fall back into an age of Islamist theocracy, Tzoreff said. “But the Muslim Brotherhood, both in ideology as well as in practice, are not fundamentalists at all. From their founding in 1928 until today, as individuals and as a group, they never showed any aspirations to turn Egypt into Iran.”
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood are “actually pretty much into realpolitik,” she added. “They have the ideology but they also have a ladder to come down from their ideology whenever it clashes with reality,” Tzoreff said. In Morsi’s two last important speeches, one last week and one Sunday night after the election results were announced, he didn’t once mention Sharia law or that “Islam is the solution,” which was his party’s election slogan, she pointed out.
“The vocabulary he used was quite a liberal one,” said Tzoreff, who specializes in the religion-state relationship in Muslim and Arab societies. To be sure, relations with Israel will never be the same as they were under presidents Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, but Morsi has pledged to honor all international treaties, she emphasized.
Relations between Cairo and Jerusalem have been increasingly fragile ever since Egypt’s longtime ruler Mubarak was dethroned last year in the throes of the Arab Spring. Last September, the Israeli Embassy in Cairo was attacked by thousands of angry protesters. Then, earlier this year, the Egyptians suddenly stopped providing natural gas to Israel, a move that politicians said was based on a commercial dispute but that Egyptian leaders knew how to utilize for populist political gains.
“Yes, the tone will be quite different,” Tzoreff said. “If during the Mubarak era the peace was cold, it will be freezing now. No doubt about that. But we’re talking [only] about the rhetoric and the tone, and we should get used to it.”
As far as practical matters are concerned, Morsi understands perfectly well that peace is first and foremost an Egyptian interest, Tzoreff told The Times of Israel. Cairo depends on economic aid from American and Europe and that hinges on the honoring the peace treaty with Israel, she said. “Morsi will have to act according to Egyptian interests, otherwise he’ll face opposition from within Egypt, from other Arab states, and of course from the West, and he understands that very well.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems less confident. He is on record calling the Arab Spring an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli, undemocratic wave,” and it is likely that Morsi’s victory bolstered this view. Commenting on Sunday night, hours after the election results were announced in Cairo, Netanyahu held back on overt criticism but was also careful not to appear too optimistic. “Israel appreciates the democratic process in Egypt and respects the results of the presidential elections,” he said. “Israel looks forward to continuing cooperation with the Egyptian government on the basis of the peace treaty between the two countries, which is a joint interest of both peoples and contributes to regional stability.”
Vice Prime Minister and Kadima chair Shaul Mofaz echoed Netanyahu’s words, saying that Israel “respects the democratic process in Egypt, and I hope that the Egyptians respect it.”
President Shimon Peres was a bit more upbeat. “We’re sending our congratulations to the president-elect,” he said at an event Monday with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We honor the peace between us, because peace is the real victory for both of us. Peace is really the victory of all children in the world.”
Opposition leader and Labor chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich said that Israel needs to make every effort to maintain the peace agreement with Egypt, but did not ignore the fact that Morsi is not necessarily a great friend of the Jewish state. “We must maintain a dialogue with those who were elected to lead Egypt, despite all the complexities involved,” she posted on Facebook. “Let’s hope and wish that democracy will bring economic, social and human rights improvements to the Egyptian people, and that they will be wise enough to guarantee the continuity of the political agreements — first and foremost the peace treaty with us, which is an asset to both countries.”
MK Ahmad Tibi, from the Arab Ram-Tal party, also congratulated Morsi, adding that “all should respect the democratic choice of the Egyptians.”
Unsurprisingly, voices on the far right used Morsi’s election to say I told you so. “Israel needs to be proactive and immediately conquer the Sinai peninsula,” demanded Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, the founder of the ultra-nationalist Eretz Yisrael Shelanu party (which is part of the National Union faction in the Knesset). Israel must not be complacent, since “the entire concept of peace with Egypt is collapsing” and terror groups are controlling the Sinai. “Only the re-conquering of the Sinai will return strength to Israel,” he said.
Most people with knowledge of Egyptian politics are not worried about a new war breaking out, despite being aware that Morsi and his party will not become Israel’s best friends any time soon.
“Yes, Morsi was a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Committee to Fight the Zionist Project and has called Israel ‘the Zionist entity,’” wrote Zvi Bar’el, Middle Eastern affairs analyst for the left-leaning daily Haaretz. “But in the strategic decision by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party to recognize all agreements that Egypt has signed with other countries, the movement’s representatives are showing that they are sticking with the Camp David Accords.”
Even if Morsi had secretly wanted to change the Camp David Accords, “it certainly won’t be discussed any time soon,” Bar’el argued. “One possible outcome, as several have speculated, is that Morsi will appoint a heavyweight foreign minister who is not associated with the Muslim Brotherhood to conduct foreign policy with Israel and other countries.”
Yitzhak Levanon, who served as Israel’s ambassador in Cairo from 2009 until 2011, also argued that Morsi, a 61-year-old US-trained engineer, will have no choice but to safeguard the status quo vis-à-vis the peace with Israel. “At this point in time he has other worries, such as what powers will he have,” Levanon said. In the absence of a constitution that defines the president’s authorities, the Egyptian military rulers still have the last word on all important decisions.
“On a bilateral level, there is not much going on with Egypt currently,” he told The Times of Israel. “The gas supplies stopped, economic cooperation doesn’t work particularly, and now, in addition, there is no embassy.”
Since last year’s embassy attack, the Israeli ambassador, Yaacov Amitai, spends only three days a week in Cairo and works out of his residence because Israel no longer has an embassy building, he said. “There is very little, so it can’t get much worse,” he said.
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