Bye, Bye Bibi and Hosni, the Bobbsey Twins
of stolen elections: Peace and Democracy Coming to Middle East
The violence in Egypt is the result
of decades of autocratic military rule, the most recent example of which was the
legislative elections where not a single opposition candidate
;managed to win. Amid rumors that
Hosni Mubarek was preparing to pass the presidency on
to his son, the Egyptian people had obviously reached the breaking point.
More
significantly, the Egyptian government has followed really unpopular foreign
policies over the past three decades.
Middle East politics is actually easy to understand. There are three historic powerhouses that
compete with each other for dominance of the Arab world: Egypt, Iran and Saudi
Arabia.
Beginning
with the peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has consistently sided with the US and
the west, first in supporting the first Gulf War against Iraq, then in standing
by and even assisting Israel in its attacks on and blockade of Gaza. In fact,
it was Saddam Hussein’s lie to Mubarak about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait the
prompted the Egyptian to join the US coalition. Egypt has been trying to lead
the Arab world toward independence, peace and accommodation with Israel since
the 1950’s; but the Israelis will have none of it, and that is one of the
reasons for the current rebellion in Cairo.
In order to justify Egypt’s tilt toward the west, progress toward
Palestinian statehood and independence, where Egypt is a major mediator, is a must.
Enter the Israelis whose dominant
foreign policy program is to screw its friends, which is why it doesn’t have
any. The lack of progress in the
Israel-Palestinian conflict is a humiliation for the Egyptians, the first Arab
nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Israel’s
hard headed attitude is undermining its friends in the Arab world and
strengthening its enemies. It even went
out of its way to insult the Turks, and then killed nine of its citizens who
were on a humanitarian voyage to break the siege of Gaza. Good work, Bibi.
So, one would have to conclude that inciting hostility is deliberate
policy. Israel has no interest in peace,
because peace means Israel will have to give up land.
Israel
now has a government, installed after losing the election through the good
offices of President Schlemiel Peres, who has been in power in Israel for 60
years (yes, Israel is the only “democracy” in the world where someone can stick
around for six decades) where neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign
Minister were in Israel during the two wars: 1956 and 1967, when Israel
attacked Egypt.
It is important to understand the
history of Egyptian-Israeli relations. During the 1948 war Egypt was ruled by
King Farouk. Gamal
Abdel Nasser, a colonel in the army, came to power in a coup supported by the
CIA. Israel’s prime
minister, Moshe Sharett, was a dove and
engaged in productive negotiations with the Egyptians in the mid-1950’s when
the Lavon Affair rocked the Israeli government.
Worried about the British pullout from Egypt, a special Israeli unit 101
engaged in sabotage in Egypt, setting bombs and starting fires, in an attempt
to get the British to reverse course and remain in Egypt. This special unit,
allegedly operated without the knowledge of the prime minister and was a rogue
security operation.
The perpetrators of the sabotage were
apprehended and some, who were Egyptian jews,
were executed. This brought the
rightists back to power in Israel in the form of David Ben Gurion,
who eschewed the diplomatic route and engaged in a cabal (the protocol of Sèvres, Peres was Defense Minister) with the French and
British to invade Egypt; the British and French to topple Nasser and restore
their control of the Suez Canal, the Israelis to seize the lebensraum it so
desperately desired.
After
Israel’s lightning victory, conquering Sinai in six days during the Suez war,
the first words out of Ben Gurion’s mouth were: “The
army did not make an effort to occupy enemy territory in Egypt proper.” [Italics, mine.] Three days later, Ben Gurion
told parliament, “One of the main objectives of the offensive against Egypt was
the liberation of ‘homeland’ territory occupied by the Egyptian.”
So, on
what basis did Israel claim Sinai as part of the Jewish homeland? The book of Genesis: “The lord made a covenant
with Abram, saying unto thy seed have I given this land FROM THE RIVER OF EGYPT
UNTO THE GREAT RIVER, THE RIVER EUPHRATES.” In other words, some Israelis and
Jews think God gave the land from the Nile to the Euphrates River in Iraq to
the Jews. And they really believe it.
This is the root of the Arab – Israeli conflict.
Subsequently, Ben Gurion declared that Israel would not permit the return of
the Egyptians to Gaza, and cast doubt on their willingness to evacuate the
islands of Jez Tiran and Sinafir,
which belongs to the Saudis but were administered by the Egyptians.
Israel was forced to withdrawn under
pressure from the United States, but they dragged their feet so they could map
Sinai and secrete provisions in anticipation of their return eleven years
later.
In the
1967 war, though, in addition to seizing Sinai, Israel took the West Bank and
Jerusalem. Long story short, after the
six day war Israel agreed to return Sinai in exchange for peace with Egypt and
to permanently annex Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank.
President
George H. W. Bush fashioned a coalition with the Arabs in 1991 to oust Saddam
Hussein from Kuwait in exchange for a promise to pressure Israel to make peace
with the Palestinians. That is the
genesis of the Oslo Peace process. But
Israel has never been serious about living within the borders allotted to it by
the United Nations resolutions of 1948, and has never been serious about an
Israel without Jerusalem as its capital under its sovereignty.
The current
government of Israel, which lost the elections two years ago but seized power
much the same way George W. Bush installed himself in the White House after
losing to Al Gore, is headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who was living in
Pennsylvania during the 1956 Suez War and in Massachusetts during the 1967 six
day war, and a foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman,
who was living in Moldova. No wonder the
Israeli government made all the wrong moves that undermined Egypt.
Now
the Israeli government is trying to make everyone think that democracy in Egypt
is equivalent to Islamic rule in Iran.
However, Egypt is a conservative culture with an ancient civilization:
the Pharohs and pyramids, great antiquities and one
of the cradles of human civilization long antedating Islam. They are a great nation and a great people
who have been invaded and humiliated by the west and its surrogates for the
past two hundred years. A democratic
Egypt is the best guarantor of peace and stability, provided, of course, that
Israel gets serious about living in peace with its neighbors.
The time has come for the usurpers, Bibi and
Hosni, to move on.
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