Of
Course, Israel Is Egypt's Enemy: Encouraging Copts To Rise
Up Against The Government
09 January 2011By Khalid
Amayreh
Some Israeli officials
have voiced surprise at revelations published by
Wikileaks showing that the Egyptian military continues
to view the apartheid Israeli regime as the primary
strategic threat facing Egypt.
This is despite the passage of more than 30 years
since the signing of the Camp David peace treaty
between the two states in 1979.
According to the revelations, American diplomats have
been frustrated as the Egyptian army continued to
retain the erstwhile military doctrine which viewed
Israel as the enemy.
The US, which is often at Israel and beck and call,
has been trying to convince leading Arab states that
their enemy is Iran and Sunni Islamist movements, such
as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, not Israel which
committed a virtual genocide in Gaza two years ago and
is constantly trying to kill the prospects of
Palestinian statehood by keeping up the construction
of Jewish colonies on stolen Arab land.
One leaked file quoted an unnamed American diplomat as
saying that "the US has sought to interest the
Egyptian military into expanding their mission in ways
that reflect new regional and transnational security
threats, such as piracy, border security and
counterterrorism."
However, Egypt reportedly resisted the flagrant
American intervention in shaping the Egyptian
strategic military doctrine, with one high-ranking
Egyptian army commander stressing that Israel was
still targeting Egypt in a variety of ways, including
having plans for the possible re-occupation of the
Sinai Peninsula.
Well, it is an expression of daring audacity on the
part of these arrogant American diplomats to expect
the sons of Egypt to morph themselves into Israel
lovers and forget the tens of thousands of Egyptians,
civilians and servicemen, who were murdered by
Israel.
The Egyptian people are not about to forget the
massacres of Bahr el Bagar school, the Abu Za'abal
factory, and the massacre of Egyptian POWs at the
instruction of Ariel Sharon in addition to the
indiscriminate bombings of Egyptian civilian areas
during the so-called war of attrition prior to the
1973 war.
It is true that Egypt , mainly due to economic and
other reasons, had to sign the infamous peace treaty
at Camp David, which only formally ended the state of
belligerency between Israel and largest and most
powerful Arab country. But it is also true that the
vast majority of Egyptians continued to hate Israel as
a hostile and criminal entity despite all American
inducements and bribes to create good chemistry
between Egyptians and Israelis.
In the final analysis, it would be a form of morbid
imagination to expect Egyptians, who nearly on a daily
basis watch Zionist thugs and terrorists murder,
terrorize and savage their coreligionists and brethren
in Palestine and destroy their homes, bulldoze their
farms, and expel them form their places of residence.
It is morbid imagination to expect members of the
Egyptian armed forces to fall in love with the killers
of their fathers and forefathers who fell in battle
with Zionism on Palestinian and Egyptian soils.
It is even more morbid to expect the Egyptian armed
forces to abandon their old doctrine and adopt a new
one based on the unnatural and mendacious assumption
which views other Arabs and Muslims, not Israel,
which usurped Palestine and expelled its people to
the four corners of the world, as the enemy.
Egypt and its kind-hearted people may not be going
through the best of times. But what is in the heart is
in the heart, and no amount of Kafkaesque
metamorphosis would succeed in deviating the needle of
the Egyptian people's compass away from its natural
direction.
I know that Israelis can easily visit Egypt, dine in
its restaurants and bask on its beaches. But it is
also true that these Israelis who do so are often met
with inimical eyes and sullen hostility wherever they
go. I also know that these Israelis, especially those
who would reveal their identity, never feel secure or
at peace. This is why they stop speaking Hebrew in
public and often claim to be Italians or other
Europeans.
To be sure, Israel itself never came to view Egypt as
a non-hostile state. In fact, one exaggerates little
by saying that Israel continues to view Egypt as
constituting the main strategic threat facing Israel.
Yes Israel feels the threat is dormant, but it is
real.
Moreover, it would be foolhardy on the part of
Egyptian strategic planners to ignore or dismiss
intelligence reports suggesting that Israel is
constantly acting to destabilize and weaken Egypt in a
variety of ways.
These include, inter alia, encouraging some expatriate
Copts to rise up against the central government,
encouraging Nile-basin countries such as Ethiopia to
undermine Egyptian interests, keep Egyptian-Iranian
relations in the worst possible state, and constantly
threatening to instigate Congress, which is tightly
controlled by the Jewish lobby, to press for reducing
or cutting off US economic and military aid to Egypt
if the Egyptian regime doesn't behave according to
script.
A few years ago, Avigdor Lieberman, the thuggish
Israeli foreign minister, went as far as threatening
to bomb the Aswan Dam. This is what he said in
public. One would wonder what he might have said in
private.
Another point, which really illustrates both the
temerity and naivety of many American diplomats, is
the belief that cordial relations between Israel and
an Arab-Muslim country are possible as long as the
Palestinian plight remains unresolved. This is
probably the reason the Americans couldn't bring
themselves to understand the recent turnabout in the
Israeli-Turkish relations.
Finally, I have one advice to the self-absorbed
American diplomatic community. Don't take Arab and
Muslim peoples for granted, don't overlook the
feelings of millions of Arabs and Muslims as this
myopic approach would eventually boomerang onto you.
Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living
in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from
the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the
1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for
several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram
Weekly, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), and
Middle East International. This articles and several
writings of Mr. Amayreh available at The Palestinian
Information Center via
https://english.palinfo.com
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