In splendid isolation

October 12, 2000 is day British photojournalist Mark Seager will always remember. He was in Ramallah that day and sensing something news worthy was about to happen he followed an agitated crowd of Palestinians heading towards the local police station. However he was completely unprepared for what he was about to witness. He described it later as “murder of the most barbaric kind.” A few hours earlier two IDF reservist drivers had taken a wrong turn and ended up at a PA roadblock outside Ramallah. From there they were taken to the local police station. A frenzied crowd that gathered outside stormed the building and brutally murdered the two drivers. One of the murderers Aziz Salha appeared at a window proudly showing his blood-stained hands to the cheering crowd below. Later one of the mutilated bodies was thrown out of the same window. Both the bodies were dragged through the streets to Al-Manara square in the centre of the town. Seager tried to photograph the lynching but the mob physically assaulted him and destroyed his camera. Recalling the horrific scene when he was interviewed later he said, “I know I'll have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

When scenes of Egyptian protesters storming the Israeli Embassy in Cairo on Friday, were shown on main channel TV newscasts, many shocked Israelis sensed a certain déjà vu. Once again the Ramallah nightmare scenario was unfolding before their eyes.

Egypt’s Minister of Defence and de facto head of state, Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein al-Tantawi couldn’t be reached when Prime Minister Netanyahu tried calling him. He wanted Tantawi to extricate the six Israeli security guards trapped inside the embassy. The much decorated field marshal was reluctant to intervene. Rescuing the Israelis might involve a clash with the protesters. And no doubt he would be held responsible for the deaths of any protesters killed in the rescue operation. He didn't want to end up in a Cairo courtroom cage like Mubarak.

How can this outburst of pure hatred be explained? Michael Birnbaum and Ingy Hassieb wrote in the Washington Post a few days ago, "The incident underlined the deeply altered relationship between Israel and Egypt, in which popular anti-Israeli sentiment, fueled by Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, has threatened to undermine relations cemented in a 1979."

New York Times columnist Nick Kristof referenced the root causes of the attack, as he saw them: "Attacking the Israeli embassy doesn't help Gazans, doesn't bring back the dead. Instead it helps Israeli hardliners.”

The Christian Science Monitor quoted from an article by Ben Caspit in the Israeli daily Maariv, who in turn quoted Gidi Grinstein, president of the Reut Institute in Tel Aviv and a former peace negotiator during Ehud Barak's tenure as prime minister, who said, "A lot of what drives the frustration in Egypt and Turkey is the moribund negotiations with the Palestinians."

Washington Institute for Near East Policy researcher Eric Trager, disagreed. He said, "It was the standard response of armchair analysts, for whom all Middle Eastern current events -- and particularly the most outrageous ones -- are inextricably linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Trager claims that," The assumption that the Egyptian protesters who attacked the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last Friday, tearing down a protective wall and ransacking the premises, were motivated by cosmopolitan, pro-Palestinian concerns is to completely ignore the sad truth that Egyptians overwhelmingly hate Israel for wholly Egyptian reasons.”

American writer Robert Satloff is the executive director of WINEP, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy . The New York Review of Books claims he is, “a neoconservative with very hawkish views on the Middle East.”

Just the same, he is very familiar with our region and his insights are often thought-provoking. After the attack on the embassy Robert Satloff wrote in the Jerusalem Report, “It’s the granddaddy of all American diplomatic achievements in the Middle East. It represents one of the greatest Western victories of the Cold War. It has prevented the drift toward a region-wide Arab-Israeli military confrontation for more than 30 years. It is the foundation both of Israel’s security doctrine and the Jewish state’s transformation from an economic basket case into a first world economic power. It has made possible every hopeful move toward Arab-Israeli peace for the past generation. And it – the Egypt-Israel peace treaty – is hanging on by a thread.”

Relations between the two countries were always very “low profile.” Satloff described it in more sombre tones, ”The entire relationship between these two neighbors had been whittled down to the sale of gas, the operation of several low-profile economic zones, measured security cooperation in constraining the activities of radical jihadists (especially those targeting Egypt) and an uneasy political ménage à trois with the United States.”

“Forget the Palestinian gambit at the United Nations.” Says Satloff, “Don’t lose sleep about Grad missiles from Hamas. Fear not the threats of Syria’s Assad, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah or al- Qaeda’s Zawahiri. Compared to the potential demise of Egypt-Israel peace, a huge bonanza to radicals of every stripe and a strategic calamity nearly on par with the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the Iranian mullahs, these are mere annoyances.”

A number of Israeli analysts have arguably stressed Egypt’s dependence on American aid. Some have claimed that without the annual US aid grant the Egyptian economy will collapse. Contradicting this claim another WINEP analyst David Schenker says, “Notwithstanding devoting more than 30 years and $50 billion to secure the peace and build a strong bilateral relationship, during this critical moment of transition, Washington today finds itself with precious little influence in Egypt. For now, U.S. access to Cairo West airbase, priority Suez Canal access for U.S. warships, and routine military over flights of Egyptian airspace are not at risk. Despite the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, neither is the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. If the current trajectory isn't reversed and the next government in Cairo doesn't start to value the bilateral relationship, however, these U.S. equities may soon be in jeopardy.”

“Simply put,” says Schenker, “the $1.3 billion a year U.S. grant isn't what it used to be. When U.S. assistance started flowing back in 1981, the annual military grant equated to more than 5 percent of the state's GDP. In 2010, it stood at less than one-fourth of a percent. Given the relatively small amount of assistance, it is unlikely that U.S. attempts to condition this aid to politically difficult decisions would be successful. And Washington's influence in Cairo will become even more tenuous when (and if) the military eventually returns to the barracks.”

Nevertheless, the Egyptian economy has suffered losses due to a sharp decrease in the number of tourists visiting Egypt.

Our relationship with Egypt was exacerbated this week when Turkish premier

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited Egypt—the first visit at such a level for 15 years—to sign new military and economic agreements. The crowds in Cairo gave Erdogan a hero’s welcome. His downgrading of the Israeli embassy and his sabre-rattling rhetoric pleased the Egyptians. However his undisguised aspiration to fill the leadership vacuum in the Muslim world didn’t please the interim government. Nobody wants the Ottomans back.

Schenker mentioned another worrying aspect of the current mood in Egypt.

“In June this year Cairo turned down a $3 billion low-interest IMF loan with virtually no conditions attached, a decision seemingly predicated on a popular aversion to the United States: According to a Gallup Poll taken earlier this year, 75 percent of Egyptians oppose accepting U.S. economic assistance.”

“Unsurprisingly,” he says, “these anti-U.S. sentiments also carry over to the U.S.-brokered Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, a deal that Amr Moussa says ‘is over.’ Even the most ‘liberal’ presidential hopeful, Mohamed ElBaradei, says that Egypt should consider going to war with Israel to protect Palestinians in Gaza.”

Last week there were wild speculations about a possible naval confrontation with Turkey. I wondered if the Turks were concerned too. Journalist Ümit Enginsoy wrote in Hürriyet Daily News, one of Turkey’s two English language papers, “The possibility of a Turkish-Israeli military conflict is still small.” Enginsoy who lives in New York said, “The paradigm between Turkey and Israel has changed, but several defence experts still believe the chance of a physical confrontation between the militaries of the two countries is rather small.

The United States would not allow a new Turkish flotilla to approach Israel. It would seek to deter that kind of an aid flotilla from the start, before it sails.

Even in the case of a crisis, the United States, which holds a major military force in the Mediterranean, would try to separate the navies of the two countries,”

“Could Turkey and Israel Go to War? “ asked Soner Cagaptay Soner director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

“Not only is Ankara no longer a trusted friend of Israel, but it has also begun to emerge as the key regional actor opposing Israel.

This is the most important shift in Levantine politics since Camp David or even since 1949 when Turkey recognized Israel. This new balance is a serious threat for Israel, which must now consider an increasingly hostile Turkey and an ever colder and unfriendly Egypt when it evaluates its security environment.”

Foreign Minister Lieberman made oblique references to retaliatory action against Turkey.

The other Turkish English language paper Today's Zaman understood him well. “Israel's hawkish foreign minister is planning a series of measures to retaliate against Turkey in an apology row, including military aid to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Other planned measures are cooperation with the Armenian lobby in the US in its efforts to win recognition for Armenian claims that 1.5 million Armenians were victims of a genocide campaign in the late Ottoman Empire during the First World War years and to issue a travel warning urging all Israeli military veterans to refrain from traveling to Turkey, according to the report in Yediot Ahranot. The travel advisory will also urge Israelis to refrain from boarding connections in Turkey,” the report said.

.”Turkey's demand for an apology has divided the Israeli government, with hawks such as Lieberman strictly opposing it while others insisting that a way must be found to restore ties because Turkey is an ally of critical importance for Israel.

On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel and Turkey will eventually mend fences rather than become foes, dismissing their apology dispute as ‘spilled milk.’ “

Our preoccupation with the Turkish and Egyptian embroilment has caused the news media to relegate a number of pressing domestic matters to a state of near oblivion. Admittedly we can't ignore Turkish premier Erdogan's bellicose statements, however neither can we gloss over the cottage cheese boycott that sparked off a mass social protest that brought over 400,000 Israelis to fill the city squares demonstrating for social justice.

The social protest has given rise to a number of dynamic young leaders.

Young students especially have taken on the tycoons, the people with deep-rooted financial clout. The latest boycott against Tnuva’s dairy products is beginning to show results.

Tnuva was founded in 1926 by the kibbutz movements as a cooperative for the processing and marketing of agricultural products. For many years its dairy division had a near monopoly. In 2006 foreign investors approached

Tnuva seeking to acquire a controlling share of the company. Many of the kibbutz shareholders sold out. Since we (Ein Harod Ihud) weren’t financially pressed we kept our shares. As a result I’m in an awkward position. I strongly support the social protest and the various boycotts designed to reduce consumer prices. On the other hand my kibbutz holds shares in Tnuva.

At breakfast this morning I considered not drinking milk with my coffee in support of the boycott. My capitalist instincts got the better of me.

To offset this I voted in the Labour party primaries held this week to choose a new party chairman. I’m hoping it will be a chairwoman. The only woman candidate Shelly Yachimovich won the first round of the primaries by a narrow majority. Next week we will go to the polls again, hopefully she will win this time too.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 15^th of September, 2011.