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Collaborators with Israel are no longer thrown into snake pits but ‘sentenced to death in court.’

Jerusalem – The killing of «collaborators» by fellow Palestinians once again has gained notoriety. In the context of the current al-Aqsa intifada, at least seven Palestinians have been murdered already – either with their backs against a wall facing the rifles of Palestinian Authority «policemen,» or under the burning wrath of irregulars armed with pistols, axes and knives.

On Jan. 13, PA Minister of Justice Freih Abu Meiden gave crude expression to this reality when he declared that «anyone we lay our hands on will not merit the mercy of the Palestinian people or the mercy of the Palestinian law.» Later that day, Palestinian human-rights organizations reported to Israeli television that Arafat’s regime had assembled a list of more than 20,000 Palestinians slated for execution for collaborating with Israel.

Of course there is nothing new under the sun. This type of killing is as old as Palestinian nationalism itself. During the 1930s, then-Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, the most prominent Palestinian leader in British-ruled Palestine, imposed a reign of terror of such proportions that by the end of the decade, moderate Arab opinion in Palestine had all but disappeared.

In this period, thousands of Palestinian Arabs were exiled or murdered in a most brutal manner. Moreover, according to historian David Pryce-Jones, not all of those suspected of treason were immediately assassinated. Some were kidnapped, taken to the mountain areas under rebel control and there thrown into pits infested with snakes and scorpions. The bodies of the victims then were left on the city streets for days, after a shoe had been ceremoniously shoved into their mouths as a symbol of disgrace and an example to others.

During the first Palestinian intifada (from 1987 to 1993), masked activists from all PLO factions and Islamic groups killed scores of their brothers suspected of collaboration, often acting on mere rumor.

The mildest estimate puts the number of those killed during this period at almost 1,000. Such was their zealous devotion to the cause that Fatah activists persisted in murdering alleged collaborators to the point of disregarding orders from the Tunis-based PLO leadership at the time, which itself wanted to coordinate all political assassinations.

Collaborator killing did not vanish with the creation of the PA. During the first year after Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and Jericho (May 1994) alone, 31 Palestinians suspected of being collaborators were murdered. In 1995, the PA established the so-called State Security Court, which has special jurisdiction over security offenses. As such, it functions outside the Palestinian Civil Court system. Collaboration is considered national treason by the PA, so it consequently falls within this court’s jurisdiction. The court provides no right of appeal «and thus operates in contravention of international fair trial standards» in the words of the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment.

The New York-based organization Human Rights Watch stated in a letter sent in 1999 to then-President Clinton that «trials in these courts are typically closed to the public, last a few hours and severely limit the defendant’s chances to prepare a defense. Sentences sometimes are issued just hours after the arrest of the accused.»

Sentences issued by the State Security Court, including life imprisonment and the death penalty, are subject to ratification or veto only by Yasser Arafat himself. Since its establishment in 1995, 33 death penalties have been issued, five of which have been carried out.

Of course, among the various categories of collaborators, by far the most despised group is made up of those Palestinians who sell land to Jews. Some are murdered extra-judicially, others are brought to trial under the terms of the 1997 Property Law for Foreigners. This anti-Semitic legislation effectively has made the PA one of the few entities in the world — since the fall of the Nazi empire — that mandates the death penalty for the sale of lands to Jews.

To say that the conduct of the PA with regard to collaborators is at odds with the Oslo accords and with international law – which burdens the PA with elementary norms of civilized behavior – would be trivial. True, the fact that instead of throwing collaborators to pits full of snakes, the Palestinian leadership now condemns them to death in trials «as short as traffic courts,» as journalist Helen Schary Motro observed, undoubtedly must be considered civic progress for the chaotic Palestinian society. Judged by less relative standards, however, this ongoing human-rights atrocity may be seen as revealing commentary on the true character of the future 23rd Arab nation in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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New Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has a unique opportunity – or challenge – to put Israel back on track.

Jerusalem – I am looking at the picture of Shalhevet Tehiya Pass, the baby girl gunned gown by Palestinian terrorists this week, and I can’t make sense of this atrocious crime. She is sitting on her father’s lap, her parents are smiling; she is looking into the camera with a typically innocent baby face. Shalhevet was killed in her mother’s arms at a kindergarten in Israel.

Her senseless death epitomizes the ugliness, hatred and bestiality of Palestinian terror: Shalhevet didn’t die as a result of a lost, ricochet bullet; this 10-month-old baby was deliberately murdered. How can anyone, even a combatant, raise his rifle, see the face of an infant through his telescopic lens and shoot to kill? I wonder what thoughts must cross the mind of such a man the second before he pulls the trigger that will cut off a baby’s life. Did he sleep later that night? Does he feel anything when his eyes rest on other infant-born of Palestinian mothers? Is he tempted to repent? Obviously not.

Throughout its relentless march toward independence, the PLO repeatedly has targeted children. «There are no innocents; if you are alive, you are involved. Innocence is meaningless,» said Ghassan Kanafani of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine decades ago. He then added rhetorically: “What does the life of an Arab child or a Jewish child matter if their death will help bring about the revolution?»

Three decades later, the «Palestinian revolution» has taken yet another life. The current mini-war (referred to worldwide as an uprising, or intifada) already has resulted in almost 70 Israeli and hundreds of Palestinian deaths. This time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had no choice but to respond harshly. Otherwise, I fear we would be witnessing the beginning of the end of the Jewish state. Indeed, a nation that tolerates such an atrocity is doomed to extinction. This is a radical statement, in total harmony with the radical situation we are facing.

There must be limits to the current Israeli policy of accommodating to «political correctness.» During the Oslo process, every Hamas suicide bombing was explained away as an act committed by «the enemies of peace»; halting the peace talks would have been tantamount to surrendering to terror, so went the mantra.

In the context of the current hostilities, Israel’s need to exercise restraint is justified on similar pragmatic grounds: Yasser Arafat orders these horrible killings to precipitate a brutal Israeli response that will at least invite international intervention and at best lead to a regional war («at least» and «at best» as measured in Arafat’s terms). In light of this equation, and especially considering that an Arab Summit was taking place in neighboring Amman at the time of Shalhevet’s murder, logic would dictate that restraint continue as the name of the game. Not quite.

No longer feared

For too long already, Israel has been regionally perceived as a weak state. The day that Jordan expelled Israeli journalists who were covering this past Arab Summit from Amman, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa announced: «This shows no one is afraid of Israel anymore.» Indeed, Israeli weakness invites aggression.

Before the advent of the Oslo era, the Jewish state was hated in the Arab world – but it was feared, too. Now, after eight years of the peace process, Israel is still no less hated, but is no longer feared as well. In the face of a lax and hesitant Israel, the mood in the Arab street (particularly after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon) is one of pride, victory and self-confidence. In light of this reality, the name of the game should be deterrence, not restraint.

The current manifestation of Palestinian hostility is compounded by troublesome scenarios:

• Internationally, Israel does not enjoy the support of the Western world. The Jewish state is consistently vilified by human-rights organizations, the media, left-wing intellectuals and the United Nations when it adopts any measure in response to Palestinian aggression.
• Domestically, Israel’s people are divided. Half of the population is disoriented, confused and shocked after Arafat, the man they trusted and upon whom they projected their own peaceful aspirations, betrayed them – violently. The other half watches in pain as their predictions, sadly, materialize.

Sharon, the man who emerged victorious from the so-called national camp, has a unique opportunity – or challenge – to put Israel back on track. Ehud Barak failed; Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn’t have had the gall to do it.

«Only Sharon,» as the Likud election slogan promised, «will bring peace.» I will be more than happy if he brings security alone. For the sake of Shalhevet’s parents, and all the other grieving mothers in Israel, I hope he will.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem – Palestinian terror traditionally has led Israel to adopt countermeasures varying in degree of force, risk and controversy. By tactically blending terrorists into the civilian population, Palestinian terror organizations too often have placed Israel in the uneasy position of having to risk civilian life and injury when targeting the terrorists.

This vintage tactic was common during the Lebanon War and has been typical during the current Al-Aqsa intifada. But whether Israel responded indiscriminately, as in the 1996 Kfar Kana incident, or by exercising discrimination, as in its current policy of liquidations, the international community consistently has erupted in a massive outcry.

Most notable are the various human-rights organizations that argue that by deliberately assassinating terrorists, Israel is violating one of the most basic human rights: the right to life. Given that this right is ensconced in several important international documents, among them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Israel is thereby presented as a violator of international law. This is pure nonsense, for such a fundamental international norm also clearly encompasses the right of Israeli citizens to live free from the threat of death or maming.

Admittedly, the right to self-defense may necessarily entail killing and injuring other human beings. Israel always has had to walk a fine line when dealing with terrorism, balancing the imperative effectively to fight it with the restraints of international law and morality.

But the same dilemma has preoccupied mankind for millennia. Using Roman concepts of war as well as the ethics of early Christian moralists, St. Thomas Aquinas articulated an idea in the 13th Century that today we call the Modern Just War Doctrine. This doctrine delineates the framework within which war itself is morally permissible and then draws perimeters around ethical war conduct. Since no fair-minded observer would dare question Israel’s need to exercise self-defense in the face of Palestinian aggression, let us focus on the second part of the doctrine.

As Georgetown University professor William O’Brien explains, war-conduct doctrine comprises two central elements: proportion and discrimination.

• A military action must be proportionate to both the strategic and political ends involved. Assuming that Israel’s primary goal is to quell Palestinian terror and motivate the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, then the targeting of certain terrorist leaders for assassination is appropriate. In fact, the IDF has been highly measured in its responses. If not, Ramallah would be no more than a rubble today.
• Discrimination is also particularly well served by Israel’s assassination policy. Considering the other available options – all collective actions, such as indiscriminate shelling of population centers or economic closures of entire areas – the chosen course of selective liquidation should be commended for its precision and restraint.

Assassination itself is not necessarily a crime, depending on the context — especially when that context is retributive. Punishment, as Purdue University professor Louis Rene Beres points out, is actually a sacred principle of international law. But «no crime without a punishment» takes on particular validity when the crime involved is as egregious as terrorism.

As Beres reminds us, when the Nuremberg Tribunal was established in 1945, it affirmed that «so far from it being unjust to punish [an offender], it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.» By standards of international law, terrorists are known as common enemies of mankind. Defending the right to life of this kind of criminal when he is devoting himself to denying others the ability to exercise that same right simply doesn’t follow. In fact, it is obscene.

With remarkable hypocrisy, the same enlightened members of the international community that urged Israel to take “risks for peace» and embark on the dangerous Oslo road – whose final destination was war -condemn Israel for defending itself against the Palestinian violence that they are always so willing to justify. This, and not Israel’s legitimate assassination policy, is the true immorality.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem – «I am not an easy negotiator, but my word is my word, and my red lines are clear». So pronounced Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon to top Palestinian negotiator Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) right after Sharon’s dramatic election victory.

In a nutshell, this is what the recent elections were all about: red lines. With their resounding Yes to Sharon, Israeli voters sent an unequivocal message to the world: We do, after all, have our limits.

The specific parameters are well-known:

• No Palestinian right of return.
• No division of Jerusalem.
• No abandonment of the strategic Jordan Valley.
• No negotiations under fire.

These issues were consensual in Israeli society just a short while ago; Oslo changed all that. Take for instance Jerusalem. In 70 CE, the Jewish people lost its beloved capital to Roman Emperor Titus.

As commentator Sarah Honig once observed, it took him four legions of the formidable Roman army to capture Jerusalem; yet 2,000 years later, the leader of the sovereign Jewish state was ready to give Israel’s capital away to Yasser Arafat — for the sake of a dubious peace agreement — without a fight. That leader, Ehud Barak, did so with such amazing irresponsibility that he elicited the only logical response any mature people with even a little remaining historical perspective and national pride could have produced: an unequivocal rejection of that leadership. On Election Day, Barak was brought down in shame as Israelis showed themselves to be in favor of real peace, and in opposition to Oslo’s false promises.

The Labor Party shares a different interpretation of the vote. With vintage arrogance, for example, Shimon Peres said that had he been given the chance, he could have defeated Sharon (Peres has never won a single electoral contest). Other Laborites claim that, in fact, Barak the prime minister, not the peace-camp platform, lost on Election Day.

Myths die hard. Predictably, the Israeli Left seems unable to admit that it has been wrong all along since 1993. Oslo was built on a fundamentally wrong conception – that the Arab- Israeli conflict is about territorial rather than existential disagreement; thus the formula «Land for Peace.»

But as Barak’s magnanimous offers at Camp David later would prove, no amount of Israeli concessions can ever satisfy the PLO. Columnist Charles Krauthammer put it this way: The Palestinians do not want their own state; they want their neighbor’s state. What is there to talk about when Israel still doesn’t appear on a single official map issued by the Palestinian Authority?

Will things change? If the initial Palestinian reaction to Sharon’s victory is any indication, there is not much room for optimism. Their welcome message to the new prime minister included the following: a kind letter from Arafat, a bombing in Jerusalem, a Sharon-effigy burning ceremony in Sidon, mortar-shelling of settlements and this statement from Fatah: «If the Israelis think that Sharon will bring them security, we say loudly that Israel will never have security.» As if all this evidence of goodwill weren’t enough, the official Voice of Palestine called for a «Day of Rage,» which was obediently heeded. Days ago, a Palestinian bus driver deliberatedly overran 20 Israelis, killing eight. Arafat dismissed this deed as a car accident.

At a basic level, the Palestinian leadership now faces two elementary options:

• They can start to exhibit some degree of realism, reasonableness and a modicum of flexibility, which together may pave the way for the «historical reconciliation» that everyone longs for.
• Or they can stick steadfastly to their Utopian position, maintain their al-Aqsa intifada in the territories and keep shooting at Israeli civilians while pronouncing the word peace to the Western media, United Nations officials and European diplomats.

If the Palestinians choose Option 2, they should recall that their intransigence with Barak brought them Sharon, a man Arafat feared would «deal with us in a crude military manner.»

By choosing the path of violence, Arafat and his henchmen should bear in mind that they risk finding themselves, once again, sailing back to Tunis. Only this time, Sharon will be waving bon voyage from Gaza instead of Lebanon. In sum: «Mr. Chairman, everything is in your hands.»

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Palestinians call Barak ‘The Lemon,» because Arafat has squeezed so many concessions out of him.

Jerusalem – Poor Ehud Barak. He has been viciously attacked from every conceivable quarter, collecting condemnations so harsh that one wonders whether he is the worst ruler Israel — and the world — has ever known.

Washington Post columnist George Will called Barak «the most calamitous leader a democracy has ever had» while, on the other side of the ideological spectrum, CNN devotes a good share of its programming to bashing Barak. In the Middle East, he fares no better. While the Egyptian media compare him with Hitler, Nero and Pharaoh, the Palestinian media call him a «war criminal.»

According to Israel Radio, Palestinians have nicknamed him «The Lemon,» because Yasser Arafat has squeezed so many concessions out of him. Within Israel, controversial Parliament member Azmi Bishara and respected political scientist Shlomo Avineri have accused him of Bonapartism, as polls show him lagging 20 points behind the historically problematic Ariel Sharon in the current electoral campaign.

So what to do when you are a prime minister in the middle of elections and your public image has been shattered? First, you may try to reach a peace agreement with an historical enemy with whom your country has been negotiating for years to no avail.

It may be a difficult task to do so when you hardly enjoy parliamentarian and popular support, after you have resigned to the premiership – thus lacking moral and perhaps legal authority to make fateful decisions — and especially when you no longer enjoy the support of an enthusiastic American president, because he is out of office.

So, unable to produce an impressive diplomatic achievement, you may opt for mercilessly attacking your contender for the high office. This is why Barak’s ad campaign is centered mostly on character assassination. In politics, of course, there is nothing new or atypical about it, but it is quite a comment on Barak’s desperate position.

So voters are treated to what can be described only as a public exhibition of Sharon’s weaknesses and past mistakes.

• First came the gossip about his senility; he doesn’t hear well, he looses attention, he is overweight. A pro-Barak journalist went as far as even contacting Sharon’s personal medical doctor, in Kampuchea on vacation, in an attempt to try to get a new scoop to add to the repertoire. He was disappointed; the good doctor said that Sharon was clinically all right.
• Then Barak’s spin doctors introduced the obvious card: Sharon’s role during the Lebanon War. Not completely satisfied with this, Barak’s public-relations campaign placed an advertisement in Israeli-Arab newspapers showing Sharon ascending the Temple Mount last September in an effort to persuade Arabs that it was the Likud candidate who started the whole «Al-Aqsa intifada» —in which 13 revolting Israeli-Arabs were killed, a fact that Barak knows all too well will cost him the Arab vote.

This explains why Sharon is making every effort to present himself as the ultimate dove. «Sharon: A leader of peace» says his main electoral slogan. In the Likud TV ads one can see Sharon fatherly hugging cute little kids, cutting a flower in a field, gently looking at the camera as he removes his grandpa glasses and so on. The Likud jingle, coming pretty close to a local version of USA for Africa, is full of intonations about peace and smiling Israelis. Anything that can counterbalance Sharon’s warmonger image is emphasized.

But no matter how much Sharon invests in trying to convince Israelis that he will bring peace to this war-stricken land, he simply can’t. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because peace or war is not an option for him to decide. As scholar Daniel Pipes points out, that decision is not made in Jerusalem but in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and elsewhere in the region.

In any case, these elections are not about peace as much as they are about security; sorely needed security. Personal and national security have to be restored in Israel. For this, Sharon is unquestionably the right man for the job.

Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst in Jerusalem.

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Jerusalem -According to the PLO, the Palestinian «right of return» is legally supported by U.N. Resolution 194 and morally sheltered by the history of the conflict. In truth, however, both points are incorrect.

Consider:

Resolution 194 of Dec.11, 1948, makes no reference of the expression «right of return.» This was a Palestinian invention. This resolution encompasses refugees from the 1948 war, not their descendants.

This resolution was adopted by the General Assembly, whose decisions are nonmandatory. Additionally, all the Arab states voted against this resolution, precisely because it did not establish a «right of return» – something they now conveniently forget.

But this one was not the only U.N. resolution that Arab nations rejected at the time. A year earlier they had rejected Resolution 181, better known as the Resolution for the Partition of Palestine, which determined the establishment of two states to live side by side; one Jewish, the other Arab. Not only did they reject it but actually launched a war of extermination against the newly born state of Israel. They exhorted their Arab brethren in Palestine (people who after 1967 started to call themselves Palestinians) to abandon their houses to allow the holy warriors to attack and «throw the Jews into the sea.»

When the sublime attack turned into a humiliating defeat, the Arab world confined the fleeing Palestinians in camps along the borders. As Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), now one of the top Palestinian negotiators, put it in the 1976 March issue of the PLO journal in Beirut: «The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.»

By refusing to integrate them into their economies and societies and, in effect, keeping their brothers in camps under extremely poor conditions, Arab rulers perpetuated their plight thus sustaining a collective resentment, turning it into the oldest active refugee problem in the world.

Only two countries absorbed Palestinian refugees, granting them citizenship and civil rights: Jordan and Israel. The 150,000 Palestinians who had stayed within the borders of Israel were integrated into Israeli society – an action hardly fitting with PLO propaganda of Israeli «expulsions.» Today they have their own representatives in the Israeli parliament and constitute almost 20 percent of the population. In 1949, then-Israeli Primer Minister David Ben-Gurion offered to accept about 100,000 Palestinian refugees (a figure tantamount at the time to one-sixth of the Jewish population in the Israeli state), but the Arab nations rebuffed the initiative.

From the 1950s until 1993, Israel allowed 125,000 refugees to return to Israel under a family-reunification program; and since 1993, another 90,000 Palestinians were allowed to enter the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This, when Israel had to absorb its own 850,000 Jewish refugees expelled en masse from Arab lands in the 1948 war.

Incredibly, the Arab world and the PLO are demanding from Israel to pay the price for a military defeat that they suffered in a war of aggression that they themselves initiated. This moral absurdity is nonetheless surpassed by a logical absurdity of even greater proportions, as was expounded by Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff: Not only do the Palestinians expect Israel to concede territory but that it also absorb Palestinian refugees inside its reduced borders.

The rate of natural growth of the Muslim sector in Israel doubles that of the Jewish population; in a short period of time, the 3.5 million Palestinian refugees democratically could turn the Jews into a minority into their one and only tiny state in the entire globe.

Actually, the Palestinian «right of return» is nothing but a euphemism for the destruction of Israel. Gamal Abd-el Nasser put it clearly in 1960: «If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.» It is evident then that if the PLO insists on materializing the right of return within Israel, the chances of reaching a peace accord will be buried. But if the right of return is realized, it is the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel what will be buried indeed. If this is what Arafat truly wants, then the time finally has arrived to call him for what he really is: not a peace-seeker but an unreconstructed warmonger bent on Israel’s destruction.

Julian Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.

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Cairo sees peace as a threat to its supremacy.

Relations between Israel and Egypt have drastically deteriorated since the eruption of the Al-Aksa Intifadah. After the Palestinian boy Mohammed Al-Durrah was killed in the line of fire between Palestinian snipers and Israeli soldiers, Egypt announced that it would name after that boy the street where the Israeli embassy sits in Cairo.

At the United Nations, Egypt was at the vanguard of those countries condemning Israel. At the last Arab Summit, Hosni Mubarak’s regime supported the final communique that condemned Israel, which among other things, called for an international court of justice to judge Israeli leaders under «war crimes» charges.

For abstaining from inviting a war against Israel, Egypt was applauded by the Western world for its moderation. After Israel shelled Gaza in retaliation for a Palestinian terrorist attack against a school bus, Mubarak recalled his ambassador to Tel-Aviv, protesting Israel’s excessive force. Shortly afterward, the Egyptian secret service discovered an Israeli spy ring operating on Egyptian soil. The timing of this «discovery» – as well as its deliberate publication in the media – did not cause much surprise in Israel, which denied the whole issue.

Far from being uncharacteristic of Cairo’s foreign policy, all this is nothing more than a reflection of its general hostility toward its northern neighbor. During the past 20 years, Egypt has adopted and implemented a policy commonly referred to as «cold peace.» Whereas it is preferable to a «hot war,» it can hardly be regarded as constructive for peace-keeping. Contrary to what the 1978 Camp David Accords stipulate, Egypt actively restricts all kinds of cultural, scientific, economic and tourist exchanges with Israel.

The few Egyptians who apply for a visa to enter Israel are interrogated by the secret police. Save Itzhak Rabin’s funeral, President Mubarak has never visited Jerusalem. Likewise, Mubarak did not attend the signing ceremony of the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, as one would expect from the leader of the first Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

One can, more often than not, find Egypt at the forefront of those countries trying to internationally isolate Israel – be that at the UN, the Non-Proliferation Treaty conventions, or economic conferences such as those in Casablanca (1994) and Amman (1995) where Israel did not appear in the Middle East maps in the Egyptian brochures. Whereas the film Schindler’s List (whose theme is unrelated to the conflict) was forbidden, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a 200-year-old Soviet forgery accusing the Jews of world domination –are bestsellers throughout the country.

For their part, official Egyptian media are replete with articles denying the Holocaust, comparing Israeli leaders to Hitler and Nero, and attributing to the Jews the most ludicrous conspiracy theories. Pepsi, according to an Egyptian group calling for a boycott of Israeli and American products, stands for «Pay Every Penny to Save Israel.»

Why all this? Why does Egypt boycott its Jewish neighbor, when it was precisely the first Arab nation to ever reach a peace agreement with Israel?

Simple: Egypt wants to keep its hegemony in the Middle East. Were Israel to integrate regionally, it would soon become the regional leader – economically, scientifically and technologically – at Egypt’s expense. Peace is seen by Cairo as a threat to its supremacy in the area.

Why not then completely cancel diplomatic relations with the Jewish state? Even more simple: Since it signed a peace agreement with Israel, Egypt received more than $30 billion in American economic assistance. Consequently, Mubarak implements a dual policy. He keeps a «cold peace» with Israel in order to guarantee the flow of American dollars to his coffers, while he minimizes Egypt’s relations with Israel and demonizes it as much as possible to prevent Israel’s regional integration.

This American policy of financial appeasement, fully supported by Israel, consists of tempting moderate Arab countries with economic help in exchange for diplomatic relations with Israel. But it has its restrictions. The same policy will be condemned to failure so long as a parallel policy of regional democratization will not be pursued.

Just as Tel-Aviv University professor Martin Sherman pointed out: «By making the inherently aggressive dictatorships of the region more prosperous, we will not make them more pacific, only more powerful.» Sadly, Egypt’s «cold peace» remarkably confirms this statement.

The author is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.