Egypt will continue to work for the Palestinian people whatever ill-informed opinion pundits say, writes Ibrahim Nafie Egypt, this week, was the locus of intensive diplomatic efforts focussing on the Israeli disengagement plan from Gaza. French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has just left Cairo after talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Maher, over efforts to incorporate the disengagement plan into the roadmap. The Egyptian foreign minister then held talks with the US assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, William Burns. Then, yesterday in Taba, Egypt hosted the Quartet. In keeping with Egypt's aim to engage international powers in the search for a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the meeting was critical, too, to the advancement of Egyptian perceptions of Gaza. It followed the Quartet's recent session in Washington in which participants agreed to encourage Sharon's disengagement plan, but only on condition that it be a prelude to the implementation of the three phases of the roadmap on the basis of its original principles and its vision for the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005. In tandem with these activities in Egypt, head of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Suleiman held crucial talks this week with top-level officials in Ramallah and Tel Aviv on new aspects of the Israeli disengagement plan and, in a few days, a high-level Egyptian envoy will head to Washington in order to prevail upon the Bush administration to take a more proactive stance at this particularly delicate stage in the drive to revive the roadmap. In pursuing these diplomatic efforts Egypt is keeping its sights firmly trained on its ultimate objective, which is to promote a political process that leads to a comprehensive and lasting peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. For this reason Egypt's role in the current phase cannot be restricted to the security dimension alone. Security is only one facet of peace efforts, which inherently require that the Palestinians be invited back to the negotiating table after having been deliberately locked out of all crucial deliberations. Furthermore, in order to ensure that the comprehensive process that we seek is not derailed, Egypt's current drive includes a number of precautionary measures. Foremost among our concerns is the need obviate attempts on the part of Sharon to manipulate the disengagement process in a manner that would transform the whole of Gaza into a huge Palestinian prison camp. For this reason Egypt has developed a detailed working plan for engaging influential powers in a reconstruction programme that would gradually generate the concrete foundations for a political settlement and the creation of a Palestinian state. Egypt is presently urging the rapid repair and reopening of the Gaza air and sea ports so as to reconnect the Palestinians with the outside world, and the reconstruction of their transport, communications, water and electricity infrastructure so that the Palestinians can finally feel some tangible improvement in the quality of daily life. Towards this end Egypt has already begun communications with donor nations in order to raise the necessary funding and, moreover, the World Bank has already signalled its willingness to earmark a billion dollars per year towards reconstruction and development projects in Palestine. A second major concern of Egypt is to safeguard vital Palestinian infrastructural installations from future acts of destruction at the hands of occupation forces. The Egyptian working plan, therefore, entails steps to mobilise the international community into actively supervising and monitoring every phase of the disengagement plan. In particular, Egypt is pushing for the creation of an international peacekeeping force, one of the tasks of which would be to protect vital installations. As the most formidable stumbling block before progress on the Palestinian-Israeli track has always been Israel's failure to implement its end of the bargain in the agreements it signed, Egypt has also worked to formulate a detailed timetable for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, supplemented by recommendations on mechanisms for the international monitoring and enforcement of this process. In fact this is the immediate object of the current diplomatic drive which, in effect, constitutes the first phase of the working plan. The second phase will focus on the withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of all Israeli settlements in Gaza and of three settlements in the West Bank. The third phase will focus on bringing the Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table in the framework of the roadmap. Nonetheless, in spite of the abundant evidence of Egypt's careful planning and commitment to the advancement of the Palestinian cause, some critics cannot bring themselves to abandon their favourite game of casting aspersions. Egypt, they intimate, charge or warn, is acting on petty, short-term considerations, or is heading blindly into a trap, or will do more harm than good if it is allowed to play an active role in the search for a solution to the Palestinian cause. Clearly, it is not the substance of what they say that counts, since the object of the game is simply to raise as many doubts and suspicions as possible. To them "theory" is more important than reality, their prescriptions more valid than the actual opinions and aspirations of the people concerned and the regional and international movement to help these people. Instead of taking the trouble to examine and sort out the facts, they take the easy way out, which is to call everything into question and to presume the worst intentions on the part of everyone involved. The natural conclusion of this approach is that a conspiracy is afoot, involving all regional and international powers, not to mention those organisations that embody international legitimacy. I do not refute that Egypt and the Arab world are the object of schemes and strategies. However, wild conjecturing and talking in the air is one thing, rational assessment and practical action to defuse conspiracies and defend our rights and interests is quite another. Our policy planners in Egypt are fully aware of what is going on around them and which parties stand where. Moreover, Egypt is a regional power long accustomed to overcoming adversity in the defence of its rights and interests. It has never recoiled in the face of the most arduous challenges and it will continue to exercise its national and regional duty to stand up against the plots that are woven against us and to promote strong and realistic collective Arab action towards this end. Perhaps the most tangible evidence of this can be found in the periodic dips in our bilateral relations with both the US and Israel as the result of the steadfastness of our commitment to Arab causes, the Palestinian cause above all. Most of those bent on criticising Egypt's handling of the Israeli plan to disengage from Gaza have sought confirmation for their biases and prejudices in the Israeli press and are prepared to take even the most absurd reports at face value. Take for example the story about the Israeli announcement of a plan to build a trench along the Gaza-Egypt border. So firm and unequivocal was Egypt's response to this announcement that within hours of its release the Israeli prime minister announced that his country would never go ahead with such a project without first consulting Egypt. Soon afterwards, the Israeli chief of staff said that the purpose of the Defence Department in making this announcement and issuing a request for bids was merely to get an estimate of the costs of the construction. The Israeli minister of interior hastened to add that he saw no real need for such a moat. One would think that experienced journalists and commentators would have acquired the sense to hold up such reports to a more critical light. More often than not announcements of that nature are sent up as trial balloons, or are deliberately intended to mislead or convey certain messages, phenomena with which we are more than familiar in relations as complicated as those between Egypt and Israel. It must be stressed here in no uncertain terms that Egypt remains constantly vigilant over all military, political and economic dimensions of its national security. Such vigilance is the foremost task of its government and its people. Thus, any action Egypt embarks on is undertaken with the full awareness of the intentions behind such projects as the "new", "expanded" or "greater" Middle East. Egypt has considerable experience in dealing with schemes aiming to disrupt, partition and fragment the Arab world and has developed the capacity to confront them. In other words, Egypt does not need others to tell it what its responsibilities are, nor will it let its policies and strategic outlook be dictated by ill-informed conjectures and the outright lies aired on Arab satellite stations. Moreover, when some puffed-up guest on some satellite channel news "analysis" panel scoffs that Egypt's current diplomatic drive is motivated by the promise of a $300 million payoff from the US, we should bring that man down to size and expose his affront for what it is. To suggest that Egypt is acting in any way contrary to the interests of the Palestinian people and their leadership betrays, at best, a total ignorance of the facts. Egypt did not begin its drive until obtaining written authorisation from Yasser Arafat and ascertaining the approval of the Palestinian people. And as long as there is full accord between the PA and the various factions over this, Egypt will continue to pursue its efforts on behalf of the Palestinian people. Our principle has always been to serve the Palestinian cause, but at the same time we have always deferred to Palestinian ideas of the strategies Egypt could adopt to support their struggle for national liberation. If the Palestinian people decide to reject Egypt's current drive and sustain armed resistance, Egypt will respect that decision and do all in its power to support them. What is crucial is that it is the Palestinians who state what they want and not others pretending to speak on their behalf. In view of the foregoing, anyone who has a minimum grasp of the facts cannot possibly credit the tendentious nonsense to the effect that Egypt is helping to "bury" the Intifada and "protect" the occupation forces. Nothing more blatantly defies both logic and reality than the claim that Egypt's role in Gaza will be restricted to security functions. That the 150 to 200 advisers Egypt will be sending to Gaza range in their expertise over a full gamut of political, security, legal and administrative fields is sufficient to put paid to this claim. I can only hope that henceforward people writing on the Egyptian contribution to the Palestinian cause will be a little more faithful to the facts and show a little more integrity in their analyses. It is time to realise that the common infatuation with sensationalism and headline grabbing is counterproductive to any honest endeavour on behalf of the Palestinian people.
