Egypt, much under fire, emerged stronger from the crisis in Gaza, writes Abdel-Moneim Said* It appears, at least for the moment, that the Gaza crisis has passed. The guns have fallen silent and the rocket fire has stopped, and there is talk of making the ceasefire permanent, of the reconstruction of Gaza, of Palestinian reconciliation and the resumption of the peace process. On the surface the subject has shifted and the tone of language has changed, even if anger continues to seethe in people's hearts while minds are contemplating another round of confrontation. The Gaza crisis did not greatly depart from the general run of Arab-Israeli flare-ups. The Israeli occupation of Arab land is at the root of the problem, with the matters of border crossings and Hamas power in Gaza providing the sparks. Once the fighting erupts, there follows outcry in the Arab world and abroad, calls for international intervention, cries for urgent relief and a drive to pass UN resolutions until we arrive at the final chapter: a ceasefire and efforts to prolong it, a call for an Arab summit and the beginning, now for the tenth time, of the reconstruction of yet another demolished Arab city. We saw this cycle play itself out in Lebanon in 2006, in the West Bank in 2003 and in other uprisings and wars. What is new this time is the dynamic of Egyptian involvement. After signing the first peace agreement with Israel, Egypt believed that it had liberated its land and could help the Palestinians without getting its fingers burned. One of the objectives of the recent crisis, however, was precisely that: to burn Egyptian fingers, to reduce our influence and isolate us from the Arab and Islamic world, indeed to weaken our standing in the eyes of the entire world. Now to the grim details. Every crisis has a starting point for each of its participants. For Israel it began on 19 December, the moment that Hamas announced the end to the truce, following a week of talks and rivalry with Islamic Jihad over resistance. Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and the other resistant factions had given themselves a new starting point for firing rockets, placing Israel before the choice of whether to strike pre-emptively or to wait until the other side fired first. Theoretically, Hamas could have rescinded the truce yet adhered to it in practice. In fact, many international parties urged Hamas to opt for this course as a form of brinkmanship in order to budge an unacceptable situation without courting actual hostilities. However, the dynamics of the Hamas-Jihad rivalry dictated otherwise, and before long 60 rockets soared into southern Israel, inviting a resumption of Israeli belligerence. The firing of rockets forces decisions to be made on the receiving side, and when those decision-makers are on the threshold of general elections they do not base their calculations on how powerful or effective the rockets are, but on the prospect of being voted out of power for failing to undertake what would be regarded as their duty towards their fellow citizens. For the Palestinians, the crisis began on 27 December when Israel unleashed a savage and brutal offensive. It was an attack by land, sea and air, in the course of which the invading forces divided Gaza into chunks which they devoured piece by piece. From his residence in Damascus, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal stated that he believed that the offensive would not last more than three days. Instead, it stretched on relentlessly for three weeks. For the Palestinians, therefore, the crisis was threefold. They faced a bombardment of unanticipated intensity, contrary to the factions' prediction that Israel would shrug off the rockets for fear of repeating what had happened in Lebanon. Secondly, they faced an offensive of unanticipated scope, extending to government buildings, infrastructure, civilians, tunnels, not to mention the assassination of political and military leaders, revealing the existence of an extensive network of Israeli intelligence that enabled the invading forces to pinpoint the whereabouts of figures of the stature of Nazar Rayan and Said Sayem. Thirdly, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah found itself part of a crisis over which it had no control, pressured from within to declare a new Intifada in the West Bank and from abroad to take this action or that with respect to Gaza with its hands tied behind its back. This time, as I mentioned, Egypt was also directly affected by the crisis and for us it began early on, two weeks before the truce ended when a demonstration was staged in Tehran in front of the Egyptian Embassy protesting against the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing. In fact, the crossing was actually open for all legitimate and humanitarian purposes whereas it was Hamas that, only a few days previously, had refused to allow Palestinians out of Gaza in order to make the pilgrimage to Mecca for the Eid Al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice). In all events, for reasons pertaining to tensions in Egyptian-Iranian relations, Iranian authorities staged an anti-Egyptian demonstration. However, before long the contagion spread to Beirut, Damascus, Sanaa and other capitals, all beneath the same banners and flags, all shouting out the same slogans, and all covered by the same commentators echoing the same remarks on Al-Jazeera, Al-Manar, Al-Alem and Suriya satellite news networks. The campaign escalated after the truce ended and grew more and more strident with the rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and with the Israeli offensive, culminating in the attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Yemen and, more recently following the ceasefire, the attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Indonesia. It was obvious that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and their broad network of alliances with various Shia and Sunni fundamentalist groups were behind this campaign. The Brotherhood in Egypt even went so far as to accuse the Egyptian government of complicity in the Israeli aggression by cutting off the flow of goods and aid to the Palestinians in Gaza via Rafah. However, it was Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah that really overstepped the mark when he called upon the Egyptian people to rebel and open the crossing by force, and called upon the Egyptian army to mount a coup. That triggered Egyptians' patriotic vigilance and their response, especially in the wake of the assassination of Yasser Farid Issawi, was to rally solidly behind President Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian leadership. Thus, while on the surface the Egyptian part of the crisis seemed to revolve around Rafah, it had much deeper aspects. Firstly, it had much to do with regional power politics between Egypt and Iran and certain Arab countries that share Tehran's hostility towards Cairo. Indeed, during his visit to Syria, French President Nicolas Sarkozy observed that Damascus was not so much interested in solving the crisis as it was in excluding the Egyptian role in managing the crisis. Secondly, it had to do with an attempt on the part of Israel and the US to impose conditions in the Sinai that Egypt cannot accept. The third aspect involved a small Arab country that wanted a role but whose one and only means of leverage is a television station. Ultimately, Egypt emerged victorious from this crisis because right does win in the end. There are certainly lessons to be learned from the crisis, because our media did not undertake the appropriate level of response, our diplomacy had not been prepared in advance for such a crisis and, often, we found ourselves on the defensive where an offensive position would have been preferable. Even so, what is clear is that people from the East and from the West came to Cairo to look for a solution. The Egyptian initiative was the only game in town, as they say. So, perhaps, we should take this as a sign that it is time to adopt a new tone of voice and a different mode of behaviour. * The writer is director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
