With Egypt still trying to find its way to the future, issues that were taboo under the ousted despotic regime are hotly debated in every teahouse — including the peace treaty with Israel, now entering its fourth decade.
During the uprising that ended President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Israel was hardly mentioned. But the recent raid on the Israeli embassy in Cairo has opened a debate over future relations between the two nations.
With a bland statement asserting that Egypt will “abide by its international obligations,” the interim government is doing its best to shut off the debate. This is a mistake.
The Egyptian view of Israel is a jumble of contradictions. Most Egyptians, even those who never warmed to the military regime, have always felt bitter that their country suffered three major defeats at the hands of “tiny Israel.” At the same time, they’ve persuaded themselves that making peace was a favor that Egypt did for Israel.
Thus, losing wars to Israel was a cause of national humiliation while making peace with it is somehow a sign of Egyptian magnanimity.
The Mubarak regime had every interest in pretending that peace was an Egyptian gift that could be withdrawn at any time. This enabled Mubarak to collect for that gift again and again without taking the steps needed to foster a proper peace with Israel. So, after three decades, what goes for peace between Egypt and Israel is little more than a ceasefire.
Egypt would do well to seize this moment of freedom and take a serious look at the issue. A public and sober debate would show that peace with Israel is primarily good for Egypt — in fact essential for its democratic development.
The Camp David that shaped the lukewarm peace also let Egypt recover the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had seized in the 1967 war. That meant regaining over 60,000 square miles of territory, and an area that holds more than 80 percent of the nation’s oil and natural-gas resources — which provide Egypt’s top source of revenue after tourism. The return of the Sinai also meant the re-opening of the Suez Canal, the nation’s No. 3 income source.
Peace also brought $2 billion a year in US aid, as well as gifts from Europe. Thus, over the past 30 years, Egypt has received over $100 billion in peace dividends.
Needless to say, without peace it would have been impossible for Egypt to develop its tourism industry and its hundreds of thousands of jobs. The “Egyptian Riviera” on the Red Sea would remain a forlorn desert.
Peace with Israel enabled Egypt to attract direct foreign investment on a scale few Egyptians had dreamt of. By 2010, in the Middle East, Egypt was second only to Turkey on that score, having attracted more than $50 billion — which helped the country achieve yearly economic growth rates of up to 8 percent for much of the past decade.
But Egypt’s biggest peace dividend came in the shape of a sharp reduction in the military budget. Between the mid-’60s and mid-’70s, it spent around 15 percent of gross domestic product on its military. The inevitable effect was lack of resources to spend on education, health and economic development.
Worse still, the military made a deal with Islamist fanatics to suffocate Egypt’s democratic aspirations in the name of one day “eliminating the Zionist enemy.”
The myth of an eventual victory over Israel enabled the inefficient and corrupt military elite to hold the Egyptian people hostage. With peace in place, at least on paper, the military could no longer claim legitimacy for its despotic rule. Peace with Israel was an essential first step toward freedom from despotic rule in Egypt.
It would be healthy to bring the peace issue into the open so that those still dreaming of war and revenge could be exposed as enemies, primarily, of the Egyptian people.