Editorial, February 4, 2011

THE ironic thing about the ongoing turmoil in Egypt is that it was widely assumed that President Hosni Mubarak had one foot out the door anyway. The 82-year-old head of state had surgery last year and talk of who would be his successor was the fodder for many political analyses for months. True, Mubarak had not then announced an intention to retire, but neither had he committed to stand for re-election, in whatever counts as elections in Egypt these days.

That brings us to the part of the story that is anything but ironic – Egypt’s democracy problem, specifically its lack thereof.

Could anyone be surprised to see a spontaneous outpouring of frustration from a nation of 79 million people who are systematically deprived of a democratic voice in government? Even the most benevolent autocrat is still an autocrat, and Cairo’s seat of power is prone to graft and corruption. Add to that the dismal poverty in which most Egyptians live and the real question becomes not why Egyptians are showing signs of revolt, but rather how was it possible for Mubarak and his predecessors in his military-rooted power base to have managed to suppress rebellion for so many years until now.

The situation in Egypt poses a dilemma for Israel and its supporters, who personally champion human rights and yet find it problematic to join in the multinational Mubarak-bashing conga line when he has been one of their most reliable neighbours and facilitators of regional peace talks.

Israeli President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace prize laureate who does not choose his words carelessly, encapsulated the Israeli position succinctly on Monday. “Not everything Mubarak did was right,” Peres said. “But he did one thing for which we all owe him a debt of gratitude. He kept the peace in the Middle East.”

Jerusalem has not forgotten that Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, paid for the 1979 Camp David Peace Accords with Israel with his life, when he was assassinated two years later. Mubarak could have played it safe and distanced himself from Israel, but he continued the policies of Sadat and safeguarded the peace agreement.
In fact, Mubarak’s Egypt has been Israel’s most important and reliable regional ally in its campaign to isolate Iran regionally and militant Islamic extremists locally. While Sadat’s “cold peace” had never quite lived up to the promise of Camp David, there are few Israelis today who would say the agreement was not worthwhile.

That assessment could change if the peace pact fails to outlive Mubarak. Unfortunately, pundits say that is a distinct possibility if the Muslim Brotherhood manages to emerge from the current chaos with sway on Egypt’s foreign policy.

For it is one thing to support the spread of democracy, but it’s far from clear that democracy is what would emerge from a detonation of Cairo’s current political powderkeg.

What should weigh heavily on everyone’s minds is the possibility of a replay of the Iranian revolution of the 1970s, when the Shah was deposed only to be replaced by an even more repressive regime of Ayatollahs. It is that same regime, lest we forget, that continues to menace the world today as an expansionist terror-sponsoring nation on the cusp of becoming a nuclear-armed threat.

Egypt is not Iran, but it is a powerful nation that commands the Middle East’s second most potent army besides Israel, and it controls one of the world’s most strategic passages – the Suez Canal.

It’s also Israel’s neighbour, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in an unenviable position – shared incidentally by his counterparts in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza – whereby he can’t be seen as interfering or taking sides in the internal political affairs of the country to which he is inexorably tied by a common border.

Jerusalem’s interests, as Netanyahu said this week, is for continued stability in Cairo. The choices facing Mubarak regarding a transition of power and implementation of political reforms to head off a complete overthrow of Egypt’s traditional power structure is a matter that can only be negotiated between him and his people directly.

But when a potential outcome of the political free-for-all could be the collapse of the 30-year peace between Israel and Egypt, this becomes a

matter of existential importance for the Jewish State.

Like so many other occasions in the state’s nearly 63-year history, Israel must now pray for the best but prepare for the worst.

For nearly three decades, Hosni Mubarak has been the reassuring face at the other side of Israel’s southern door.

For better or for worse, and sooner rather than later, someone else will be knocking. It’s not too late to prepare for that eventuality, whatever tidings it may bring.