Egypt- The dead end country always travelling down dead end roads.
Posted on 07/24/2002 2:07:09 PM PDT by jonatron
Tunneling - a useful pursuit
In a phone call Ariel Sharon made to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a short time after Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001, he proposed the two leaders meet in a peace tent somewhere on the Israeli-Egyptian border. Sharon was attempting to overcome Mubarak's refusal to make even a single official visit to Israel.
So, proposed Sharon in friendly fashion, let's set up a tent, half of which would stand on the soil of the Egyptian Sinai desert and half on the soil of the Israeli Negev, and hold a summit meeting there.
Mubarak refused. Over the years he had become accustomed to Israeli prime ministers going to him in Alexandria, Cairo or Sharm e-Sheikh, while he himself would not reciprocate, except for one hurried trip to Jerusalem to participate in Yitzhak Rabin's funeral.
Ezer Weizman, who likes to boast that he invented the peace with Egypt, pleaded with Mubarak for years, both face-to-face (in Egypt, of course) and by phone, urging him to relent and come, but Mubarak kept putting him off. Rabin, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and, of course, Shimon Peres all went to Egypt, dishonoring Israel in the process.
In October 2000 Barak even agreed to attend an emergency conference in Sharm e-Sheikh sponsored by Mubarak and with the participation of president Bill Clinton in the hope of persuading Arafat to discontinue the terrorist offensive he had started a month earlier.
Back in March 1996 Clinton had launched the international conference against terrorism in Sharm e-Sheikh. Peres was running against Netanyahu in the elections when Arafat's suicide bombers blew up a series of buses in Jerusalem. Mubarak had the honor of hosting world leaders, including princes from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, who came to express their solidarity with the war against terror.
The conference was of course intended to rescue Peres's election campaign. As it turned out, it helped neither Peres nor the war against Arafat or bin Laden terror.
In principle, it's not a bad thing for Israeli celebrities to visit Egypt or participate in such international conferences. They are good for Egypt's ego, and Egypt is the leader of the Arab world, attempting to contribute to the war against terrorism including Islamic Jihad terrorism, which threatens Egypt itself domestically.
The peace agreement with Israel has been very advantageous for Mubarak. But his hostile attitude toward Israel, expressed by his refusal to visit, testifies to the coldness of that peace. Mubarak consistently refused to come here even while Israeli leaders were honoring the Oslo Accords and preparing to continue giving in to Arafat's demands.
This week Mubarak added to his store of pretexts, in a newspaper interview. He would not come to Israel, he explained, "as long as the occupation continues and there is no solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." As usual, he subsequently denied these remarks.
It is very important to maintain the peace with Egypt, but equally important to remember that Egypt is making every effort to help the Palestinians destroy the State of Israel from within. Its policy is to take every step short of total war with Israel. To prepare for that ultimate option if there is no alternative, Egypt has developed a gigantic army equipped with the most modern US weapons.
AMONG SECRET Palestinian documents seized by Israel at Orient House in Jerusalem a year ago was the Palestinian protocol of a conversation between Arafat and Mubarak five years before, in which Mubarak called another war with Israel "inevitable."
Arafat and Mubarak never dreamed this protocol would fall into Israeli hands. If, therefore, Mubarak could bleed and weaken Israel via the Palestinian Trojan horse, without itself becoming tied up in a war against it, that was his preferred option.
Consequently, in the name of the "peace process" with the Palestinians, Mubarak has over the years granted propaganda interviews to foolish Israel TV correspondents in order to pressure Israel's governments into making concessions to Arafat.
At the same time the Palestinians, day and night, over months and years, have been digging tunnels from Egyptian Rafiah to Palestinian Rafiah in order to smuggle in the weapons and explosives Arafat has been using during the last 22 months of war.
If Mubarak so wished, he could end these smuggling activities just as he killed hundreds of members of Egyptian Jihad, not hesitating to arrest thousands when they threatened his regime.
It would come as no surprise to learn that Egyptian intelligence was encouraging this arms smuggling through the tunnels. In the shadow of Arafat's terrorist offensive against Israel, Egypt hoped its "friendly advice" would be accepted, that Israel would hurriedly grant Arafat additional concessions.
However, things went wrong for Mubarak and his senior adviser, Osama el-Baz, known for his anti-Israel views. They failed to take into account that Ariel Sharon would be elected prime minister, that he would stay in power, and that he would turn the Palestinian Trojan horse into a worthless political donkey, one the US Administration would call to expel from the Middle Eastern stables.
This week Mubarak and el-Baz repeated their old trick, attempting to undermine our government from within Israel itself.
(They did this during Anwar Sadat's era, exploiting Ezer Weizman's political stupidity as defense minister, and that of his national security adviser Avraham Tamir, to undermine Menachem Begin's regime. They played the same game during Yitzhak's Shamir's tenure as prime minister, via Peres, and again during Netanyahu's premiership, stroking the "strategic" ego of defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai until Netanyahu was forced to fire him.)
And, one after the other, Mubarak and el-Baz invited two peaceniks entranced by their own rhetoric: Minister Efraim Sneh and Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg. Aiming to exploit the potential of internal Israeli intrigue, Mubarak also met with defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.
Thus do the Egyptians hope to learn about the mood here and extract information from their egocentric guests that will help them go on sowing discord inside Israel, digging tunnels under the Israeli government.
The egotistic caprices of opposition leader Yossi Sarid and Yossi Beilin, both welcome guests in Egypt, of course, are not enough for the Egyptians, who want to inflate the ego of Burg, who was recently prepared to travel to Ramallah in order to address Arafat's "parliament," and of Ben-Eliezer, who announced he was prepared to give into the Palestinians on virtually every issue.
Fortunately, all Mubarak's invited Israeli "partners" can provide him with only unreliable support. In this week's cabinet meeting Sharon announced that decisions would be made only by the government, and that trips such as those of Sneh and Ben-Eliezer would express only the personal desire of these people to expound their political doctrines.
As an IDF commander Sharon defeated the Egyptian Army four times: in the Sinai desert in 1956 and 1967; in the War of Attrition in 1970; and during the crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973.
Now he is prime minister, and for Egypt, who has been using the last few years to carry on a dangerous and bitter struggle against Israel via the Palestinian Authority, another defeat is in the offing.
The writer is the Mideast correspondent of The New York Post.
Egypt- The dead end country always travelling down dead end roads.
He really is. But what about Israeli Avoda politicos? These Lefti idiots are so cheap, and they're a real danger for their own country.
As to Sharon, he's the man! Kicked Arab butts all his life, and continues to do it now... he should become PM long time ago, but Israel was for decades under the Socialist spell. What a shame!
Does Hosni need a reminder of what happened in 1967 and 1973 when Sharon was unleashed with a mechanized division?
He cut off and destroyed 3 Egyptian armored divisions in 1967!
October 10, 1985 - The quick thinking of Ollie North, the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Battlegroup Admiral Jerry Unruh and the actions of the men of Carrier Air Wing 17/USS Saratoga (CV60). Mighty Fine!
To me that is more than a little weird.
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