Thursday, June 21, 2007

Egypt and Gaza

Analysis: Calling Egypt's bluff on Gaza | Jerusalem Post

I noted a few posts ago the suggestion that getting Egypt into Gaza to sought out the mess would be an ideal solution, as far as the West is concerned. But I speculated that such involvement would probably risk the stability of the Egyptian government.

This seems to have been a good guess. From the Jerusalem Post, the article above discusses why Egypt does not do enough to stop the flow of smuggled arms into Gaza:
The Mubarak administration has its own delicate balancing act to maintain between the calls for democracy and the ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow the secular government. The last thing it needs is to get sucked into the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians and between Fatah and Hamas.

Egypt faces an Islamist terrorist threat, with bombings usually targeted at the tourism industry on the southern Red Sea coast of Sinai. So far, North Sinai, which is also close to Cairo and the Nile Delta, has been quiet and that is something they want to maintain at all costs. Allowing Hamas to smuggle arms in to Gaza through their territory is a reasonable price as long as none of it remains behind in Egypt and the Palestinians go about it with discretion...

The policy remains not to risk even one Egyptian for the Palestinians' sake. If the US and Israel are to realize their hopes of a greater Egyptian involvement in dealing with the Hamas mini-state that has sprung up overnight in Gaza, it will only be achieved by a considerable package of incentives, or a serious threat to other interests of the Mubarak regime.

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