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| My hat tip to Lilly Rivlin for citing this important edition of Gershon Baskin’s Jerusalem Post column: ‘The view from Cairo’
Since Friday I have been in Cairo. … I came to Cairo to attend a small
meeting of MECA – the Middle East Citizens Assembly. This small
but important organization was founded by Walid Salem, a Palestinian
peace and democracy activist from east Jerusalem who decided that for
real democracy to take root in the Arab world, citizens needed to take
responsibility, stop acting like subjects and become active participants.
Walid succeeded in creating a network of democracy activists from all
over the Middle East….
Walid has consistently demanded that Israelis
be included at every meeting. …
…. I learned of the horrible attack against the Israeli Embassy, and the
failure of the Egyptian security forces to prevent it. My friends at the
MECA meeting condemned the attack both publicly and in private, and
also expressed their concern for my security and their solidarity,assuring
me that they would protect me.
At the meeting, the well known professor and democracy activist Saad
Eddin Ibrahim, who had been jailed and tortured by Mubarak, gave a
brilliant presentation about the Egyptian revolution and how Tahrir square,
and many other squares around Egypt, had been transformed into
“Parliaments of the People.” In my speech, which followed Prof. Ibrahim’s,
I tried to express the deep concern felt by Israelis at what we saw going on
around us in “the neighborhood.” The “Parliaments of the People,” I said,
were beginning to look like “Parliaments of the mobs.” ….
THE NARGILA boy in the coffee shop in Zamalek asked me where I was
from. “Falestin,” I said. “Very good,” he replied, “we love Palestine … I will
kill all of the Israelis for you!”
I asked him why he hated Israelis so much. Did he know any Israelis, I asked?
No, and he didn’t want to, he replied. He hated the Israelis, he said, because
they killed Palestinians and took their land, and because now they were also
killing Egyptians.
I asked him what he would think if Israel ended the occupation and made peace
with a Palestinian state. After a brief pause, he said, “if they make real peace
and free the Palestinians and let them have a state, we will have nothing against
Israel, ahalan w’sahalan (welcome).”
This young man, educated on the street, and by Al Jazeera, probably knows
almost nothing about the conflict, but his views reflect those of millions of Arabs
all over the region, and millions of Turks as well. People across this region are
willing to accept an Israel that lives in peace with its Arab neighbors. Israel is
hated in the Arab and Muslim world not, as many Israelis believe, simply
because they deny our right to exist. If Israel would only understand that its
relations with the Palestinians determine the level of its acceptance in the
region perhaps we would be at a very different place today.
[My emphasis
added.]
People in the MECA meeting said that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was still
on the table and serves as the basis for Israel to be a welcome member throughout
the region.
All of the Egyptians that I have spoken with condemned the attack
against the Israeli embassy. …
They say that these people are actively working to undermine the revolution and
to show that post-Mubarak Egypt is a lawless society where all security has broken
down. They hope to hijack the revolution and to bring back the old regime.
….
It seems there is a very real possibility that these attacks were in fact carried out by
anti-revolutionary “agents provocateurs.”
From my admittedly non-scientific reading
of the Cairo street “map,” the Egyptian masses do not support the attack against the
Israeli embassy. They do not support warm peace with Israel or forms of normalization
because in their view Israel has not implemented the second chapter of the Israeli-
Egyptian peace treaty of Camp David – ending the occupation, but they do understand
and support the strategic importance of the peace for Egypt. Egyptians do not want to
go to war against Israel. ….
You can read this entire column by clicking here. |
106 W 32ND ST, NEW YORK, NY, 10001 (212) 242 4500
In the case of Egypt, their animosity isn’t necessarily entirely based off Israel’s relationship/occupation/conflict with the Palestinians. As Eric Trager and the blogger Arun point out in the links below, the wars they had a (relatively) short while ago are also probably sources of anger.
I’ve said on this blog and others my pessimism regarding anti-Jewish bigotry in the Arab/Islamic world; I don’t think I need to rehash it.
Links:
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/94826/egyptian-nationalism-anti-israel-gaza-arab-spring-sinai-embassy
http://arunwithaview.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/egypt-israel/
Glad to hear about the Middle East Citizens Assembly and Walid Salem, but the 2nd half of this is worse than “non-scientific.” It’s anecdote on a complex subject that requires more effort.