Daniel Kohl of Milwaukee recently traveled to Israel and Egypt as part of the American Jewish Committee’s annual leadership mission. One of eight Sholom D. Comay fellows, he met with Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and world learders; and attended the reopening of the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum. Following are some thoughts from his days in Cairo.
On a glorious late morning in March, I was seated in the 20th row of an Air Sinai jet, paging through a book and excited to be part of an AJC delegation heading to Cairo.
Beginning our descent we were discomfited by sharp turbulence, which lasted for several minutes and ceased. We then passed over a sprawling metropolis, twice the size of Manhattan. A fascinating but disconcerting visit lay ahead.
It quickly became evident how seriously the authorities took our protection, as well as the content of our discussions. At all times we felt closely guarded, carefully watched.
A cordon of uniformed men blocked off a downtown street when we visited Cairo’s one minimally functioning synagogue.
The flipside to this careful scrutiny was the tremendous access afforded our AJC delegation. Shuttling across town we met a “who’s who” of Egyptian businessmen, journalists, and politicians, in most cases finding hospitality the rule and fresh political thinking the exception.
But in this intellectual capital of the Arab world, where thinkers and policy analysts appear to be grappling with the challenge of change more forthrightly than many politicians, these exceptions were noteworthy and encouraging.
Our meetings left no doubt that Egypt takes its role as a Middle East peace broker very seriously. But how constructive a force will Egypt be? Much of what was said left me discouraged.
‘Back channel messages’
• The road map toward Israel-Palestinian peace. Egypt’s official position is that the parties will enter the next round of negotiations “from scratch,” pledged to the “road map” but somehow divorced from the events of the last four-and-a-half years — the violent Palestinian “intifada” and the erosion of Oslo-era trust in a negotiated settlement.
Egypt’s affable foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, qualified that position even further, explaining that prior agreements and understandings reached in Taba and Geneva should serve as “reference points” to help move discussions forward.
“It is unrealistic to expect Abu Mazen to confront terror cells,” Gheit told us, “without first being given an endgame” (parlance for final status issues?) where the road map might lead.
• Gaza disengagement and Israeli domestic politics. Egyptian officials also downplayed the security concerns and political obstacles that confront Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, suggesting the Israeli leader is merely stalling for time.
Former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, making no effort to hide his mistrust in Sharon, pessimistically predicted he wouldn’t live to see Israel pull out of the West Bank. Gheit, referring to possible fallout from a Gaza withdrawal, commented that the Israeli leader’s life was not at risk from assassination.
Seeing Egyptian officials so quick to qualify their official position before a Jewish audience, I couldn’t help wondering what kind of back channel messages they are sending to the Arab world.
• Democracy and reform. The American diplomatic challenge is two-fold: encouraging democracy without antagonizing an important broker for Israel-Palestinian peace; bolstering reformers without undermining their credibility on the Arab street.
Earlier this month Egypt agreed to open up its presidential election and released jailed opposition leader Ayman Nour.
These developments, while positive, also underscore the impediments to democratic reform in Egypt. These half-steps, grudging and precipitated by intense U.S. pressure, are mostly symbolic.
Egypt remains an autocratic state with a tightly controlled press, a questionable human rights record, and a clunky bureaucratic apparatus. Over 25 percent of all employed Egyptians work for the government in some capacity. Meaningful change seems distant.
• The “cold peace” between Israel and Egypt. In a welcome move, Egypt has returned its ambassador to Tel Aviv, ending a 53-month hiatus; Jerusalem is accelerating the replacement of the Israeli ambassador whose term in Cairo ended last year.
Another well-received development was the establishment of qualified investment zones designed to bolster trade between the neighbor nations.
On the other hand, tourism between the two countries has slowed to a trickle, cultural exchanges are practically nonexistent, and diplomatic relations remain stilted and tense.
Perhaps most troubling of all is Israel’s consistently negative coverage in the Egyptian press. We shared dinner with a journalist, known as the Egyptian Barbara Walters, who boasted that she would never interview an Israeli or a Jew on her television show.
In the March 18 English edition of the Egyptian Gazette a front page story warned of an impending Jewish “strike against the Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem.”
A second story reported on an Egyptian-Qatari joint statement calling for a complete Israeli withdrawal “from all the Arab territories occupied since 1967.” An editorial decried “the illegal separation barrier,” which “if completed” would “lock the Palestinians into a big prison” and “make a mockery of any talk about peace.”
Such images and words hardly prepare the Arab street for the hard bargaining and difficult concessions required for a lasting and mutually acceptable peace.
• Jewish life and anti-Semitism in Egypt. To glimpse Jewish life in Cairo is to see a long and proud Jewish tradition dying before one’s eyes. Of Cairo’s 17 million residents, less than 100 identify themselves as Jewish. Nearly all of the 40 or so still willing or able to participate communally are women beyond age 65.
Underscoring the daily challenges these elderly women confront, a large, slightly tattered sign hung on a building directly across the street from the downtown synagogue: Individual pictures of Sharon, former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, and Moshe Dayan emblazoned beneath the large caption “Killers.”
Urging the Egyptian authorities to remove this offensive sign, we were told that anti-Semitism isn’t tolerated in Egypt and promised by the country’s human rights agency (headed by Boutros-Ghali) that the government would seek the sign’s removal.
Hardly reassuring, however, was the remark that such a political expression of hate would be entirely appropriate across from Cairo’s Israeli Embassy. Good luck Mr. Ambassador.
In my three days there, I was able to witness a nation openly struggling between tradition and modernization, insularity and openness, autocracy and reform.
I left Cairo tired and bewildered, but with a clear sense of Egyptian attitudes towards Israel, Jews, democratic reform, and the role Egypt sees in a changing Arab world.
My overwhelming impression is that Egypt and the aging men who lead it are averse to change. They cling to a Nasserite view of Egypt leading the Arab world but are slow to embrace democracy and reform.
They strongly desire a decisive role in brokering a Middle East peace, but the messages Egypt conveys to the street about Israel and the contours of a likely Palestinian state are dangerously counterproductive.
Will Egypt be a constructive force for peace and reform in the Middle East? I’m hopeful, but not holding my breath.
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