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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Interview Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Peace with Israel 20 years on
By Nadia Abou Al-Magd
Many of those who opposed the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which was signed on 26 March 1979, did so because they felt that Egypt had abandoned Arab countries by signing it independently from them.
Hossam Issa, a professor of commercial law at Ain Al-Shams University, considers the treaty "a historical mistake." He believes it harmed both Arab and Egyptian interests and that the price Egypt paid was very high: withdrawal from the Arab World. Issa describes all the current divisions and problems in the Arab world as the consequence of Egypt making peace with "our number one historical enemy".
"I think we regained Sinai, but lost Egypt," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Issa's rationale for opposing the treaty is exactly why Wahid Abdel-Meguid, editor of the Arab Strategic Report, who initially had reservations, is in favour of the treaty now. "Twenty years later, I see the treaty in a new light. It was the outcome of a problem and not the cause of it, as I used to think then," said Abdel-Meguid, who wrote a book entitled Twenty Years after Camp David.
At the time of Camp David and the peace treaty, Abdel-Meguid had "reservations" over the agreements because he feared they would weaken the Arab position. With time, he discovered that it was impossible for Egypt to wait for all Arabs to agree to a peaceful settlement of the conflict with Israel. "I think Arab coordination during the October 1973 war was an exceptional moment in their history that is not likely to be repeated," Abdel-Meguid added.
For Mohamed Abdel-Moneim, chief editor of Rose Al-Youssef magazine, the late President Anwar El-Sadat was ahead of his time when he decided to make peace with Israel "because peace is the natural end of any struggle."
Abdel-Moneim, who was a military correspondent at the time, sent El-Sadat a telegram describing him as "the most courageous man in the world." "Definitely Sadat was ahead of his time, regardless of whether those who hate him like it or not," Abdel-Moneim told the Weekly.
Veteran diplomat Tahsin Bashir, who was with the Egyptian negotiating team, says that the treaty, despite some shortcomings, was a real achievement. "Should history repeat itself, I would still support it. Can anyone say 'no' to regaining his occupied land?" Bashir said to the Weekly.
Sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim, who opposed the treaty, as well as El-Sadat's policies, has changed his position 180 degrees. "I vehemently opposed the treaty then because we were told that we had a resounding victory in the 1973 War; so I could not understand why we should make concessions such as accepting the demilitarised zone in Sinai," Ibrahim said.
Ibrahim conducted a series of public opinion surveys in Egypt and several Arab countries about the Arab-Israeli conflict. To his surprise, 63 percent of the 2,000 people who were sampled in Egypt opted for an alternative that was very similar to what Sadat did: to have a historical compromise with Israel, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.
Ibrahim initially refused to believe the outcome of the poll and repeated it with a new team of researchers and another sample. To his dismay, the outcome was almost identical to that of the first.
That drove home the point that what he stood for might not be a true reflection of public sentiments. However, the shift in his position took 10 years.
The shift was partly triggered by a stormy meeting between Ibrahim and Sadat five weeks before the latter's assassination in October 1981.
Sadat's assertion that no conflict, following World War II, had been settled by war "kept simmering in my mind," Ibrahim said.
"After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Sadat's words started to resonate and echo in my mind and heart," Ibrahim told the Weekly. He later authored a book, Vindication of Sadat, on the 10th anniversary of the president's assassination in 1991.
However, Ibrahim was not psychologically ready to go to Israel until 1995. He said that he has "no regrets" about the visit because he believes now that "peace, although it didn't end hostilities and conflict, has been beneficial for Egypt."
Abdel-Wahab Elmesseiri, author of the Encyclopedia on Jews, Judaism and Zionism, disagrees. "Peace with Israel has meant concessions on the part of Egypt and subverted its leadership of the region without reaching the promised land of peace," Elmesseiri told the Weekly. He does not believe that the 1973 war with the "settler colonial enclave that was set up in Palestine," is the last war. "We know from our experience now that it is not," he added.
Ibrahim El-Bahrawi, a professor of Hebrew and director of the Israel section in the Middle East Research Centre at Ain Shams University, agrees that the peace treaty ushered in a truce for the Egyptian armed forces before an inevitable future war.
"We had to rebuild Egyptian society and our armed forces to be prepared for the coming confrontation, which is inevitable," El-Bahrawi told the Weekly. "And we won't be the ones to initiate the hostilities."
El-Bahrawi believes that Israel's withdrawal from Sinai was due to international pressure, and not the result of a real change in "Israel's Zionist expansionist policies or the religious belief that Israel's borders extend from the Euphrates to the Nile". Besides, El-Bahrawi adds, "Israel is urging all the Jews of the world to come to it; and it is definitely not planning to settle them in Jordan, where resources are scarce, but in Sinai."
El-Bahrawi, who says that Israel considers him a "hawkish negotiator", pointed out that he lost many members of his family and friends in the British-French-Israeli aggression on Port Said in 1956. Therefore, he decided to learn Hebrew, "the language of the enemy". "Ideologically I believe that the treaty is wrong and I'm against it, but I'm for it tactically because there is no other alternative," he said.
