[Salon] The Slow Death of the Camp David Accords



The Slow Death of the Camp David Accords

Summary: President Sisi's recent use of the term "enemy" for Israel, coupled with a proposal for a joint Arab Force, signals a profound shift away from the post-Camp David regional order. Israel's Gaza operation and expansionist ambitions, now prioritised over the Egyptian regime's stability by both the U.S. and Israel, have shattered the decades-long alliance, leaving Egypt vulnerable to a significant domestic crisis if forced to accept a mass Palestinian exodus.

We thank our regular contributor Maged Mandour for today’s newsletter. Maged is a political analyst who also contributes to Middle East Eye and Open Democracy. He is a writer for Sada, the Carnegie Endowment online journal and the author of the recently published and highly recommended Egypt under El-Sisi (I.B.Tauris) which examines social and political developments since the coup of 2013. You can find Maged’s most recent AD podcast here.

In September, during his speech in the Arab and Islamic summit in Doha, Sisi called Israel an “enemy”, the first time that an Egyptian President has used that term to describe Israel since Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in 1977 according to a statement issued by Diaa Rashwan, head of the State Information Service, an unofficial spokesperson for the regime. This sharp escalation in rhetoric was followed by a proposal by the regime to establish a joint Arab Force based on the 1950 Joint Defence and Economic Cooperation treaty. This proposal, which was blocked by the UAE and Qatar, together with the increasingly aggressive rhetoric, reveal a creeping awareness that the rules of the game have changed, that the old world of Camp David is rapidly coming to an end, and that the alliance with Israel is not as permanent as once the regime assumed.

The bargain of Camp David is simple. In exchange for signing a separate peace with Israel, which severely weakened the collective Arab position and that of the Palestinians, the regime would receive lavish support from the United States, Israel would forgo its colonial ambitions in the Sinai, and close security cooperation would prevail between the two sides. The two nations would no longer be adversaries and Egypt would become a cornerstone of a regional order that accepts a two state solution and one that would later accept a creeping colonisation of occupied Palestinian territories after the collapse of the peace process. Implicit in this arrangement is an understanding that the United States will act as a deterrent against possible Israeli ambitions and - most importantly - a guarantor for the regime’s security. In time, this arrangement led to Israel adopting the position that stability for the regime in Egypt was critical for its own security. This became apparent in 2011 when Israeli officials and commentators reacted negatively to the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. The same pattern appeared again in 2013 after the coup that brought Sisi to power, when both AIPAC and Israel lobbied the US on behalf of the nascent military regime. Indeed, security cooperation went so deep that Israeli jets participated in airstrikes in Sinai and allowed the regime to increase the number of troops in the peninsula to counter the insurgents, in violation of the Camp David accords.


President Sisi, back when he was a Brigadier before the military coup that brought him to power, extends a helping hand to a US Sergeant Major who had taken a tumble on a US Defence Department visit to Egypt

The genocide in Gaza, however, has taken a sledgehammer to this cosy arrangement, with both the United States and Israel acting as revisionist powers looking to restructure the alliance that emerged out of the Camp David accords at the regime’s expense. Namely, the deep commitment to the Egyptian regime’s security has evaporated when weighed against the Israeli ambition to completely eliminate or ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in Gaza and to annex the West Bank - a prospect that would be devastating for the regime’s stability and its ability to maintain the cohesion of its base.

The reasons for this are simple. The regime’s ideological foundation is a deeply chauvinistic version of Egyptian nationalism which regards the idea of accepting a mass exodus of Palestinians as a betrayal of the nation. One only needs to keep in mind how conspiracy theories linking the Muslim Brotherhood to an alleged plot to sell Sinai to the Palestinians were instrumental in the popular mobilisation against the former President Morsi. A mass exodus of Palestinians would be extremely damaging to a regime that anchors its legitimacy in a nationalist narrative and which justifies its overt military domination as protection for the state. It also makes the regime susceptible to pressure from its political opponents who would undoubtedly use such a mass exodus to attack the regime as weak and incapable of protecting the Egyptian border and national security, a stain that would be very difficult to avoid considering that it would be reverse-employing the regime’s own nationalist narrative against it. This would cause the regime immense domestic damage that it would struggle to overcome.

Even President Trump’s peace plan which is anchored on a so-called temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF), probably entailing Egyptian involvement, will damage the regime domestically. It will likely entail the suppression of Palestinian resistance by Egyptian troops, a deeply unpopular prospect among large parts of the country. If casualties were to be reported amongst those forces popular anger would be palpable, since they would have died to protect Israel. This leaves the regime with the option of refusing participation, which in turn will place additional strain on its relationship with the United States and Israel, making the regime even less attractive as an asset worth protecting as seen through the narrow prism of Israeli interest.

The regime is now faced with an unpalatable dilemma. There are still illusions that the old rules of the game apply, exemplified by the USD 35 billion gas deal that last month was stopped by Netanyahu in order to pressure the regime. The trend, however, is one of revisionism and the regime is by far the weakest link. Far right Israeli ambitions, which were considered unthinkable a few years back are now undeniable and fully adopted by the United States, which is no longer acting as a hegemon. The security of the regime is now trumped by Israel’s desire to end the existence of the Palestinian nationalist movement at all costs and the full annexation of whatever is left of historic Palestine. The regime is expected to pay for these ambitions, at the cost of its own survival. The regime is now left in an extremely vulnerable position, threatened by its old allies, who are slowly but surely turning into the most potent threat it has ever faced.

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