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.
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