We’re starting to get a good picture of what the lower house of Egypt’s parliament will be like. Close to 50 percent of the seats will be held by the Muslim Brotherhood. Another 25 percent will be held by the al-Nour party of Salafists. With 75 percent, the two Islamist parties will be able to do as they please.
But, they — or at least the Brotherhood — are determined to be cautious. Note that there is a big difference between actually being moderate and simply being patient, advancing step by step toward radical goals. The Western media will report that the Brotherhood is indeed moderate. Actually, as I review coverage over the last year it is almost impossible to find even a single article in the mass media that reports any such evidence, much less analysis, despite the massive documentation available to the contrary .
The non-Islamist seats will be held by the Wafd, nine percent, and the Free Egyptians Party, another nine percent, with the rest spread among a dozen different parties, mainly liberal with a small number of leftists. The Wafd will be willing to make deals with the Islamists in order to obtain a share of power for itself. Only the Free Egyptians will oppose them with determination.
There is no reason to believe the “moderates” will be able to work together; the Islamist parties also won’t unite. There is, however, an important difference. While the Wafd’s cooperation with the Brotherhood will undermine the ability of anti-Islamist forces doing anything at all, the Salafists will pull the Brotherhood toward a more militant stance.
Both Islamist parties will support laws making Egypt more Islamist, and when the Brotherhood does less than the Salafists want it will be proclaimed as moderate. Yet the two parties have no substantive difference on foreign policy except about how openly anti-American they will be and how active to push on conflict with Israel. Internationally, the Brotherhood will be portrayed as a wonderful bulwark against the Salafists, even as it moves Egypt step by step down the road toward radical Islamism.
Two key events will dominate Egyptian politics: writing the constitution and also the election of the president, currently expected in June. In order not to scare people, the Brotherhood continues its strategy of not directly sponsoring a presidential candidate. It is likely, however, that the Islamists will vote for Islamist candidates and in any run-off the likely two candidates will be an Islamist, probably Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, and the radical nationalist Amr Moussa. But here’s a thought: what if the two candidates that receive the largest number of votes in the first round are both Islamists? That could mean an all-Islamist run-off between the Brotherhood’s favorite and a Salafist.
Finally, here are some thoughts about the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. This provides a wonderful case study of how the media and elite analysts have entirely missed the point. Generally, the discussion is over whether the Islamists will explicitly revoke the peace treaty. It is said that they will be moderate because they won’t tear it up.
The problem is that for all practical purposes they have already done so. Consider what the treaty is all about. It was Egypt’s acceptance of Israel’s existence, agreement that there were no issues between the two countries that could lead to war, and pledge that there would be no more armed conflict.
Yet the Brotherhood and the Salafists do not accept Israel’s existence, they openly look forward to wiping it off the map. They see multiple issues between the two countries worth fighting wars about. They are the patrons of Hamas. And we can no longer assume that Egypt will not go to war with Israel.
But, but you must be mistaken. President Obama turned the Moslem Brotherhood into our dearest friends when he gave the Cairo speech and he is the fourth best President in US history.
Fourth best??? What are you, a racist? He’s obviously the best president EVAR.
Hard to imagine this entire series of events can be in any way good for Egypt or the region or anyone for that matter. It was reported some salafis taking the parliamentary oath today amended it to say “as long as a law doesn’t conflict with god’s law.”
Compared to a dictatorship it is better in the sense that it is a road that must be gone down but there is a lot of potential for trouble politically and socially as well as economic if the Islamists don’t tone it down a bit. Egypt was already plenty Islamic and making it more so won’t really change much other than putting off the day Egypt won’t be a giant backwater essentially living in Victorian times but with tech toys from overseas. This is not a paradigm for success but for yet another revolution when the people realize you can’t eat a Koran.
Saile – Didn’t you ever hear of ‘one person, one vote, one time’?
Yeah; name one time it’s happened in the middle east.
gaza
That is a popular myth that never occurred; Hamas was voted into gov’t but a year later a civil war ensued that Hamas won. Hamas did not win because they had been voted in as that certainly didn’t help them in the West Bank.
@ . Saile Furman
Absolutely brilliant!
“…when the people realize you can’t eat a Koran.”
Print them on edible rice paper with edible halal soy oil.
Then, when the economy tanks, everyone has a choice, eat or prey.
I think we can still assume the army won’t go to war with Israel. Ask yourself why the Egyptian army never opened fire on the protesters a year ago although Mubarak was clearly one of theirs. Instead snipers and the police did all the killing. There is an implication that America simply wouldn’t allow it’s equipment to be used to kill people. Can you imagine the headlines about American-made Egyptian tanks using massive live fire on its own citizens with all the hollering about U.S.-made tear gas?
There is no way the U.S. will refit and resupply attacking tank columns or jets against Israel. You can bet thoughts are already afoot in Egypt on how to get rid of that American equipment and have a new army that will then have a free hand. The problem is that, without oil like Iran had, where is the money to purchase a viable army going to come from?
Look how much it’s slowed down Iran… they only fought a war with Iraq for eight years after we cut them off.
Did you purposefully ignore what I wrote?
” Can you imagine the headlines about American-made Egyptian tanks using massive live fire on its own citizens with all the hollering about U.S.-made tear gas?”
didn’t seem to stop them from literally crushing people to death with their tanks. oh wait that was just ignorant infidels being slaughtered, the world could care less about that
That was one man in an armored personnel carrier; please don’t exaggerate that incident by comparing it to concerted and massive live fire from tank machine guns.
Israel and Egypt get something like $3 billion a year from us, more than anyone else. (and both countries are compelled to spend most of that money on American military equipment.) I thought that the reason Egypt got the money in the first place was because of the peace treaty. if they break the treaty, they shouldn’t get the money.
I’m assuming losing $3 billion a year would hurt.
foreign aid is important; I was very disappointed to hear the GOP candidates saying “we should start from zero” and look at the whole program. and we only spend something like 1% of our budget on it. but I do agree that we shouldn’t be giving our enemies millions of dollars!
Prof. Rubin’s point is that they won’t break the treaty (at least not for some
time) but will empty it of content. They can continue to get the aid, which the Obama administration may view as leverage to “moderate” the Islamists, while
strengthening Hamas and undermining Israel in other ways.
A good motivation to get rid of that “leverage” that is the American equipment. That’s okay: Israel is already establishing ties with South Sudan and one can imagine a future with dams that control the flow of the Nile being controlled by Israel.
WE should start from zero! We should start using our founding documents as the foundation for ANY decision about foreign aid or visas. If a country has a problem supporting our First Amendment they are enemies for freedom. Period. There is NO reason we should ever support our enemies.
Up next… the Islamic Republic of Eqypt, Sharia and war in the Mideast. And we thought rainbows and unicorns would break out?
The thing is, the same thing has basically happened in Turkey, sans the revolution/coup.
Erdogan’s ruling party in Turkey is basically the same sort of Islamist as the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey has gone from being an ally to Israel to a foe – they were the ones that started up that relief ship crap.
Of course, Turkey doesn’t have a border with Israel, so it’s not as big a deal, but it shows that this sort of thing was pretty much inevitable. Israel needs to come up with a settlement with the Palestians sooner, rather than later.
And how do you propose we’d do that if the Arabs refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and demand to settle millions of Arabs inside Israel? These people don’t want a settlement – Fatah wants to replace Israel with an Arab state and Hamas wants to replace it with a Muslim state. That’s the bottom line. Yet people insist it’s up to us to achieve the impossible.
Even if Israel did settle with the Palestinians soon(something I- an Israeli and a supporter of a two-state solution, sadly believe is not possible at this time)how would this affect the Islamists – who consider the entire territory of the current Israel (not just the territories over the Green Line) to be Muslim
land conquered by infidels. There goal is to conquer it back and establish an
Islamic state.
I don’t understand. I can get you a two-state solution in 10 minutes. Just get the American president to support settlements and Abbas will come running.
Of course, as the PA, like Mubarek, has been inciting its people for two generations to hate us, a treaty will lead to war, and with all of the refugees in the PA, they could win.
If you want a two-state solution, you first need to replace the PA with someone who actually wants peace with us. Then wait 20 years or so.
war is inevitable at this point, and it’s not going to be pretty.
OK, that’s precisely backwards. What this teaches us is that Oslo is dead, that there is no point to further talks with the PA, that we should finally start building in the existing settlements and maybe build new ones.
Look, if we can’t rely on an actual peace treaty, then what about people who call us “the enemy”?
Can American Presidents please stop trying to get Nobel peace prizes and just realize that Oslo will not work, that the current situation is as good as it can get.
No the treaty will not be dead. The United States (and the rest of the world) will demand that Israel abide by the terms of the treaty and do nothing no matter what provocations the Egyptians do (including developing an Atomic Bomb, blockading the Gulf of Aquaba and denying access through the Suez canal, firing rockets from the Sinai, massing armed forces on the Egyptian-Israeli border, and making military and political alliances with any other state or entity that is preparing to attack Israel).
(1) What else can we expect from a president who bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, who denies that Mohammedanism was the motive of the killer of the members of the Army at Fort Hood, who was a faithful acolyte of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in Chicago?
(2) By the way, calling Arabs “Palestinian” was history rewrite from Gamal Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union, which invented the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (P.L.O.) in 1964 in Egypt, haters of Jews, in order to destroy Israel The name “Palestina” was synonymous with “land of the Jews” or “the Holy Land” (since Jesus was a Jew) since the Roman Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea to Palestina in 135 A.D., after he defeated the Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba. His purpose was to eradicate all memory of Judea, and he outlawed Judaism. After World War I, Great Britain was awarded the Palestine Mandate to be the homeland of the Jews.
The Arabs called “Palestinians” are just trying to destroy Israel. They hate Jews for religious reasons. The only thing that Israel can do about them is to defend themselves against them, as just another Arab organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
“After World War I, Great Britain was awarded the Palestine Mandate to be the homeland of the Jews.”
And then they gave almost 80% of it to the Hashemite emir Abdallah from Hijaz (later Saudi Arabia after the tribe of Saud got control of it) and renamed it Trans-Jordan (today’s Jordan). Why? Because France conquered Syria and kicked out the Hashemite king Faysal. The Hashemites were pissed off and threatened to go to war against the French, so to appease them the Brits installed Faysal in Iraq and gave Abdallah 78% of the Palestine mandate. Then the UN decided to divide the rest into a Jewish state and a second Arab state in the Palestine mandate. The Jews ended up with about 11-12% of the original Palestine mandate (and about 0.1-0.2% of the land mass the Arabs got in the Middle East), but the Arabs rejected it. At the time the world saw it for what it was – tiny Israel with its tiny population was David defeating the huge Arab Goliath that set out to destroy it. So they invented the Palestinian-Nation-That-Lived-There-From-Time-Immemorial to reverse the roles. But they don’t want a state next to Israel, but instead of Israel.
your history lesson doesn’t hold water. you must have forgotten about all the non-Zionist decent Jews in your audience who heard your well-constructed fabricated historical half-truths and discounted them many times before. unless you go dump your wisdom on some other zionist cheering ears your zionist narrative doesn’t impress anymore. it has many holes and doesn’t hold water.
What difference does a name make? They’re there no matter what you call them. This name argument is pathetic as is the rest of it. If the Arabs have no claim to the land but were there all along, then what claim does Judaism have? If the argument is that the Arabs had recently moved their, so did the Jews although it is plain many Arabs had been there for generations. You really show the weakness not the strength of your side when you make such bootless claims.
Saile, I just think you are overstating the Arab presence in the Land of Israel (a/k/a Palestine) prior to the 19th century. Two things happened to increase the Arab presence: The first is that Jews started drifting back to the Land of Israel in the 19th century, and as they did, they revived the economy of the region and Arabs from Syria started to move in as well. (They voted with their feet, but not with their heads.) The second thing is that the Ottoman Turks, in response to the increase of the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel resettled Bosnian Muslims there.
Also, over a longer time period, the Arabs were interlopers into the area, but I guess that is ‘ancient’ history.
Well, “ancient history” is in your favor when you want it to be and not when you don’t want it to be. You use “logic” as if you yourself are vulnerable to it.
Be honest, I could line up 1,000 historians to refute your claims and it wouldn’t move you an inch. At once using such logic, stupid and ignorant logic at that, and ignoring it at the same time is what is pathetic.
Choose a side and just say it’s your side; at least that’s honest. Fortunately Jews both in Israel and America ARE vulnerable to facts and logic; I believe you refer to them as “useful idiots,” and “self-hating Jews.”
By ‘ancient history’ I meant thirteen-hundred years ago. Of course, what right does any nation have to any piece of territory? The post-Columbian indigenous native Americans (i.e., the currents citizens of the United States) did not come to an unpopulated land: they took it from the pre-Columbian indigneous native Americans (i.e., the American Indians). The French are primarily a German tribe (the Franks) who moved into Roman Gaul and it took it from the Romans, who had taken it from Celts, etc. The Slavs of Eastern Europe are not native to that area; they took it mostly from German tribes who then moved West as the Roman Empire was collapsing. The Arabs of north Africa are not native to that area. Before it was Arab, it was Roman, and before it was Roman, it was Phoenician (Carthage). There is no right and wrong here. Nations get to occupy the area they can control. In my comment to your comment I was pointing out that the so-called Palestinians are for the most part not native to the Land of Israel (although they sometimes term themselves – and absurdly so – Canaanites), but they have as much or as little claim as do the Jews. Insofar as the Jews can and do control the Land of Israel (or most of it) it becomes theirs. End of story.
You’re right. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that your co-religionists have tried four times to start a second holocaust, and that almost all of the historical Jewish population of the Middle East lives in Israel, and they aren’t safe anywhere else, thanks to your “gentle” co-religionists. So in fact, Israel had better control and settle the whole region, including Judea and Samaria, because it is the only way the gentle “Palestinians” will not finish off the Jews that they’ve been persecuting since the days of the man who Maimonides called “the madman”.
I apologize Jack. The truth I know is that in fact no one knows the true ethnic or immigratory make up of that area before the Mandate. I think when one hears arguments that people other than Jews came in after the fact it reveals wishful thinking and a non-existent argument. What were the Turks governing for 400 years, Albanians and Bosnians? Why would recent emigres suddenly be so attached to the land? It doesn’t add up, especially when the argument is that the very land most fought over by wild coincidence is the most empty or full of recent emigres. You’re right, might makes right and I ain’t giving away America any time soon nor is Hawaii or Alaska going to say otherwise.
Well, how about the Oriental Jews who were expelled or murdered by the Arbs? They had been living there since wlle before the Romans, some of them since before Alexander. Ok, but if th Arbs expel the Jews then the Jews have the right to expel the Arbs not to mention that most Arbs left their lands because the Arab armies told them to and not to mention the fact that the Arabs sold the land where the Jews established their first settlements.
BTw, according to youtr logic the Germans hould be given back the lands Nazi Germany lost to Poland after WWII.
If Egypt attacks Israel and Israel feels seriously threatened, how long before they take out Aswan Dam? Bye, Bye Egypt.
If… When… It is more a matter of how and what is the outcome. Somehow Hamas will ‘engineer’ a war involving Syria/Lebanon and Assad will only be most happy to accommodate. Iran and Egypt will tacitly and materially support this war against Israel. Jordan will probably get drawn into it as a not-so-innocent bystander because of the influence of Hamas/PLO that has been there for years. Jordan is playing footsies with Hamas these days. And, of course, the russians are floating around in the background.
Israel will take care of business *in the first war* of this millennium. In doing so Israel will be spent. Its conventional war capability will be severely degraded and its economy and society pretty much wrecked. Never mind Syria will be devastated as well, along with Lebanon and probably Jordan. Devastated, as in no longer viable, functioning countries.
And then there is Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya… who have been sharpening their knives all the while. (Peace treaty? What peace treaty.) And the only thing left for Israel’s survival is their nuclear option. Which means ‘war across the board.’ (Russia has treaty obligations with Iran. China is Iran’s biggest trading partner.) Call that war the *second war of the millennium* or maybe just WWIII.
Can the US help Israel? (Remember, we are now shifting political/military interests to SEA to counter China’s growing influence.) Under Obama I doubt that would happen. Even if Obama is defeated this next election he has put us on a course for a one-war military. Which means the US could very easily get bogged down over Taiwan or Korea. In any event, we will need to be very picky on who we go to war with, and when and why.
Israel is becoming more and more isolated, and unlike the past, the US may no longer be able or interested in helping. Israel has invested not so much in ‘city killer’ nuclear weapons, but rather in battlefield smaller-yield nuclear weapons. And in a second war they will need them. The Aswan Dam will make a lucrative, force-multiplied target.
Ahhh… out of our hands anyway.
Israel doesn’t need to take out the Aswan Dam; what do you think they’re doing courting South Sudan against those Northern Sudanese Muslims? Without water in the Aswan Dam due to dams far to the South, there will be no need for direct military action.
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And so we see the bankruptcy of land for peace. Israel gave up the land, and there will be no peace.
Take back the Sinai now.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. Sort of like a choice between the SS and the SA.
For decades, the corrupt despot Mubarak stayed in favor with the US and Israel by posing as the “moderate” alternative to the Moslem Brotherhood. (Even as his government pandered to Islamists and spewed anti-Israel propaganda.)
Now the Brotherhood can pose as the “moderate” alternative to the Salafis – a classic “good cop/bad cop” pairing.
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