Courting Cairo
Once more into the Mideast peace process
The Trump administration announced this week that it was cutting economic and military aid to Egypt by $95.7 million and holding back another $195 million, based on Egypt’s lamentable human rights record.
At the same time, a trip underway by the special envoy to the Middle East, President Donald Trump’s sonin-law Jared Kushner, to try to resuscitate talks between the Israelis and Palestinians included a stop in Cairo on Wednesday. He met with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, a praised favorite of Mr. Trump, in spite of the symbolic U.S. swat at Egypt in the actions on aid to it.
Egypt’s military aid from the United States will still amount to $1.3 billion this year, unaffected basically because it is used to pay the American companies that build U.S. military equipment for Egypt.
Mr. Sissi’s government committed a human rights offense that Mr. Trump’s government couldn’t overlook. It passed a law in May that restricts the activities of nongovernmental organizations and charities in Egypt, some of them U.S.-based. The previous month, as part of Mr. Sissi’s official visit to Washington, Egyptian leaders had promised that the measures would not become law.
Prospects for Mr. Kushner’s Middle East project are considered shaky. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing charges of financial corruption, which make his leadership position in Israel uncertain at this moment. In addition, he has a legendary record of dodging and weaving when faced by agreement-vital decisions on Israeli government actions, particularly any affecting the situation of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The Palestinian leadership’s status is as dodgy as Israel’s, probably more so. The term of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 82, expired in 2009 and his poor health is a factor. There is no evidence of progress on the Palestinian side toward arriving at a common position among Mr. Abbas’ Fatah party; Hamas, which rules in Gaza; and other Palestinian elements, including Islamic Jihad, to present in any negotiations with the Israelis that Mr. Kushner or anyone else might construct. Israel apparently has a plan to unite the Sunni Muslim states of the region, led by Saudi Arabia, to provide acceptance to its role in Palestine and the region. Mr. Netanyahu’s government sought to close down the long-standing activities of the Qatar-based medium Al-Jazeera in Israel in pursuit of that goal, at Saudi Arabia’s behest. The effort of the Saudis, some of the Emirates, Egypt and Jordan to shut down Qatar, which supports Hamas and has working relations with Iran, has been unsuccessful for the most part, probably ending that scheme.
Egypt’s role in any of this maneuvering is perforce limited by its problems at home, which include an active Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, substantial domestic opposition to Mr. Sissi’s government and near economic collapse. It can play no significant military role in the region due to the vulnerability of the Nile River dam it constructed at Aswan in 1968, creating Lake Nasser. An attack on the dam would result in a catastrophic flood down the Nile delta and into the capital, Cairo, population 10 million. Nevertheless, the peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel has been in force since 1979 and remains a strategic asset for Egypt.