|
|
Left to right, Sadat, Carter, and Begin at Camp David, 1978
|
Twenty-six years have
passed but Yasser still remembers that day in
detail.
It had been one year
since Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the
1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, and Yasser, then a
high school student in Egypt's average
neighborhood of Giza, was both angry and
bewildered watching his president making peace
with the Arabs' decades-long enemy.
He was sitting in the
classroom waiting for the break bell to ring when
the school principal came in and ordered the
students to stay in the classroom during the
break.
A group of outsiders
— a number of foreigners and three Egyptians —
entered the room and one of them started to talk.
He introduced himself as a Foreign Ministry
officer.
The students were still
guessing who the rest of the visitors were when
the officer relieved them — or did he?
"This is an
Israeli delegation coming to visit Egypt now that
we have signed the Peace Treaty. They are visiting
several places to meet Egyptians, and the Foreign
Ministry has chosen your school, your class [in
particular]."
He spoke for a few
minutes on the concept of peace, then gave the
floor to one of the Israelis. "We have both
lost a lot because of war and it's time to live
together in peace," he said in colloquial
Levantine Arabic. When the Israeli concluded his
speech, the Egyptian officer clapped his hands,
signaling to the students to follow suit. A few
sluggish claps were heard.
"I wasn't among
them," Yasser affirms.
The Israeli speaker
then invited the Egyptian students to ask whatever
questions they had for the Israeli delegation.
Silence.
Not a single Egyptian
responded, as if there were an unwritten agreement
among the students not to talk with their Israeli
visitors.
|
Egyptians had
"conflicting feelings" toward
the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. |
Yasser and his generation witnessed their
president become the first Arab leader to sign a peace treaty with
Israel, breaking ranks with Arab allies and shocking the world.
After Sadat signed the Camp David Accords
with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which won them a Nobel
Peace Prize and led to the historic Peace Treaty of 1979, the Arab
states boycotted Egypt and the Arab League suspended the country's
membership and moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis.
Egyptians had "conflicting
feelings," says Yasser, describing the atmosphere in post-Camp
David Egypt as he lived it. "We were tired of war and losses. We
went to war with Israel on behalf of other Arab countries that didn't
fight and, rather, had already started to develop and build themselves
while we were still suffering from the war's repercussions."
"At the same time," he goes on,
"because the price we paid was too high, and because we
sacrificed a lot during the war — to free Palestine — it was
difficult to abandon our cause so easily all of a sudden, so
cheaply."
*****
|
Every Egyptian
family has a member martyred, wounded, or
captured by Israelis in a past war. |
On October 6, 1981,
militant Islamists who opposed the peace treaty
assassinated Sadat. Under his successor, Mubarak,
Egypt regained its Arab League membership and the
organization's headquarters was relocated to
Cairo. The Oslo Accords were reached; Jordan, an
Arab country, signed a peace treaty with Israel;
and the so-called peace process started.
Incomplete but
substantial strides have been made in the
normalization of relations between Egypt and
Israel — especially in the fields of trade,
agriculture, tourism, and oil.
But a psychological
barrier still separates the two peoples, making an
Egyptian like Munir, a cab driver,
"disgusted" at the idea of having an
Israeli tourist in his cab.
"I am human,"
he says, explaining that his feelings toward
Israelis have nothing to do with religion or
nationality per se. "If an Arab, say a
Libyan, killed an Egyptian, I would be uneasy
about dealing with any Libyan. Even if someone
from a certain Egyptian family harmed one in mine,
I would naturally feel negative about anyone from
the aggressor's family."
Every Egyptian family
has a member martyred, wounded, or captured by
Israelis in a past war, says Egyptian social
scientist Dr. Nader Fergany, the lead author of
the UNDP's Arab Human Development Report.
Egyptians took part in
battles with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973.
History set aside,
"painful media images of current Israeli
violence against Palestinian and Israeli civilians
are enough to stir and continuously feed negative
feelings toward Israelis," says consulting
psychiatrist Dr. Mohamed El-Mahdi.
Public opinion is
generally affected by recent events, remarks Gamal
Abdel Gawad, the head of the opinion department at
Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic
Studies.
Hundreds of Lebanese
and Palestinian civilians have been recently
killed and injured in Israeli assaults. "And
the Israeli government is facing no considerable
popular Israeli opposition to such attacks on
civilians," says political analyst Dr. Amr
El-Shobky.
Eighty percent of
Israelis support their military's offensive in
Lebanon, according to a poll published in Israel's
Maariv newspaper August 1, 2006.
This might further
explain Munir's unease about riding an Israeli in
his cab.
Munir is only one
Egyptian. In general, says Abdel Gawad, Egyptians
have negative feelings toward Israel, a tendency
not to encourage normalization of relations, and a
desire to keep the peace treaty in force and avoid
military conflict.
The relations between
the two peoples will stop here; Egyptians have no
will to develop them any further, preferring a
"cold peace formula," he adds.
We are reminded by an
American political scientist living in Egypt, Dr.
David Holt, that "we are not living in normal
times," in reference to the wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine. "Rightly
or wrongly, many Arab Muslims hold both Israel and
the United States responsible for the regional
turbulence, and see them as hostile to Islam and
Muslims generally. How can we expect Muslim
peoples on the street to see Israel and the Jews
normally?" Holt asks.
Abdel Gawad explains
that Egyptians' attitudes toward Israelis
"depend on the political context" they
are studied in.
"Political"
and "politics" are held as key words by
Holt, Abdel Gawad, and two noteworthy academics:
Michael Dahan, from Sapir Academic College,
Israel, and Mohamed Mossad, from the American
University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt.
*****
|
|
A Lebanese woman walks past a building
flattened during an Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5
(Reuters photo). "Current Israeli violence … [stirs
Egyptians'] negative feelings toward Israelis."
|
Tuesday, July 25, 2006:
Around 30 attendees in a room in AUC's main campus
are waiting to hear the Egyptian and Israeli
scholars present a paper on media studies.
"One of you will
present first then the other?" asked the
session's moderator.
"No, we are
presenting together," they replied, rising to
the podium.
They gave a
well-organized presentation that seemed to have
been carefully prepared; each one of them knew
when to speak, what to say, and when to stop and
give the floor to his partner.
After the session
ended, a number of the attendees circled the
speakers, flooding them with comments and
questions.
"How did you get
to know each other?" one woman asked.
"Bravo," said another, from Egypt,
revealing that her PhD dissertation was about
Egyptian-Israeli relations, and that she defended
it in the United States, not in her home country.
|
"Once Mike [and
I met], we started to talk … for 10
minutes, then we became friends like we
had known each other for years," says
Mossad, Egyptian, of his Israeli friend. |
As Dahan and Mossad answered their questioners,
news about the Hizbullah-Israel confrontation
continued to emerge. In an Israeli raid, nine
Lebanese civilians were killed in Nabteyya, south
of Beirut; whereas Hizbullah fired 16 rockets on
Israeli cities, killing one Israeli civilian and
wounding 70.
Dahan and Mossad first met in 1999 when the
Israeli political scientist came to Cairo with a
group of his students to have a dialogue session
with AUC students.
"We fell in love with each other,"
says Mossad, "Once Mike came here, we started
to talk together for 10 minutes, then we became
friends like we had known each other for
years."
Two factors contribute to their friendship: the
human factor — "you feel you belong to
someone and he is very close to you" — plus
the academic scholarship — "we have similar
perspectives; we share so many views" on the
Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
Dahan laughs when Mossad mentions a point they
always joke about — "Mike is more
pro-Palestinian than me and I am more pro-Israel
than him."
They also face similar difficulties — Mossad
says that most of his friends have abandoned him
and that he occasionally gets prevented from
working or writing for certain organizations. It's
the same for Dahan, who "got a tag — an
Arab-lover." For example, "I don't get
invited to give an objective view on [an Israeli]
TV program"; he rather represents the radical
left in media appearances.
Dahan visited Egypt several times before, and
every time he's here, Egyptians treat him "as
Egyptians always treat everybody —
wonderfully" without him revealing his
nationality to people until he starts to trust
them. "I have four kids," he explains.
"But it's not about all Egyptians —
maybe just one crazy person."
|
"[When we are
calling for dialogue] we are working
against the whole tide of history." |
Egyptians, according to
Mossad, are willing to normalize relations with
the Israelis, at least at the human, individual
level, "but everyone is afraid to say it in
public."
"Wishful
thinking," asserts Fergany, the social
scientist,
describing the
"personal wishes of a strata of intellectuals
who find normalization in their personal
favor."
In what way?
"They think that
calling for normalization can gain them a higher
status in the international system and
institutions."
Fergany believes that
it's only such intellectuals, in addition to
businessmen who benefit financially from relations
with Israel, who would like to deal with Israelis.
"The rest of Egyptians — the majority —
don't."
He sees no logic for
Egyptians to distinguish between the Israeli
government and people: "Egyptians see very
little popular criticism from the Israeli people
to their government's aggression in Palestine and
Lebanon, and violation of human rights and
international law."
Holt is still
optimistic: "There are many on both sides who
would love to sit down and discuss how having
normal relationships is possible."
He acknowledges the
difficulties: "[When we are calling for
dialogue] we are working against the whole tide of
history." Yet "according to many
historians," Holt points out, "Islam
dealt more charitably with Jews than Christian
Europe did; Nazism didn't come out of the Islamic
Middle East."
Dahan, as a Jew and
Israeli, sees more similarities with Islam than
Christianity, saying that he feels "more
comfortable" with Muslims than he does with
Christians.
He recalls some scenes
from history. "Look at all the Jews that were
in Egypt before the 1940s; look at Jews under the
Ottoman Empire. Jews and Muslims interacted. It
was natural. He happens to be Jewish, he happens
to be Muslim — no one would think about
it."
What has changed that?
"Politics,"
he answers. "Nationalism, which fed both
Zionism and Arab Nationalism."
"Everything is
possible between people," says Holt,
"when you are not doing it siyasi [Arabic for
politically.]"
Meanwhile, political
tension continues to dominate the atmosphere in
the Middle East.
*****
Twenty-six years have
passed and Yasser is still bitter about peace with
Israel.
Exiting his apartment
building in Canada, to which he immigrated six
years ago, Yasser notices two men stop a
conversation upon seeing him emerge from the gate.
One of them turns to Yasser and says
"as-salamu `alaykum," the Muslim salute,
in Levantine Arabic.
"Wa `alaykum
as-salam," Yasser salutes him back, delighted
at the idea of an Arab neighbor in the same
apartment building.
"Min ein?"
(Where are you from?)
The new neighbor fails
to reply. It turns out that the greeting is all
that he can say in Arabic.
Starting a handshake,
he says, "I am from Israel."
Yasser realizes the
Israeli is holding his hand tight, which makes him
feel uncomfortable. He pulls it away firmly and
asks, "Do you need something from me?"
"No,
nothing."
Yasser rushes away,
ashamed that he shook hands with an Israeli.
"Maybe I can deal with a Jew, but not an
Israeli, not with all what they did and are still
doing to our people," he reflects.
He enters the washroom
of a nearby café and, as he washes his hands, he
thinks, "Israelis have Arab blood on their
hands."
