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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.
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Egyptians had "conflicting feelings" toward the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.
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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."
*****
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Every Egyptian family has a member martyred, wounded, or captured by Israelis in a past war.
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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.
*****
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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."
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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.
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"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.
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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."
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"[When we are calling for dialogue] we are working against the whole tide of history."
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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.
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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."
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