On Sunday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said something painfully obvious to any fair-minded person. When asked by an Egyptian high school student at an event at the foreign ministry in Cairo whether the killing of Palestinian children by Israeli forces constituted terrorism, Shoukry did not give the standard answer that most Arab and Muslims audiences expected to hear. Instead of the ritual condemnation of Israel as a terrorist state that Arab and Muslim leaders have been spouting since 1948, he gave an answer in which he said such actions could not be termed terrorism. Shoukry’s willingness to avoid saying what Arab audiences are used to hearing was big news that spoke volumes about the shift in Egyptian foreign policy and the gap between that government and Arab culture in which hatred for Israel and Jews is standard fare.
Stories about the comments did not appear in the Egyptian state-run media. But as the news spread about the event on opposition websites, Palestinians and other Islamists denounced Shoukry. The foreign ministry also dismissed claims that the remarks were significant. They pointed out Shoukry expressed solidarity with the Palestinians and did not specifically defend Israel. But nobody is fooled by attempts to downplay the exchange.
As has been apparent since the 2013 coup in which the Egyptian military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government, Cairo no longer sees Israel as an enemy. The government led by former general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi views the Brotherhood and its Hamas allies and other Islamist terror groups as the real threat facing Egypt. Moreover, with the U.S. seeming to abandon its moderate Arab allies in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, Egypt finds its interests are more in tune with those of Israel than the Palestinians.
Nor is it a coincidence that Shoukry was in Israel last month, the first visit by a high-ranking Egyptian official in nearly a decade. The Egyptians have been supporting the idea of revived peace talks but that, too, puts them at odds with the Palestinian Authority, which wants to avoid negotiations and prefers going to the UN to isolate Israel. Sisi and Shoukry understand that if the Palestinians are given veto power over relations with Israel, the region will be locked into an endless conflict that will never be resolved.
But what’s really important is the chasm between Cairo’s policies and the sentiments of its people.
Even after Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem and eventually signed a peace treaty with Israel, the Jewish state has remained the focus of tremendous hatred in Egyptian popular culture. Animus for Jews that sinks to the level of the most virulent tropes of traditional anti-Semitism is a staple of their music and television. While a majority of Egyptians sympathized with the coup that ended the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule, there is no indication that Cairo’s thaw with Israel has similar support. And with the Sisi government engaging in brutal suppression of any dissent, whether from Islamist or the far more marginal supporters of democracy, the new regime’s embrace of Israel is clearly a domestic political liability.
The problem here goes deeper than the standard myths about Israel killing Palestinians kids. The “children” that have been killed in the last year were almost all shot in the course of terrorist stabbing attacks, and those killed in Gaza in 2014 were being used as human shields by Hamas terrorists. The context of the question to Shoukry was the student’s belief that Israel doesn’t merely attack Palestinians but that it is somehow the source of the Islamist terror that afflicts the rest of the Arab world. Muslims who have been fed anti-Semitic canards by both their local media and religious and governmental leaders all too readily believe conspiracy theories like this about Israel.
The realism being espoused by Shoukry and the rapprochement between Israel and nations such as Egypt and even Saudi Arabia illustrates that many in the Arab world are opting out of the futile Palestinian rejectionism that makes peace impossible. But as much as this development should be applauded—and credit given to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu for its skillful handling of relations with Egypt—the brouhaha over Shoukry’s refusal to buy into lies about Israel illustrates just how deep-seated animus for Israel and the Jews remains in Egypt 39 years since Sadat flew to Jerusalem. So long as such attitudes prevail in the Arab street, then an end to the long war against Israel remains a long way off.
