{"id":6734,"date":"2013-07-05T14:09:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T14:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6734"},"modified":"2013-07-05T14:11:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T14:11:25","slug":"us-funding-for-egypt-key-to-israel-egypt-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6734","title":{"rendered":"US funding for Egypt key to Israel-Egypt peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"egyptisrael\"<\/a>Israel\u2019s peaceful relationship with its neighbors in Egypt comes at a high price: the deal obliges the US to provide massive amounts of unconditional military aid to Egypt.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where things get dicey. A military coup normally obliges the US to suspend military aid, which is why the US is avoiding calling this coup a \u201ccoup\u201d in so many words, hoping to gloss over that fact.<\/p>\n

But Egypt is a big deal, and a coup there is a little hard for the US to just write off as no big deal, which has Israeli officials fretting the prospect that the US might eventually be obliged to revoke aid to the new junta and \u201cviolating\u201d the Egypt-Israel treaty in doing so.<\/p>\n

Not that this means a serious risk of war, as both nations have been be getting billions from the US for decades and are both armed to the teeth. The US money buys Israel a lot of influence however, like the right under the treaty to dictate Egypt\u2019s military policy in Sinai.<\/p>\n

Israel is also expressing concern that jihadists will use the \u201cpower vacuum\u201d to carry out attacks along the border, though Egypt has heavily deployed its military along the Gaza frontier, so this also seems unlikely.<\/p>\n

In the end, the first impact the coup may have for Israel is weakening Hamas and strengthening Fatah, as Hamas had close ideological ties with President Morsi and was even in the process of ditching its long-standing alliance with Syria and Iran in favor of Egypt.<\/p>\n

The Syrian government, which has long sought to portray its repression of the revolt against its rule as a crusade against Islamists, is relishing the Brotherhood\u2019s humiliation in Egypt. Assad, in comments to be published in the state-run newspaper al-Thawra on Thursday, declared that \u201cwhat is happening in Egypt is the fall of so-called political Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president urged the country\u2019s military to \u201creturn full authority\u201d to \u201ca democratically elected\u201d government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill the Brotherhood see the reality of events \u2014 and they rarely see any reality other than the visions in their own minds \u2014 and step down under the pressure of tens of millions of Egyptians? Or will the country be pushed into a civil war?\u201d asked the announcer who read Wednesday afternoon\u2019s news broadcast on state television, ahead of the daily digest of army victories against \u201cterrorists\u201d opposing the government.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in rebel-held portions of Syria, people are starting to chafe at the behavior of the Islamist groups.<\/p>\n

The execution on the streets last month of a 14-year-old boy for making a blasphemous comment and a rule issued this week by the city\u2019s self-appointed Sharia court banning women from wearing makeup have stirred anger in the northern city of Aleppo. Citizens in the northeastern city of Raqqah have staged small-scale demonstrations against the Islamists who hold sway there.Some in Raqqah have watched with eager interest as the unrest unfolds in Cairo, said a resident who spoke via Skype on the condition that he not be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. \u201cThe time will come when people realize that these groups don\u2019t represent Islam, and they will kick them out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Further afield, the recent mass demonstrations in Turkey, hailed as a model for emerging Arab democracies, were sparked by plans to chop down trees in a central Istanbul park but quickly grew into a wider expression of unease with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s authoritarian style and his policies of Islamicization.<\/p>\n

In Tunisia, the ruling Ennahda party, a Brotherhood affiliate, has held the middle ground between the radical Salafis who have threatened to use force to impose Islamic law and secularist activists, in another reflection of the splits opening up across the region that could shape a new round of turmoil.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a fundamental divide in the Arab world over big issues such as the role of religion in government .\u2009.\u2009.<\/span> and the identity of the state,\u201d Hamid said. \u201cIt is a real, fundamental divide, and there is a lot at stake.\u201d antiwar.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel\u2019s peaceful relationship with its neighbors in Egypt comes at a high price: the deal obliges the US to provide massive amounts of unconditional military aid to Egypt. And that\u2019s where things get dicey. A military coup normally obliges the US to suspend military aid, which is why the US is avoiding calling this coup … Continue reading “US funding for Egypt key to Israel-Egypt peace”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,123],"tags":[3699,190,178,3725],"class_list":["post-6734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-coup","tag-egypt","tag-israel","tag-me-peace-deal"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/egyptisrael.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6734"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6737,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734\/revisions\/6737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}