Israel’s Isolation

The assault of its embassy in Cairo has caused a strain in relations with one of its few allies in the region.

The Arab Spring is turning out to be extremely complicated for Israel, whose foreign office — regular practitioner of too little, too late — is suffering from a position of growing isolation in the region, from which it can only be rescued by its privileged relationship with the United States.

Since the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt last February, Cairo has experienced a chaotic but perceptible cooling off in its relationship with the Israeli government, the two countries having solemnly signed a peace agreement back in March 1979. First, there was the authorization of Iranian naval forces to cross the Suez Canal, an event that had not occurred since the 1967 War when Israel took cover in the waterway. At the same time, Cairo has eased the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Israel maintains come hell or high water. These events precipitated the events of Aug. 18, when Israeli forces left five Egyptian police dead in a retaliatory operation against Palestinian terrorists. A crowd gathered a few days later at the Israeli embassy in the Egyptian capital, and a group of Egyptian commandos managed to penetrate the building and miraculously saved the lives of the remaining six residents of the legation, the ambassador and his family having already been evacuated in extremis to Israel.

The Egyptian military government has pronounced it will punish those guilty and has asserted that the peace treaty is sacrosanct, yet the future is uncertain. Last week, Abu Musa, one of the most serious candidates for the country’s presidency, requested that the treaty be revised concerning the limitation on the number of Egyptian troops in Sinai, although he made it clear that this was merely to resolve an old and now irrelevant issue. But the problem with Egypt is just one of many. Israel has avoided apologizing to Ankara for the boarding of a ship in international waters that was carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, on which a group of Israeli commandos killed nine passengers. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Edogan, who today finds himself in Cairo to support the democratic process in the North of Africa, has frozen political, military and economic relations with Israel as a consequence. In the end, the Palestinian National Authority will request that the United Nations recognize the existence, at least as an observer without voting rights, of an independent Palestinian state.

Israel has reacted defensively, isolating itself as a misunderstood nation, when it would be far more prudent to partake in that recognition — albeit with all the fair and necessary conditions. That way it would not be making any kind of a priori concessions in negotiations and would thus ensure it maintained an equal footing. The support of the United States permits, however, the current stubbornness, but both the protector and the protected are mistaken in acting with such obstinacy, which will ultimately get them nowhere.