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| Secretary Clinton shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their bilateral meeting July 6, 2010 at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. State Department Photo by Michael Gross. |
Note to the impatient hotheads in this country and abroad urging a well-meaning, but thoughtless US plunge into the internal affairs of yet another nation: how the crisis in Egypt resolves itself will impact the surrounding region, if not the entire world.
Tom Friedman discusses in the NY Times this morning how Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are entangled with the imminent overthrow of Mubarak’s rule:
I’m meeting a retired Israeli general at a Tel Aviv hotel. As I take my seat, he begins the conversation with: “Well, everything we thought for the last 30 years is no longer relevant.”
That pretty much sums up the disorienting sense of shock and awe that the popular uprising in Egypt has inflicted on the psyche of Israel’s establishment. The peace treaty with a stable Egypt was the unspoken foundation for every geopolitical and economic policy in Israel for the last 35 years, and now it’s gone. It’s as if Americans suddenly woke up and found both Mexico and Canada plunged into turmoil on the same day.
“Everything that once anchored our world is now unmoored,” remarked Mark Heller, a Tel Aviv University strategist. “And it is happening right at a moment when nuclearization of the region hangs in the air.”
This is a perilous time for Israel, and its anxiety is understandable. But I fear Israel could make its situation even more perilous if it succumbs to the argument one hears from a number of senior Israeli officials today that the events in Egypt prove that Israel can’t make a lasting peace with the Palestinians. It’s wrong and dangerous.
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