Four Reasons Why Israel May Miss Morsi After All
Egypt's president is no Zionist, but will Israel truly benefit from his ouster?
By Anshel Pfeffer | Jul.03, 2013 | 8:47 PM
1. Under Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood did the unthinkable when it affirmed the Camp David peace accords with Israel. Its leaders did talk of amending the treaty but they continued to uphold it, just as Hosni Mubarak's regime did before. Muslim Brotherhood members and government ministers may not have not with Israeli officials, but on the most crucial level for Israel - the security channels - cooperation was maintained and even improved, Israeli defense sources said, after a rocky period following Mubarak's fall.
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2. Israel feared that when in power, the Muslim Brotherhood – the ideological forebear of Hamas - would back the Palestinian Islamist movement and encourage it to launch missiles against Israel, while threatening Israel not to retaliate. Though, for a time, Hamas thought it was immuned, the Morsi administration actually did not try to stop Israel from launching Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza last year, in which Hamas' military leadership and infrastructure was severely damaged. Morsi was also successful in achieving a swift ceasefire that has engendered for the past eight months - an unprecedented period of calm in southern Israel - which is now being adroitly observed and enforced by Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood has reined in Hamas in a degree that never existed during Mubarak's time.
3. In Mubarak's day, the Egyptian army failed to act decisively against smuggling operations in Sinai, and from there through underground tunnels, into Gaza. For the Egyptians, this was an opportunity to create regional balance between Israel and the Palestinians, while keeping the Bedouin tribes who control the smuggling satisfied.
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4. Despite fears of a rapprochement between Iran and Egypt following the Muslim Brotherhood's electoral victories, the differences between Sunni Egypt and Shia Iran have widened under Morsi, and any chance of cooperation now seems very remote. Instinctively, the Brotherhood identifies with the Sunni rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime. Hezbollah's deepening involvement in Syria on Assad's side has made the government in Cairo an implacable foe of the Lebanese militia.
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