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Israeli-Egyptian Peace Holding after Forty Years
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Ehud Yaari - Over recent decades, Egypt has stuck to its traditional anti-Zionist stance while maintaining the March 1979 peace treaty. Efforts to widen various forms of nonmilitary cooperation have invariably met with failure. Israeli assistance with modernizing Egyptian agriculture, sponsored by visionary politician Yousef Wali, was gradually abandoned in the face of strong anti-Israel sentiment. Terrorism-related travel warnings have slowed Israeli tourism to Egypt to a trickle of mainly Arab Israelis vacationing at Red Sea resorts. The peace treaty's most salient benefit is the military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries, which reached unprecedented levels this year. Today, Israeli and Egyptian officers hold almost daily meetings and have established an efficient system of communications. This cooperation stems from a mutual interest in curbing the terrorist factions that have emerged in Sinai. Now that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have been ousted, both Israel and Egypt view the Hamas administration in Gaza as an adversary to be contained. The unprecedented deployment of Egyptian troops in central and eastern Sinai through the Agreed Activities Mechanism has shown that the two countries do not need to resort to the highly risky exercise of revising the peace treaty. The writer, an international fellow with The Washington Institute, is a Middle East commentator for Israel's Channel Two television.