Egypt's peace treaty with Israel: what course to follow?
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Not worst-case scenario
Ephraim Kam, a principal research fellow and deputy director at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told Xinhua that at the moment no one really knows what the future holds for the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, but added that the situation could be worse.
According to Kam, the current situation, with the Egyptian army in control, is preferable to the possible scenario of the Muslim Brotherhood taking over. The Muslim Brotherhood is regarded as the largest political movement in Egypt and has called for the peace treaty to be canceled. The party is also alleged of having close ties with Iran and supporting Hamas.
"For the time being, it's relatively good news," Kam said, adding that "the Egyptian army has a good connection with Israel and even more with the United States."
"I heard on the news that our Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Tantawi and they talked, which is a good sign," he added.
Lt. Col. Moshe Marzuk, a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herzliya, said that while it's hard to predict what will happen 50 years from now, he did not see any immediate deterioration in Egyptian- Israeli relations.
One of the main reasons behind this reasoning, Marzuk believes, is that right now Egypt's main focus will be on the domestic problems that caused the protests in the first place, such as skyrocketing youth unemployment and inflation.
"War and instability cost money and this is not what the Egyptians are interested in right now," he told Xinhua.
Marzuk also pointed to the good relations that the Egyptian army has with the West and the U.S. in particular, as a stabilizing factor.
According to the analysts, Egypt is, after Israel, the second largest recipients of American military aid in the Middle East and receives an estimated 1.3 billion U.S. dollars annually. Much of the modern weaponry in the Egyptian army is American, and Washington has always made sure that Israel has maintained a technological advantage over neighboring countries.
Some analysts say that the peace between Israel and Egypt, if often described as a cold peace, exists between the two governments but not between the two peoples. Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed the treaty, was assassinated three years afterward by Islamist fundamentalist that opposed any dealings with Israel.
"The peace was never very deep, even during Mubarak," Marzuk said, adding that the treaty was always seen as a good agreement between two states that did not want war, but never a peace between two peoples.
