'Sisi's men wish to clarify that the security cooperation with Israel is temporary'
Photo: AP
Egypt primitively downplaying Israel ties
Analysis: Egypt is on fire, but its government rejected Israel's offer to treat terror attack victims and its official daily's top story is a new 'sensational' espionage affair involving the Mossad.
This is what the schedule of five senior ministers in the Egyptian government looked like immediately after the deadly terror attack
in Taba: The foreign minister made phone calls to offer condolences to the South Korean government.
The interior minister sent reinforced teams to Sinai, to investigate the security failure, add roadblocks and pursue the terrorists (with no chance of success). The tourism minister canceled an important flight to Luxor, where he was supposed to pamper a delegation of travel agents and reporters from France who came to offer the calming message that "people can return to Egypt."
The health minister handled the transportation of the killed and injured.
The perpetrators of the attack against the tourist bus succeeded in hitting three targets: They landed a slap on the security-military-intelligence organizations' cheeks, created tension along the shared border, and disrupted the plan devised in several European countries to lift the travel alerts to Egypt.
The information minister's office, meanwhile, released a comprehensive clarification that Egypt rejects the Israeli offer to hospitalize the injured in our hospitals, even those whose life is in danger. The ambulances and deployment on the Israeli side of the Taba border crossing boosted the national dignity level. The Egyptian side is not prepared to deal with waves of criticism over open and overly tight cooperation with us.
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Tourism is the Egyptian economy's second most important income potential (after the passage of ships in the Suez Canal). At least three million families made a living, until the series of upheavals in Egypt, off the flights, hotel stays, tours, restaurants, recreational activities and shopping. A tourist who insisted on spending the past weekend in Luxor's tourist site told me about rock-bottom prices, deserted restaurants and an awkward loneliness on the deck of the only felucca sailing along the Nile.
The economy will dictate the stability of the next Egyptian president's seat. Until now he has yet to remove his uniform, had yet to announce his candidacy in his own voice and has yet to reveal his plans. But the crushing victory of Field Marshal Sisi appears to be certain, although no one in Egypt knows how he plans to deal with the economic distress, the unemployment and the poverty, how he will bring investors and how he will manage to get the tourists back.
Effort to create consensus
Over the weekend, we were hit with an embarrassing message from Cairo: On its front page, the official al-Ahram daily spread a "sensational exposure" of a new espionage affair starring Egyptian citizen Abdel Baki Hussein and his two Israeli "operators," "Meir" and "Shaul" of the Mossad. This is not a juicy story. It's a primitive concoction of the adventures of the victim who enlisted with the Mossad through Facebook, was sent to spy on Hezbollah, went out to dubious nightclubs with his operators, and finally begged to be converted. To tell you the truth, I read it and was irritated. Is that what the media's most respectable hospice has to deal with while Egypt is on fire?My Egyptian friends tried to convince me that "we know it's rubbish." Greater experts admit candidly that the story's publication points to governmental distress and a (primitive) effort to create consensus.
But the analysis our experts provide is interesting and far-reaching. The close associates of the designated president, Sisi, don't approve of the Israeli leaks about strategic security cooperation between the countries. Sisi's men are interested in clarifying that the cooperation (the size of which we've never had, even in the Mubarak era) is a temporary thing, on an ad hoc basis.
Later on, Sisi's Egypt will make sure to keep its distance.
