Morsi. Fanatical leadership
Photo: AP
Hagai Segal
Photo: Zoom 77
Morsi deceiving Israel
Op-ed: Jerusalem must reject Egyptian leadership's demand to renegotiate terms of 1979 peace treaty
The high praise Egypt's
campaign
against terror cells in Sinai won in Israel
was exaggerated. The terrorists' continued freedom of movement in close proximity to the Israeli border raises the suspicion that the operation was conducted mainly on television, not on the ground.
The academic theories according to which the Camp David Accords are preventing Egypt from deploying large forces to Sinai in order to combat the terrorists are at best a poor excuse and, at worst, a blatant lie. If Egyptian President Morsi was really interested in defeating the terrorists he would have made due with the means at his disposal, which are significant. Israel already showed flexibility on this issue when it authorized Cairo to move additional forces into Sinai, but terror activity in the peninsula persists.
The new Egyptian leadership is essentially accepting the Lebanon-like situation in Sinai. The leadership lacks the ideological fervor to confront extremist Islam because it is also fanatical.
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Now all we can do is hope Israel does not accept additional Egyptian demands, certainly not the demand to renegotiate the terms of the Camp David agreement. This demand is impertinent even in comparison with the accepted rules of commerce at a Middle Eastern bazaar, because at Camp David the Egyptians received 100% of the land in exchange for diplomatic relations. Now when they speak of opening the peace treaty they are not referring to sovereignty over the Yamit region or Sharm el-Sheikh, but to the diplomatic relations. We would have to be fools to agree to this. Nowhere does it say that a country is permitted to demand changes to a peace treaty 30 years after it was signed.
If Egypt merely wants to ratify the old agreement they are welcome to do so. In this case Morsi should come to Jerusalem and address the Knesset. Perhaps such a momentous event would finally bring Obama to Israel as well. But Morsi has other plans that are much less festive, and Israel must reject them out of hand. Otherwise, he will demand to reopen the UN resolution from November 29, 1947.
