In January, when a new Egyptian ambassador arrived in Israel after a three-year hiatus, observers hailed the event as a sign of warming relations between the two countries, which have been cooperating to contain Hamas and fight Islamic State infiltration in the Sinai Peninsula. Yet in Egypt itself, a parliamentarian who recently met with Israel’s ambassador faced widespread condemnation in state-owned media and was then expelled by his colleagues. Eyal Zisser attempts to make sense of these mixed messages:
[T]he improved diplomatic and security relationship between the countries still has not trickled down to the street. . . . [However, it] is hard to gauge the extent to which hostility [to Israel and Jews], which Egypt’s intellectual elite also expresses on occasion, truly represents the mood of the average Egyptian. . . .
It doesn’t take too much intelligence to realize that [Egyptian] lawmakers don’t represent much of anyone in Egypt, and it is doubtful whether they even care about the conflict with Israel. What’s interesting in this story is that an Egyptian parliamentarian dared do what many of his colleagues perhaps wished they could, were they not afraid of the backlash from fellow lawmakers.
The bottom line, however, is that both countries’ leaderships have a common view of the challenges that lie ahead. In retrospect, perhaps the understandings shared by the respective political and security echelons are more significant than the ephemeral mood on the street or among segments of the cultural and intellectual elite in the Arab world.
Read more on Israel Hayom: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=15437