Though Egypt and Israel insist the decision to end a gas sales contract wasn't political, it's hard to see annulling the largest ever contract between the two countries as anything but.
Israelis are furious that a multi-billion gas sales contract with Egypt was cancelled this week. And for good reason.
Skip to next paragraphThough Egyptian officials and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insist the decision wasn't political, it's hard to see annulling the largest ever contract between the two countries as anything but.
What comes next?
Egypt Minister of International Cooperation Faiza Aboul Naga suggested yesterday that her cash-strapped government has adopted what amounts to a negotiating position. If Israel and the private Egyptian and Israeli investors who served as the middlemen in the original agreement agree to pay more, the gas might flow again, she said.
But the Israeli Finance Ministry has it about right: Egypt's decision could set ?a dangerous precedent that casts clouds over ... the atmosphere of peace?between Egypt and Israel," the ministry said in a statement.
Egypt in many ways now seems rudderless. It has a government nominally run by a military junta, a frustrated Muslim Brotherhood that has won parliamentary elections but so far been unable to exercise any real power, and a Mubarak-era bureaucracy that is trundling along and largely left to its own devices. But one clear, consistent trend is evident across the country's many competing power centers: Xenophobia is in, the old ways of doing business with Israel and the US are on the way out.
Gas sales to Israel are just an indicator, albeit a serious one, raising questions regarding how long the peace treaty reached between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin in 1979 can hold. The Egyptian population never took to the treaty, and views Israel as a regional menace. While the country is a long way from being a functional democracy, public attitudes will influence Egyptian affairs far more than they have for decades.
And that's what's fueling the latest kick in the teeth for Jimmy Carter (a key player in the 1978 Camp David peace talks) and a group of foreign NGOs.
The former president's Carter Center was one of eight foreign civil society organizations that the Egyptian government announced yesterday were barred from working in Egypt because they're deemed a threat to Egypt's sovereignty.?The Carter Center specializes in election monitoring, and has monitored Egyptian elections in the past.
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