There is no doubt that it is President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, President Nasser\u2019s successor, to whom Abdel Bari Atwan principally refers; and there is no doubt, too, that the \u201cflotilla affair\u201d marks a watershed moment for Egypt \u2013 and to a lesser extent for Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Even the notoriously tin ear of President Mubarak to his own people\u2019s sympathy for the Palestinian cause in Gaza could not fail to hear the grinding of the tectonic plates of Middle East change. Even Mubarak has felt obliged to respond to the Israeli assault. He ordered the immediate opening of the Egyptian crossing into Gaza.<\/p>\n
What we are witnessing is another step \u2013 perhaps crucial \u2013 in the shifting strategic balance of power in the Middle East. The cause of the Palestinians is gradually passing out of the hands of Mubarak and King Abdullah bin Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia. It is the leaders of Iran and Turkey, together with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who recognize the winds of change. Mubarak appears increasingly isolated and is cast as Israel\u2019s most assiduous collaborator. Here in the region, it is often as not the Egyptian embassies that are the butt of popular demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Mubarak\u2019s motives for his dogged support for Israel are well known in the region: He is convinced that the gateway to obtaining Washington\u2019s green light for his son Gamal to succeed him lies in Tel Aviv rather than Washington. Mubarak enjoys a bare modicum of support in the United States, and if Washington is to ignore its democratic principles in order to support a Gamal shoo-in, it will be because Israel says that this American \u201cblind eye\u201d is essential for its security.<\/p>\n
To this end, Mubarak has worked to weaken and hollow out Hamas\u2019s standing in Gaza, and to strengthen that of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Indeed, he has pursued this policy at the expense of Palestinian unity \u2013 his regular \u201cunity\u201d initiatives notwithstanding. Egyptian one-sided peace \u201cbrokering\u201d is viewed here as part of the problem rather than as part of any Palestinian solution. Paradoxically, it is precisely this posture that has opened the door to Turkey and Iran\u2019s seizing of the sponsorship of the Palestinian cause.<\/p>\n
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But standing behind this sharp Turkish reaction to Israel\u2019s assault on the Turkish ship is a deeper regional rift, and this divide stems from the near-universal conviction that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has failed. Its structural pillars have crumbled: The Israeli public no longer believes that \u201cland for peace\u201d \u2013 the Oslo principle \u2013 will bring them security. Rather, Israelis believe those who tell them that further withdrawal will only bring Hamas rockets closer. The other Oslo pillars also lie broken on the ground: The hitherto presumed \u201creversibility\u201d of the Israeli settlement project and the hypothetical possibility of last-resort American imposition of its own solution are now understood to have been no more than chimeras.<\/p>\n
Yet Egypt refuses to budge in these changed circumstances. It stands almost alone as Israel\u2019s ally. But the shift in the balance of regional power toward the northern tier of Middle Eastern states \u2013 Syria, Turkey, Iran, Qatar, and Lebanon \u2013 continues, and gathers pace. Egypt increasingly has only its memory of past grandeur on which to stand. In contemporary terms its influence has been on the slide for some time.<\/p>\n
Egypt\u2019s one card is that it is Gaza\u2019s other neighbor \u2013 aside from Israel. It has been Egypt\u2019s acquiescence to the siege of Gaza \u2013 encouraged by President Abbas in the West Bank, who shares Mubarak\u2019s desire to see Hamas weakened \u2013 that has given Mubarak his stranglehold over Palestinian issues. But the Islamic and regional tide will be flowing ever stronger against him after Israel\u2019s action against the flotilla.<\/p>\n
Already the Arab League is talking of supporting Turkey in any legal action against the Israeli assault on the aid convoy to Gaza. The Arab League has also issued a call to other states to break Israel\u2019s siege on Gaza.<\/p>\n
It is too early to say that such talk marks any turning point in Arab League politics. The Arab League, as such, is not taken seriously in the region or elsewhere. But it is rather the shifting of the regional strategic balance that marks the locus from where real change may become possible.<\/p>\n
Egypt and Saudi Arabia may conclude that the price of seeing the baton of leadership on such a key and emotive issue pass to non-Arab hands inIran and Turkey is too high, and too shameful. The near-universal skepticism directed toward the \u201cpeace process\u201d among their own peoples has already left these leaders exposed internally.<\/p>\n
For nearly 20 years these leaders have used their involvement in the \u201cprocess\u201d as justification to curb internal dissension; but it is now a tool that has lost its magic. They are already paying the price of popular cynicism.<\/p>\n
This is Mubarak\u2019s dilemma: stay with the siege and hope America will reward him with Gamal\u2019s succession; but by flouting the winds of change, he may imperil Gamal\u2019s very survival. In any event, Egypt\u2019s control of the Palestinian \u201cfile\u201d will never be the same again.<\/p>\n
Alastair Crooke, a former British M16 operative in the Middle East, is author of \u201cResistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution.\u201d He runs the Conflicts Forum in Beirut.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n\u00a9 2010 Global Viewpoint Network\/ Tribune Media Services. Hosted online by The Christian Science Monitor.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Egypt\u2019s control of the Palestinian ‘file’ will never be the same again, says former British intelligence operative Alastair Crooke. By Alastair Crooke \/ June 3, 2010 Beirut, Lebanon \u201cThis is language that we have not heard since the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser.\u201d Thus wrote the influential chief editor of Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, referring to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":69723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[3044],"class_list":["post-19479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-mavi-marmara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}