http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16617<snip>
Tony Blair, with the blood of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine dripping from his fingers, says Egyptian dictator Husni Mubarak is “immensely courageous and a force for good.” The opinion is based on working “with him on the Middle East peace process.” Mubarak’s record on the pacification process involves helping the Palestinian Authority transform itself into a (stateless) police state apparatus, obstructing Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, and constructing, in concert with US army engineers, a metal wall underneath the Gaza border.
Under Nasser’s police state Egypt had no popular sovereignty, but it did have national independence. This was lost at Camp David in 1979, when Sadat signed peace with Israel, retrieved the occupied Sinai peninsula, and received the promise of billions of dollars of annual American aid. After Israel, Egypt is the second largest recipient of US aid. American funding of the military is the reason why top officers remain loyal to the regime despite all the humiliations (for Egypt lost its Arab leadership role long ago) and committed to the peace treaty, although Israel has reneged on its Camp David undertaking to provide a just solution to the Palestinian problem.
Blair claims to fear that democracy in Egypt will be stolen by the Muslim Brotherhood – an improbable outcome, to say the least. The Brotherhood is popular and deeply rooted, but so are secular nationalist and leftist currents. The Brothers are involved but not at the forefront of the revolution, and they recognise this quite plainly. Egyptian democracy would resemble Turkey more than Iran (though it would be poorer than both). And even if the Brothers were to win a majority in a powerful parliament, Egypt is in no position to take on Israel militarily. It’s entirely possible that the peace treaty would survive a Brotherhood government, which would be eager first to prove its worth by improving living standards in Egypt.
But no real democracy in Egypt, whether secular or Islamist, neo-liberal or leftist, would provide support for the colonisation of Jerusalem and the West Bank, the emasculation of Palestinian political forces, or assaults on Lebanon, Syria or Iran. This is what most immediately worries Blair and other Zionists.
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