The results of change in Egypt
Haaretz's Amos Harel, one of the country's top military analysts, explains some of the potential strategic implications of what is going on in Egypt today. In the possible scenarios that Israeli intelligence envisioned, they admittedly posited 2011 as a year of possible regime change – with a lot question marks – in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but a popular uprising like this was completely unexpected.Read it all and you will understand why there is so much concern in Israel about what's going on in Egypt today.
More than this, in his first appearance at a meeting last Wednesday of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee the new head of military intelligence Major General Aviv Kochavi said to member of Knesset, "There are currently no doubts about the stability of the regime in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is not organized enough to take over, they haven't managed to consolidate their efforts in a significant direction."
If the Mubarak regime is toppled, the quiet coordination of security between Israel and Egypt will quickly be negatively affected. It will affect relations between Cairo's relationship with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, it will harm the international forces stationed in Sinai.
It will mean the refusal of Egypt to continue to allow the movement of Israeli ships carrying missiles through the Suez canal, which was permitted for the last two years, according to reports in the foreign press, in order to combat weapons smuggling from Sudan to Gaza. In the long run, Egypt's already-cold peace treaty with Israel will get even colder.
From the perspective of the IDF, the events are going to demand a complete reorganization. For the last 20 years, the IDF has not included a serious threat from Egypt in its operational plan.
Labels: Cairo 25 January 2011, Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Hosni Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood, Politics, World Politics
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:33 PM
2 Comments:
If I were these guys, I'd be asking whether the current U.S. administration has any plan for retrieving all the weapons systems that have been delivered to Egypt or, conversely, whether they have been organizing this type of a hand over to the Muslim Brotherhood since... well, since when?
There's no doubt any change in Egypt that vaults the MB into an influential position is bad for Israel. Israel is powerless to influence events and can only pray the worst doesn't happen.
And since this is the Middle East, Israel has to be prepared to assume the worst.
Post a Comment
<< Home