by Efraim Karsh
How do Israelis view this momentous event from a 40-year vantage point?
Originally published under the title "Sadat's Visit."
Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat's November 20, 1977 visit to Jerusalem was the
most important single political event in the history of the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
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So
profound was the general disbelief that the Israeli chief of staff,
Mordechai Gur, warned the government that the visit was an Egyptian
deceptive ploy, on the heels of the Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack of
October 1973.
As
it turned out, the visit proved to be the most important single
political event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, culminating
in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of March 1979 and the attendant
shattering of the Arab world's uniform rejection of Jewish statehood.
And while Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak, held a far more restrictive
view of the agreement, the Israeli-Egyptian peace has successfully
weathered many regional crises (from the 1982 Lebanon war to the
"al-Aksa Intifada" and the 2014 Gaza conflict), paving the road to the
October 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty and the yet-to-be-completed
Israeli-Palestinian peace process launched with the September 1993 Oslo
accord.
But
how do Israelis view this momentous event from a 40-year vantage point?
Do they appreciate its full historic significance and the impact it has
had on their lives? Do they consider the price of the Egyptian-Israeli
peace treaty worth paying?
A
recent survey held by Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for
Strategic Studies (BESA ) and the Foreign Ministry shows a rather mixed
picture. While 81% of respondents viewed the agreement as conducive to
Israel's national security, 51% deemed the concessions made for its
attainment (notably the evacuation of the oil-rich Sinai Peninsula and
the demolition of Yamit) to have been excessive, compared to 46% of
respondents who considered them commensurate with the agreement's
mammoth gains.
Peace with Israel was the price Cairo had to pay for US economic and military aid.
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This
apparent contradiction seems to be a corollary to Israelis' keen
awareness of Mubarak's lukewarm perception of peace. While one can only
speculate about Sadat's own ultimate intentions – he was assassinated in
October 1981 by an Islamist zealot – for Mubarak, peace was of no value
in and of itself but was rather the price Cairo had to pay for such
substantial benefits as US economic and military aid. As a result,
Mubarak reduced interaction with Israel to the lowest possible level,
while simultaneously transforming the Egyptian army into a formidable
modern force and fostering a culture of virulent antisemitism in Egypt, a
culture whose premises he himself evidently shared.
Though
President Abdel Fattah Sisi has taken a different route, bringing
Israeli-Egyptian relations to unprecedented heights, most Israelis seem
to acknowledge the instrumental nature of the Egyptian perception of
peace. Consequently, only 14% of the BESA /FMA survey respondents
regarded Egypt's attitude to Israel as friendly (of whom 37% thought
Israel "overpaid" for the agreement), while 68% viewed it as lukewarm
and another 18% as hostile (of whom 44% and 68% percent respectively
deemed the concessions made for the agreement excessive).
Most Israelis seem to acknowledge the instrumental nature of the Egyptian perception of peace.
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Not
surprisingly, perhaps, support for the agreement was found to be
strongest among center-left voters, though it was actually the
right-wing Likud Party that made this historic breakthrough. Ninety-two
percent of Zionist Union and Yesh Atid voters, as well as 88% of Meretz
voters, believed the agreement to have enhanced Israel's national
security as opposed to 82% of Likud voters, 82% of Bayit Yehudi's voters
and 67% of Yisrael Beytenu voters. Support for the agreement within the
ultra-Orthodox community was even lower, with a mere 64% of Shas voters
and 68% of United Torah Judaism voters viewing the agreement as
conducive to Israel's national security.
Likewise,
the survey exposed the ambiguous attitude of Israel's Arab citizens to
the agreement, or indeed to possible Israeli reconciliation with the
neighboring Arab states. While only 68% of Israeli Arabs viewed the
agreement as conducive to Israel's national security, compared to 83% of
their Jewish compatriots, 17% of them deemed the price paid for its
attainment to have been too low (compared to 1% of Israeli Jews). In
other words, Israeli Arabs are more inclined than their Jewish
counterparts (with the salient exception of Meretz voters) to have their
state pay a higher price for a less favorable international agreement
affecting its national security. This inclination is markedly higher
among voters for the Joint Arab List (compared to those voting for
Jewish parties) with 22% of them considering the price too low.
This
gap between Israeli Arabs and Jews notwithstanding, both communities
are equally skeptical about the prospects for a Palestinian-Israeli
peace agreement, with over 80% of respondents agreeing there are
currently no leaders of Sadat's and Begin's stature on either side of
the divide who are capable of effecting a similarly momentous
breakthrough. Hardly a heart-warming prognosis after nearly four decades
of Egyptian-Israeli peace.
Efraim Karsh is emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at Kings College London, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, principal research fellow at the Middle East Forum, and editor of its flagship journal, Middle East Quarterly.
Source: http://www.meforum.org/6998/israeli-attitudes-40-years-after-sadats-visit
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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