Normal peace?
Oct 8th, 2009 by MESH
From David Schenker
Egypt’s National Democratic Party (NDP) conference is fast approaching, but the meeting—which will formally set the stage for political succession—isn’t making headlines these days. On October 6, the Los Angeles Times reported on how the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is reacting to sales of an Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit; still other news outlets have focused on the important decision at Al-Azhar to ban the niqab (the full-body veil) in the classroom.
Less covered in the Western media, but perhaps equally consequential, is the ongoing controversy surrounding Hala Mustafa (pictured). On October 10, Dr. Mustafa will appear at hearings before the Journalist Syndicate disciplinary committee, where she faces sanctions for meeting with Israeli ambassador to Egypt Shalom Cohen in early September.
Dr. Mustafa is a member of the NDP’s elite policy committee, and a scholar at the government-sponsored Al-Ahram Center. Last month, she found herself the target of a Journalist Syndicate investigation for meeting with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt. By meeting with Cohen, she violated draconian union bylaws, which enforce the strict policy of no contact with Israelis underpinning the “anti-normalization” campaign.
In recent decades, the Egyptian professional boycott against Israel—led by Islamist-controlled syndicates—has been an effective tool in preventing a normalization of bilateral relations between the states. While the government of Egypt has made little effort to reverse the trend, it has not seemingly endorsed the boycott—until recently.
The Journalist Syndicate appears to be looking to make an example out of Dr. Mustafa. And she’s not getting any help from the government’s Al-Ahram Center. Indeed, not only has the Center established its own board of inquiry to investigate Dr. Mustafa, just weeks ago the Center announced it too would “boycott Israelis of all levels.”
Perhaps this turn of events shouldn’t be surprising given that the center was founded in 1968 as the Center for Zionist and Palestine studies. Nevertheless, it seems odd that Egypt’s leading research institution—a state-funded institute closely tied to the regime—would adhere to extra-legal anti-normalization prescriptions advocated by Islamist-led unions. Indeed, the 1978 Camp David (peace) Accords stipulated that after the Israelis withdrew from Sinai, the states would establish “normal relations” including “cultural relations.”
While there is little doubt that the Egyptian government is committed to the absence of war with its Israeli neighbor, there remains a staunch opposition to moving toward a peace between the peoples at both the popular and the official levels. In Egypt, this incongruity is rationalized by the Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, but even when the peace process is making progress—during the heyday of the Oslo Accords (1994-98), for example—Cairo demonstrates little inclination to change the dynamic.
The resistance to normalizing relations with Israel reaches the highest levels in Cairo. To date Hosni Mubarak—who has served as Egypt’s president since 1981—has visited Israel only once, and that was to attend the funeral of former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin. Still, in 1995, following his return from Israel, he told the Government daily Al Ahram that “I don’t consider this a visit.”
It remains to be seen what will transpire with Hala Mustafa’s case. Syndicate insiders say that the group’s board of directors is inclined to freeze her membership for a year, resulting in her removal as editor and chief of Al-Demokratiya. Sadly, based on developments to date, it appears unlikely that Mubarak regime will oppose a Journalist Syndicate dictate or intervene on her behalf.
For the Obama administration—which is trying to convince states like Saudi Arabia to normalize with Israel in hopes of encouraging the Jewish state to take “risks for peace” with the Palestinians—Cairo’s disposition is problematic. After all, if even peace partners are unwilling to normalize, convincing states like Saudi Arabia to do so stands little chance of success. In the search for Arab normalization with Israel, Washington would be best advised to take a more modest approach. Egypt, at peace with Israel for nearly 30 years, would seem a reasonable place to start.
MESH Admin: There is an Arabic translation of this post.
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The case of Hala Mustafa, a fellow scholar and dear friend of mine, is truly distressing. As David Schenker correctly points out, it exposes an ugly underside of Egyptian political life: the fact that the government not only tolerates but in some cases encourages vicious anti-Israel and anti-U.S. rhetoric while taking billions in U.S. assistance for maintaining peace with Israel. Campaigns such as this are launched selectively to intimidate or punish an individual who has displeased the regime. Regarding the United States, this double game is somewhat less effective than it used to be; many non-governmental organizations, for example, now reject the logic that they are “agents” if they take U.S. money while the government continues not only to accept but to solicit U.S. largesse. Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel this is not yet the case.
Hala’s case also sheds a spotlight on the stifling conformity that still pervades much of Egyptian life. For the entire decade I have known her, Hala has been harassed repeatedly for being too liberal, too independent, too pro-American, too willing to talk to Israelis, and for being a woman who stands shoulder to shoulder with men in a society where that is still rare. I hope that, in her hearing before the Journalists Syndicate, high-ranking people from the Ahram Center and/or NDP will stand up to say that in meeting with an Israeli official, Hala has been neither more nor less patriotic than President Hosni Mubarak. I hope someone also points out how hypocritical it is of Egyptians to praise President Obama’s willingness to engage Iran, an enemy nation, while Egyptians themselves refuse to meet with the ambassador of a neighboring country with which Egypt is ostensibly at peace.
Michele Dunne is a member of MESH.
When “L’Affaire Hala” broke a number of weeks ago, it was hard to be surprised. The Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate along with their brethren in the Writers Union and other professionals in the arts, culture, and sciences have long held the line against contacts with Israelis. The assassination of Ali Salem’s integrity and character as a result of his visits to Israel beginning in 1994 are well known. Egypt’s journalists and writers are hardly a monolithic lot, but the syndicates have been effective enforcers of the no-contact code. As Hala Mustafa is finding out the hard way, there are serious professional hazards from even a mere courtesy call with an Israeli.
To be fair, Hala’s colleagues within the Journalists’ Syndicate are not whipping up outrage over nothing. To many in Egypt, the peace with Israel is shameful because it is a separate peace, having abandoned the Palestinians to fend for themselves in what is anything but a fair fight against the mighty IDF and the resources of the state of Israel. Over the course of the 30 years since Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin inked the peace treaty, Israel invaded Lebanon (a couple of times), poured hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers into the West Bank and Gaza Strip (until the withdrawal from the latter in 2005), imprisoned tens of thousands of Palestinians (including women and children), and killed untold numbers. All the while, Egyptian sat on the sidelines and did very little other than “strongly condemn” or “refer to the United Nations,” while continuing to host Israeli leaders in Cairo or Sharm el Sheikh. When President Hosni Mubarak recalled his longtime ambassador to Israel, Mohammed Bassiouny, in protest over Israel’s handling of the al-Aqsa Intifada it was a big deal, but the peace treaty was never in jeopardy.
Yet, even if we stipulate that Egyptians have every right to hate Israelis, shouldn’t it be up to Hala to decide whom she entertains in her office? I don’t hold a brief for Hala. I know her, but not well. I’ve written about her journal in Foreign Policy‘s “Global Newsstand.” I have heard her say some wacky things like her call for secularization of the Arab world along the lines of Mustafa Kemal’s reforms in Turkey in the 1920s, but we’ve all written and said things that weren’t necessarily analytically sound. My point is, regardless of how one feels about Hala and her work, there is a principle here. The journalists and writers who have attacked Hala are, I am told, at the forefront of agitating for personal and political freedom in Egypt. Yet, in enforcing a code of “no normalization,” they are in effect doing the bidding of a regime they ostensibly revile. They may not like what she has done, but whether she meets with Shalom Cohen, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Yossi Bellin, Tzip Livni or Zohan Dvir should be left to Hala’s professional judgment and her own conscience.
Of course, being perceived to play into the regime’s double game on Israel is no doubt not a reason for Egypt’s intellectuals to meet with Israelis. After all, many who support democracy in Egypt believe that a government more responsive to its citizens will be better equipped to resist the predatory policies of Israel and the United States. Still, this boycott thing seems to have gone a bit beyond reason. Writing in al-Masri al-Yawm, Ammar Ali Hassan called Hala’s meeting with Ambassador Cohen “a crime.” Others have been equally nasty and overwrought in their condemnations of Hala. It’s all a bit over the top.
The whole sad episode is rather revealing of the state of journalism in Egypt and, as Fouad Ajami might say, of “Egypt’s men and women of letters.” To be sure, there have been some bright spots in the last five years or so. The launch of al-Masri al-Yawm in 2004, despite Ammar Ali Hassan’s diatribe referenced above, the work of al-Dustur and a variety of other publications, as well as the hard work of any number of bloggers have successfully altered the prevailing political discourse in Egypt in a variety of positive ways. For example, despite the regime’s effort to embed their notions of “stability and development” in the Egyptian population, many are focused on reform and change instead, thanks in part to Egypt’s journalists.
That said, there is a sense that the Egyptian media is falling behind it peers elsewhere in the region. Whereas al-Ahram (which Lebanese Christians founded) and other Egyptian publications once were serious publications, they are now for the most part tendentious, predictable, and entirely uninteresting. Much of this, of course, has to do with the authoritarian political system in which Egypt’s journalists must operate, but the fault does not lie entirely with President Mubarak and his colleagues.
A number of years ago, the State Department dragooned me into a two-week tour of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to discuss U.S. Middle East policy. I did the rounds in Cairo and then headed off to Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dhahran. Somewhere along the way I came to a stunning conclusion: The Saudi journalists, writers, and academics seemed far more sophisticated, worldly, well-read, and willing to wrestle with alternative ideas than the Egyptians. I got my fair share of Saudi conspiracy mongering about the “Jewish lobby” and how Washington wanted to replace Saudi Arabia with Iran as its primary interlocutor in the Gulf, but I was on the receiving end of similar ideas and much more in Cairo. The Saudis, like their Egyptian counterparts, are forced to operate in an authoritarian environment, yet in comparison they seem enlightened. After Egyptian journalists and writers are finished devouring one of their own over a boycott that has done absolutely nothing to advance the Palestinian cause, they might want to investigate why collectively they have become little more than a second rate sideshow in a region bursting with journalistic activity.
Steven A. Cook is a member of MESH.