Anwar El-Sadat landing in Tel Aviv, 1977. (Source: BBC News)We can summarise this attitude as follows: economic and political accords, smiling handshakes on the one hand, with constant expressions of dislike, defiance and distrust on the other.
This schism is apparent in the State and public spheres and alike -nevertheless with dominant appeasement on the government level, hostility on the popular one.
Schizophrenia or hypocrisy, I am unsure.
The main difference would be intent: a hypocrite is two faced, deliberately changing masks according to his preferences or interests of the day.
A schizophrenic (more accurately, a person suffering from a multiple personality disorder) would unwillingly be trapped between two personalities, failing to control their traits, simultaneously displaying contradicting behaviour.
I went with schizophrenia. I’d rather be psychologically unstable than a hypocrite.
Egyptians dread terrorist attacks in the Sinai and curse the terrorists that conduct them because they scare away vacationers, mainly Israelis - a lifeline for the peninsula’s tourism industry, and whom are by the way well liked by Egyptian backpackers - yet indulge in an extravagant group delirium when a group of old Jewish ladies who grew up in Cairo book a trip to visit the places of their childhood, eventually leading to the cancellation of the entire visit, as happened last year.
The minister of culture valiantly declares in the Parliament that he will “burn Israeli books himself if he sees them in a Cairo bookstore” but promptly gives an appeasing 7-page interview to an Israeli newspaper, whose reporter spent a weekend in his company in Cairo.
Cairo’s leading school for Economics and Political Science - my alma matter - offers no class dedicated to the study of Israel as a country or a society, bringing up the subject through a - single - course on 'Arab-Israeli relations'.
Yet Hebrew education, either in universities or privately, is so booming - that Xceed, a Cairo-based company primarily offering distance tech-support for Microsoft’s international customers in nine languages, has set up a Hebrew Department. Israeli settlers phoning to register their Microsoft products might find themselves in touch with a veiled Cairene woman.
The QIZ agreement (for Qualified Industrial Zones), a US-chaperoned deal fostering Egyptian-Israeli industrial cooperation was heavily vilified as “forced normalization” - at the very same time that queues of Egyptian applicants seeking to take advantage of the deal were reaching all the way outside the Egyptian ministry of external trade. A recent article in the Al-Ahram daily newspaper showed that the agreement was overall beneficial for Egypt; discussions with Israelis showed it remains marginal to the Israeli public and economy.
Egypt threatens to pull out of international cultural events, as it recently did with the Dubai film festival, because they had scheduled an Israeli film (ironically, the film in question “The Band’s Visit”, where most actors are Palestinian Israelis playing an Egyptian music band lost in a small Israeli town).
Yet we seem to be valued consumers of Israeli porn - so much that several Israeli adult entertainment websites now offer a version of their websites in Arabic for the benefit of their visitors from neighbouring countries.
These and innumerable other examples not withstanding, Egyptians stubbornly refuse to admit this duality.
As for Egyptians visiting Israel, that’s another story altogether.
While Israelis may drive freely into the Sinai and can easily obtain a visa to the rest of the country, Egyptians visiting Israel are heavily discouraged by their own authorities, and scorned at upon their return.
On a government level, expressing the will to visit Israel or Palestine - as both are a single unit to the Egyptian police administration - requires one to submit to a long investigative process by both the Internal Security (the average person’s nightmare) and the Counter-intelligence services, who must both approve your plans and declare you are not a threat to the country.
Such stringent rules apply even you are visiting your Palestinian wife’s family, or even working for an international humanitarian organisation in a refugee camp.
Subsequent governmental hassle is automatically to be expected. Holding a position in the State can be jeopardized.
An Israeli passport stamp is an Egyptian scarlet letter.
On the personal level, one receives the oddest - and generally the most unfriendly - reactions. Insults and suspicion are not uncommon. Potentially damaging rumours and accusations are legion - ‘normalizing’ and ‘being on their payroll’ are the most common.
Mona El Tahawy, an Egyptian-American journalist who has covered Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in the past and visits the region periodically, is constantly subject to such abuse. Angry messages she received on a public internet forum, upon her last visit to Tel Aviv a few months back, included such delightful thing as “can you smell the charred flesh of Palestinian children?”.“(Ariel) Sharon is your godfather” was another’s insult of choice. Expressing disagreement with the angry mob exposed one to their vitriol as well.
Yet Mona is a very unique example, and she remains undaunted by the violent reactions to her personal choice to establish ‘normal’ relations with Israel and Israelis - as a place that can be visited and people who can be spoken to.
I have personally chosen to maintain a degree of privacy regarding my own visits to Israel - without hiding it, clearly - my articles and photos are openly published on the internet.
Egyptian public personas are exposed to a different set of complications.
Author Ali Salem, who visited Israel in 1994 and wrote an essay about it (an excerpt of which can be found here) was expelled from the Egyptian writers union for "activity aiming at normalizing the relation with the Zionists”. Salem sued the Union, won the legal battle, then quit the Union. He has not been published since.
Opera singer Gaber Beltagui had his membership from the Musicians’ Union suspended after singing at the 100th anniversary of Cairo’s largest synagogue - a public event which was attended by many an Egyptian and foreign officials. Beltagui had obtained the permission of the Internal Security before he sang.
Yet despite everything, there is traffic on the Egyptian Israeli border - or around it.
The number of Egyptians in Israel, in the words of an Egyptian Embassy official in Tel Aviv I spoke to, is “unknown: they don’t come to register”. But he admitted that they were “in the thousands”.
Many are illegal workers. Some have settled, married - Palestinian Israeli women - and have become citizens. Egyptian press took some interest in them, and the topic resurfaces on occasion, triggering the unavoidable round of calls for stripping them of their citizenship. I am unavoidably baffled by the huffing and puffing armchair generals calling them a ‘national security threat’ on state television, for this is, after all, a country that Egyptians are legally allowed to visit, to marry into, to move to.
But as always, the officious version of the rule is very different.
Conflicted feelings, then. But how Egyptians should behave about ‘normalisation’, or lack thereof, should not depend on feelings but interests.
In terms of interests, two main reasons compel Egypt to maintain friendly relations with Israel. The first is that Egypt simply cannot afford to have a troubled north-eastern border - more so than it currently is. Nor can it afford to engage in diplomatic hostilities, let along military skirmishes with Israel: they’d be in Cairo by tea-time.
The second is the very consequential financial incentive - bribe, really - that Egypt receives from the Americans to maintain its peace treaty, making it the second largest recipient of Washington’s largesse after Israel.
On the other hand, those refusing an upgrade in relationships with Israel also have strong arguments on their side: out of moral principle, no relations should be established until Israel withdraws from all occupied territories and refrains from trampling human rights within Israel and in the Territories.
And of course, appeasing Egyptian popular anger vis-à-vis Israel’s actions, particularly in the context of a fragile political regime, is also an interest in itself.
The more politically astute would add that Egyptian relations with Israeli should be maintained for future use as a pressure card - and a carrot for the Israelis to seek a peaceful settlement with their neighbours.
This split personality is untenable at the long term, and it is only a matter of time until Egypt is pushed out of its uncomfortable fence-sitting onto one side or the other. Political movement from within, changing regional dynamics, external pressure are as many uncontrollable factors that can force the State into one corner, which may not be in its strategic interest.
On a more personal level, the ambient schizophrenia needs to stop; at least a semblant of honesty must be achieved.
And whichever way the country chooses to go - I shall accept.
This schism is apparent in the State and public spheres and alike -nevertheless with dominant appeasement on the government level, hostility on the popular one.
Schizophrenia or hypocrisy, I am unsure.
The main difference would be intent: a hypocrite is two faced, deliberately changing masks according to his preferences or interests of the day.
A schizophrenic (more accurately, a person suffering from a multiple personality disorder) would unwillingly be trapped between two personalities, failing to control their traits, simultaneously displaying contradicting behaviour.
I went with schizophrenia. I’d rather be psychologically unstable than a hypocrite.
Egyptians dread terrorist attacks in the Sinai and curse the terrorists that conduct them because they scare away vacationers, mainly Israelis - a lifeline for the peninsula’s tourism industry, and whom are by the way well liked by Egyptian backpackers - yet indulge in an extravagant group delirium when a group of old Jewish ladies who grew up in Cairo book a trip to visit the places of their childhood, eventually leading to the cancellation of the entire visit, as happened last year.
The minister of culture valiantly declares in the Parliament that he will “burn Israeli books himself if he sees them in a Cairo bookstore” but promptly gives an appeasing 7-page interview to an Israeli newspaper, whose reporter spent a weekend in his company in Cairo.
Cairo’s leading school for Economics and Political Science - my alma matter - offers no class dedicated to the study of Israel as a country or a society, bringing up the subject through a - single - course on 'Arab-Israeli relations'.
Yet Hebrew education, either in universities or privately, is so booming - that Xceed, a Cairo-based company primarily offering distance tech-support for Microsoft’s international customers in nine languages, has set up a Hebrew Department. Israeli settlers phoning to register their Microsoft products might find themselves in touch with a veiled Cairene woman.
The QIZ agreement (for Qualified Industrial Zones), a US-chaperoned deal fostering Egyptian-Israeli industrial cooperation was heavily vilified as “forced normalization” - at the very same time that queues of Egyptian applicants seeking to take advantage of the deal were reaching all the way outside the Egyptian ministry of external trade. A recent article in the Al-Ahram daily newspaper showed that the agreement was overall beneficial for Egypt; discussions with Israelis showed it remains marginal to the Israeli public and economy.
Egypt threatens to pull out of international cultural events, as it recently did with the Dubai film festival, because they had scheduled an Israeli film (ironically, the film in question “The Band’s Visit”, where most actors are Palestinian Israelis playing an Egyptian music band lost in a small Israeli town).
Yet we seem to be valued consumers of Israeli porn - so much that several Israeli adult entertainment websites now offer a version of their websites in Arabic for the benefit of their visitors from neighbouring countries.
These and innumerable other examples not withstanding, Egyptians stubbornly refuse to admit this duality.
As for Egyptians visiting Israel, that’s another story altogether.
While Israelis may drive freely into the Sinai and can easily obtain a visa to the rest of the country, Egyptians visiting Israel are heavily discouraged by their own authorities, and scorned at upon their return.
On a government level, expressing the will to visit Israel or Palestine - as both are a single unit to the Egyptian police administration - requires one to submit to a long investigative process by both the Internal Security (the average person’s nightmare) and the Counter-intelligence services, who must both approve your plans and declare you are not a threat to the country.
Such stringent rules apply even you are visiting your Palestinian wife’s family, or even working for an international humanitarian organisation in a refugee camp.
Subsequent governmental hassle is automatically to be expected. Holding a position in the State can be jeopardized.
An Israeli passport stamp is an Egyptian scarlet letter.
On the personal level, one receives the oddest - and generally the most unfriendly - reactions. Insults and suspicion are not uncommon. Potentially damaging rumours and accusations are legion - ‘normalizing’ and ‘being on their payroll’ are the most common.
Mona El Tahawy, an Egyptian-American journalist who has covered Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in the past and visits the region periodically, is constantly subject to such abuse. Angry messages she received on a public internet forum, upon her last visit to Tel Aviv a few months back, included such delightful thing as “can you smell the charred flesh of Palestinian children?”.“(Ariel) Sharon is your godfather” was another’s insult of choice. Expressing disagreement with the angry mob exposed one to their vitriol as well.
Yet Mona is a very unique example, and she remains undaunted by the violent reactions to her personal choice to establish ‘normal’ relations with Israel and Israelis - as a place that can be visited and people who can be spoken to.
I have personally chosen to maintain a degree of privacy regarding my own visits to Israel - without hiding it, clearly - my articles and photos are openly published on the internet.
Egyptian public personas are exposed to a different set of complications.
Author Ali Salem, who visited Israel in 1994 and wrote an essay about it (an excerpt of which can be found here) was expelled from the Egyptian writers union for "activity aiming at normalizing the relation with the Zionists”. Salem sued the Union, won the legal battle, then quit the Union. He has not been published since.
Opera singer Gaber Beltagui had his membership from the Musicians’ Union suspended after singing at the 100th anniversary of Cairo’s largest synagogue - a public event which was attended by many an Egyptian and foreign officials. Beltagui had obtained the permission of the Internal Security before he sang.
Yet despite everything, there is traffic on the Egyptian Israeli border - or around it.
The number of Egyptians in Israel, in the words of an Egyptian Embassy official in Tel Aviv I spoke to, is “unknown: they don’t come to register”. But he admitted that they were “in the thousands”.
Many are illegal workers. Some have settled, married - Palestinian Israeli women - and have become citizens. Egyptian press took some interest in them, and the topic resurfaces on occasion, triggering the unavoidable round of calls for stripping them of their citizenship. I am unavoidably baffled by the huffing and puffing armchair generals calling them a ‘national security threat’ on state television, for this is, after all, a country that Egyptians are legally allowed to visit, to marry into, to move to.
But as always, the officious version of the rule is very different.
Conflicted feelings, then. But how Egyptians should behave about ‘normalisation’, or lack thereof, should not depend on feelings but interests.
In terms of interests, two main reasons compel Egypt to maintain friendly relations with Israel. The first is that Egypt simply cannot afford to have a troubled north-eastern border - more so than it currently is. Nor can it afford to engage in diplomatic hostilities, let along military skirmishes with Israel: they’d be in Cairo by tea-time.
The second is the very consequential financial incentive - bribe, really - that Egypt receives from the Americans to maintain its peace treaty, making it the second largest recipient of Washington’s largesse after Israel.
On the other hand, those refusing an upgrade in relationships with Israel also have strong arguments on their side: out of moral principle, no relations should be established until Israel withdraws from all occupied territories and refrains from trampling human rights within Israel and in the Territories.
And of course, appeasing Egyptian popular anger vis-à-vis Israel’s actions, particularly in the context of a fragile political regime, is also an interest in itself.
The more politically astute would add that Egyptian relations with Israeli should be maintained for future use as a pressure card - and a carrot for the Israelis to seek a peaceful settlement with their neighbours.
This split personality is untenable at the long term, and it is only a matter of time until Egypt is pushed out of its uncomfortable fence-sitting onto one side or the other. Political movement from within, changing regional dynamics, external pressure are as many uncontrollable factors that can force the State into one corner, which may not be in its strategic interest.
On a more personal level, the ambient schizophrenia needs to stop; at least a semblant of honesty must be achieved.
And whichever way the country chooses to go - I shall accept.
