It seems that the storming of the Egypt-Gaza border by hundreds of thousands of Gazans wasn’t enough to end the stagnation hovering over Egyptian politics, despite the fact that Cairo managed the crisis with considerable efficiency. It did not, however, absorb the core lesson to be learned from it.
This was not simply a political bottleneck. Whether the Palestinian border breach was a reflex reaction to excessive collective punishment or an organized initiative by Hamas to escape the blockade or a combination of both, the meaning of the crisis remains much deeper than what it seems.
It is an expression (but this time immediately along the Egyptian border) of heightened tension overcoming a region that is about to erupt like a volcano on the verge of spewing its deadly lava.
What happened on the Egyptian border is a strong alarm bell for those who are ready to listen.
For Egypt, this crisis ranges way beyond its border with Gaza. Fate has been kind to us this time because the border was breached by brothers and neighbors suffering a humanitarian disaster which makes it a duty to receive them. Opening the doors to them is regarded with the highest esteem.
Despite that, Egyptian officials were taken by surprise even though they should have expected it once Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in mid June, 2007. This change on the Egyptian border is part of the wider transformations sweeping through the region since the invasion of Iraq and the launch of the Greater Middle East Initiative which helped boost Iranian influence over the region as a result of the drastic mistakes of the Bush administration.
The US attacks, which began in Afghanistan, removed Iran’s two main enemies, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, opening Iraq’s doors wide to the infiltration of Iran’s well-trained revolutionary guards and intelligence agents. The threats evoked by the ill-conceived US project drove Syria and radical Lebanese and Palestinian movements to strengthen their ties with Iran, which has now assumed a strong leadership position of currents opposing US-Israeli hegemony.
All this has given birth to new regional equations in light of the Middle East’s identity crisis which influences in varying degrees its other crises, such as the Iranian nuclear stand-off, the Iraqi quagmire and the dire situation in Palestine and Lebanon.
Egypt suddenly found itself at the heart of a conflict to which it is not a major party for the first time in 50 years – hence the US’s diligent work towards setting up an axis of Arab moderates to confront the “axis of evil led by Iran.
But Egypt has been unable to join this axis of moderates because the victory of the US project harms its interests and disrupts its current regime, just as the victory of the Iranian project would. Even though Egypt has managed to distance itself from both the US and the Iranian projects, it has, however, failed to expound an Arab project for the future of the region, which is both a source of weakness and a threat.
Cairo still believes that it can keep the status quo that has been in place for decades with a small change here and there, but this is no longer possible since the volcano has erupted.
This is the source of the strategic threat to Egypt. The Gaza border crisis is merely a partial expression of it on the tactical level. That threat is related to the limited scope of Egypt’s foreign policy as a result of the internal stagnation which prohibits making any initiatives for a future project.
A state that does not have a clear picture of its own future cannot possibly influence the future of its region.
Dr Waheed Abdel Meguid is an expert at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
