Should we fear the Muslim Brotherhood asks Slate? Nah, says Shadi Hamid. The United States “can work with the country’s largest opposition group,” he writes–which is true. Even centrist Washington policy wonks agree.
But Hamid implies the U.S. can work with the banned opposition group because Egypt’s revolution won’t really change the country’s foreign policy–which is almost certainly not true. The sound idea that the Jewish state has little to fear from a democratic Egypt does not mean that it has nothing to lose. Israel has already lost plenty.
The real concern, Hamid writes, “is whether the Brotherhood, known for its inflammatory rhetoric against Israel and the United States, would work against U.S. regional interests.” Hamid understandable wants to quell fears of another Iran circa 1979. Egypt is not the scene of a runaway religious counterrevolution, nor is it likely to become one.
But we can be sure the Muslim Brotherhood, as a participant in a new h will work against U.S. regional interests, as they are now defined. The Brotherhood ‘s leaders and followers have never shared Washington’s Israeli-centric vision of the region, and they’re not going to start now. The Brotherhood is not, as Glen Beck believes, a band of bloodthirsty anti-Semites aching for the chance to colonize North America. Nor are they are not going to collaborate with Washington’s defense of the Zionist state in its current expansionist mode. Both the fear and the hope are American projections.
Hamid says it is “unlikely” that the Brotherhood will attempt to cancel Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, also true. But there’s a lot more to Egypt’s role in the Middle East than a 30-year old treaty. What Hamid’s reassuring argument glosses over is that the mainstreaming of the Brotherhood into Egyptian politics is a big setback for Israel in three ways.
The Brotherhood will not support the U.S.-Israeli-Mubarak policy of collective punishment in Gaza. Nor will any democratic government in it participates. That is going to affect Israel’s ability to maintain its siege of Gaza, a linchpin of its strategy of keeping the Palestinian population out of Israeli territory.
A democratic Egypt will demand something more productive than the dysfunctional “peace process” between the unyielding Netanhayu regime and a discredited Palestinian Authority. We can be sure the new Egyptian dispensation, whatever it is, will support Palestinians who want to shrug off an unelected government and unwanted occupation.
And the Egyptian revolution is dissolving the U.S.-Israeli-Mubarak triangle of hostility against Iran. The Brotherhood’s alliance of convenience with secularist Muhamed ElBaradei, former U.N. nuclear inspections chief who says military strikes against Iran would be “insane,” is a leading indicator of Egyptian public opinion. The U.S.-Israeli policy toward Iran based on the implied threats will no longer enjoy Cairo’s support.
The reality is that the Eygptian revolution undermines Israel’s policy of strategic deterrence and will continue to do so.
But wishful thinking dies hard. Another thing that will not change in the new Egypt, says Hamid, is the government’s clientelist mentality.
Any new, transitional government—which will be tasked with rebuilding a battered country—will not want to harm its relationship with Washington and risk losing billions of dollars in much-needed assistance.
The democratic Egypt, in this view, will tailor its policies toward Israel for the sake of Washington’s money, just as Mubarak did. This is may be true. But it may not be. Egypt, after all, has changed.
