JERUSALEM: Israel is urging the West to stick by Egypt’s army in its confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood, quietly echoing warnings by US regional ally Saudi Arabia against putting pressure on the military-backed government.
“Israel shares its views with the US and some EU (European Union) countries, and those views are to give priority to restoring stability,” a senior Israeli official said yesterday.
“And like it or not, the army is the only player that can restore law and order (in Egypt).”
With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet instructed by him to avoid public comment about turmoil in Egypt, where about 1000 people, including 70 police and soldiers, have been killed in nearly a week of violence, government officials have been speaking, anonymously, about Israel’s concerns.
Among them is any sign of weakened support for an Egyptian military that maintained close security ties with Israel even during the year-long rule of President Mohammed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader deposed by the army on July 3 after huge protests against him.
Responding to the mounting death toll on Egypt, the United States has postponed delivery of four F-16 fighters and scrapped a joint military exercise with the Egyptian armed forces, but has not withheld $1.55bn in annual aid. That decision, one Israeli official said, “raised eyebrows” in Israel, which signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 that has been underpinned by a working relationship between the armed forces of both countries.
But other officials insisted there was no formal Israeli lobbying drive in Washington to dissuade President Barack Obama from taking any stronger measures to try to curb the Egyptian military crackdown.
“When we speak (to US officials), we clearly say what we think. It doesn’t mean there is a campaign. We share our views and analysis,” one official said.
“With what other neighbour of Egypt can they speak about this? We are the only nation they can speak to what’s right on the border; obviously there’s a lot to exchange.”
Israel, hoping to preserve its peace treaty with Egypt, was muted in its response to Mursi’s election as president a year ago after autocrat Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, Netanyahu was vocal in the past about his fears of an Islamist takeover in Egypt.
Such a scenario, he said in 2011, represented a “tremendous threat” to Egyptian-Israeli cooperation.
REUTERS
