The almost always reliable MEMRI quotes an oped in the leading Egyptian government paper Al Ahram advocating improved relations with Israel.
“Objective analysis on this matter cannot lead to any other conclusion. It is time to drop the negative attitudes towards Israel, and relations with it. The basic value of the peace accord between Egypt and Israel lies in the fact that it expunges the term ‘prohibition’ or ‘taboo,’ which was created in the past by Arab policies towards Israel, and which turned relations with Israel into an abomination that could not be allowed.”
UPDATE: Another interesting report of the thaw in Israeli-Egyptian relations appears in today’s Haaretz, including this interesting note: One of the reasons for the improved relations is Yasser Arafat’s death, although this will never be admitted publicly.
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7 Comments
1. Bruce W.:It’s cause for cautious optimism, but I’ll pop a cork when it moves from the op-ed to the news pages. Meanwhile let us all pray for Sharon and Peres to srike a deal. Interesting what possibilities follow from the death of monster.
My prayer for the Pals: May they defy their history and boldly miss the opportunity to miss this opportunity.
Dec 10, 2004 - 10:04 am 2. ricpic:Moving up from abomination to disgrace….yippee!
Dec 10, 2004 - 10:11 am 3. Matt Evans:Hmmm, wonder if the US threatened to stop writing the billion dollar extortion check if they didn’t tone down the rhetoric.
Dec 10, 2004 - 10:41 am 4. M. Simon:My take on this is that no rational Arab/Islamic state wants to be on the top of the list.
Assad is practically screaming for a peace confrence with Israel. Return of the Golan no longer required. Evidently he is near the top of the list. Sharonis not interested.
Kadaffy rolls a large segment of the nuclear underground. Evidently he wants to keep his job a while longer.
I think we are going to see a lot more of these states trying to help out with the war. They can see Iraq is going to succeed in their democracy initiative. They can see success in Afghanistan. They can see Iran and Syria in the cross hairs.
Bush’s election has changed the “wait and see” attitude to “why wait”.
Dec 10, 2004 - 11:21 am 5. omar_masry:MEMRI does have its own biases, Juan Cole had an interesting run in with them.
Dec 10, 2004 - 11:44 am 6. marek:omar-masry,
A link please. Lots of people have interesting runs with Juan Cole.
Dec 10, 2004 - 12:20 pm 7. Hitman:Seems to be a lot of maybe good news coming out of the ME via MEMRI as per this post.
http://heardman.blogspot.com/2004/12/some-light-in-darkness-perhaps.html
Dec 10, 2004 - 2:10 pm