Focus: USA- Egypt relations 

- By  Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

*****

In the background of recent Egypt's proactive role in Mideast crises and the Obama administration's eagerness to resolve the Palestine issue once for all, the recent meeting between US president Barack Obama and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak acquires significance. Egyptian leader Mubarak has held talks at the White House with President Barack Obama during his first US visit for more than five years. Talks between Mubarak and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took place prior to the summit meeting.

Obama administration has sought to press the reset button with Egypt. During the Bush years, the two close allies fell out over Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Egypt's human rights record. Obama's speech in Cairo in June was intended to set a new tone in US relations with the Arab and Muslim worlds, by stressing greater mutual understanding, but some critics said the rhetoric hid an absence of concrete policy. 

After the meeting, both leaders said they saw movement in the right direction in Middle East peace efforts. But they also stressed the complications in reaching any solution. The Egyptian leader told Obama his government would not act unless Israel took "concrete steps", Obama said that as well as the Arab Israeli situation, the two leaders had discussed Iran, which both nations fear is building nuclear weapons. Mubarak said they had also talked about the situation within Egypt.

The new US administration has been putting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under pressure to freeze all settlement work, which has strained normally close ties. Israel's government says has stopped issuing settler housing tenders in the West Bank, hoping to reach common ground with the US. Israel has so far refused to take that step, despite repeated US calls.

The US is also lobbying Arab states to persuade them to move towards normalising ties with Israel, to mitigate any concessions Israel feels it is making. Israel insists settlements must be allowed to enjoy "natural growth", so families are not split up by any freeze. The Peace Now anti-settlement group says the last fresh government tender for settlement construction was in November 2008. There was no sign of a slowdown on the ground, with construction continuing in government-funded projects, in the private sector and in unauthorised outposts.

Jews have contempt for international law and they seek exception from codes of decent conduct and state terrorism. About 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, which are illegal under international law, among 2.5 million Palestinians. The land was captured by Israel in the 1967 war and Israel insists its undecided status means the settlements are legal. But Palestinians view them as constituting the theft of their homeland, while new projects further jeopardise their prospects of establishing an independent state.

2.

Egypt will elect a new parliament next year and a new president in 2011 Mubarak will then be 83, and he has not hinted if he decides to run again. the 2010 parliamentary elections will be even less free than those of 2005, which were far from perfect. Mubarak's son Gamal has been training to succeed him for a decade, but he remains largely unpopular in Egypt. Mubarak will withhold cooperation on regional peace and stability if Washington annoys him by expressing concern for the rights of Egyptians or democracy as a weapon. 

Bushdom rogues have shattered the interests of Egypt's 83 million citizens, whose collective hopes and aspirations have disappeared from U.S. considerations since President George W. Bush's freedom agenda flamed out years ago. However the bilateral ties have got a philip recently. The Mubarak visit was expected to warm Cairo's already improving relations with Washington, as the Obama administration looks to Egypt to help his push toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and grapples with Iran's growing influence in the Middle East. Egypt is a staunch regional ally of the USA, which has provided it with billions of dollars of military and other aid since it became the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with Israel in 1979. But relations were chilled during the administration of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, over Bush's Middle East policies, invasion of Iraq and criticism of Egypt's human rights record.

Known in the Western anti-Islamic circles as the American man (agent) in Mideast, Mubarak indirectly supports the Israeli aggression and Bush US terror agenda the world over. US circles think Mubarak shares Washington's interests in preventing the emergence of a permanent Hamas state in Gaza, in promoting a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israel, and in containing Iranian nuclear ambitions. He will work toward those ends for his own reasons and cooperate with the United States accordingly -- as he did even at the height of the Bush administration's democracy promotion rhetoric in 2004 and 2005. 

Over decades, without any real peace progress in the region, Egypt in Africa has consolidated its role as the indisputable arbiter of peace. In fact the situation in Palestine has gone form worse to worst with the latest holocaust drives of the fascist Jewish state, Israel with which Egypt has a "peace" treaty upon recognising the Zionist regime for what it stands for and does in the region. 

But the crude fact remains that both Egypt and Israel close their borders with Palestine clearly violating the right of Palestinians to come out of the land locked nation as and when the fascists form Israel invade and kill he defenseless Palestinians. The siege being created, off and on, by both have Neo-intra-racial partners have tremendously harmed the even the routine life of Palestinians who have to starve without food stuff.

The Egyptian state has kept the peace in a region where everything and everyone seem to push toward war. Its 1979 peace with Israel has held firm and expanded to Jordan, often against difficult odds. Americans are more interested in the procrastination of Egypt's democratization process, rather than Palestine crisis spilling over the entire region for too long as well as the resource scarcity and internal strife. Today the biggest threat to Mideast and humanity at large is the GST onward terror match killing Muslims selectively. Laws are not enforced. Economies cannot be regulated. Jobs are not created. Parts of national territory are ceded to NATO terror forces and other non-state actors. Destabilization of Muslim nations, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan the list might get enlarged if the march is lot halted by world powers jointly. 

Mubarak restated his position that Arab states should normalize relations with Israel, but only once a comprehensive peace was achieved. Egypt has also been trying to reconcile the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah groups. They have been divided since Hamas, which won 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah in 2007. Fatah is still in control of the West Bank and backed by the West. A sticking point between the two groups is peacemaking with Israel, with Hamas opposed to Abbas' peace talks with the Jewish state.

True, Egypt has to its credit steady economic progress in the region. Investments have increased significantly, bringing down unemployment from 11.8 percent in 2005 to 8.6 percent last year. Since 2005, the growth rate of Egypt's gross domestic product has outpaced some of the newly industrialized Asian economies. Though direct, multi-candidate presidential elections have replaced previous presidential referendums, they cannot be accepted as free and fair and corruption is the most crucial menace in the Egyptian society.  The Obama administration has increased its request for democracy funding in the Middle East overall, it has cut such funding for Egypt by more than half and cut aid to independent civil society organizations by more than two-thirds. It was especially important for Obama to deliver a pro-democracy message to Mubarak. But democracy should not mean genocides of Muslims and destruction of their properties and squandering their resources and siphoning off bulk of them into western nations.

3.

The USA under President Obama prepares to face the strategic challenges of forging a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement, ensuring Iraq's stability after the U.S. military withdrawal. Neocons and Pentagon are twisting the Obama hands to halt Iran's nuclear program in stead of disarming Israel.

President Obama chose Egypt for making is famous speech for Muslim nations June 4 in Cairo and soon Lebanon poll chose a pro-US regime. Washington and Cairo must recognize that staving off further state deterioration in the Middle East will require new international and regional solutions and creative statecraft. Together, the USA and Egypt should seek out a coalition of like-minded regional and international actors to design new mechanisms targeted toward averting collapse in failing nations. Solutions might sometimes be political, and other times they might require financial or managerial intervention. 

President Obama received Egyptian President  Mubarak in the Oval Office on 18 August in Washington. Mubarak has repeatedly praised Obama's June 4 speech in Cairo in which he sought to change Muslim perceptions of the United States. Mubarak called the speech a positive turning point in U.S.. relations with the Arab world. Obama, who has made finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a top priority, was expected to seek Mubarak's support for goodwill gestures by Arab states that could encourage Israel to freeze settlement building in Palestinian territory, clearing a big obstacle from the path toward peace. Arab leaders have resisted those suggestions, saying Israel, which constantly opposes any peace  in the region, should lead the way as it obstructs any real peace talk. 

Obama's administration has demanded Israel halt all settlement activity in line with the international peace plan known as the roadmap, which also demands Palestinian moves to quash anti-Israeli militants. The US is also lobbying Arab states to persuade them to move towards normalising ties with Israel, to mitigate any concessions Israel feels it is making. Israel insists settlements must be allowed to enjoy "natural growth", so families are not split up by any freeze.

Speaking after a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Washington,  Obama said he had been encouraged by reports of checkpoints being removed and increased economic activity in the West Bank. "But everybody is going to have to take steps, everybody is going to have to take some risks," he added. "It's going to require a lot of hard work." Asked about the statement that no new settler housing tenders were being issued, US President Barack Obama said there had been "movement in the right direction".

Post-script   

Many say Washington is trying to turn back the clock on its Cairo policy, Egypt is moving toward a leadership transition. U.S.-Egyptian relations have focused, somewhat myopically, on only two things: the state of Egypt's peace with Israel and its progress toward democratization. Both issues are critical to the Middle East.. Not only because Egypt is the epicenter of the Arab world; the largest, oldest and most populous Arab country; the first Arab nation to have made peace with Israel; and America's closest ally in the region.

The US republicans chose the phrase "democracy" for destabilizing Islamic nations and in doing so, defaming the Democratic Party in the USA. Even after the murder of over 1.5 million defenseless Muslims in the Islamic world and displacing a few millions more, the die-hard Neocons still harp on democracy in Mideast. 

As deliberate attempts, the Jewish lobbyists in USA and American hawks try to disrupt the Mideast peace moves emanating from White House and support the Zionist regime's right to kill innocent and defenseless Palestinians. These quirky specimens ask Obama to ask Mubarak how he plans to address rising demand for the rule of law and free political competition in Egypt. They direct the U.S. administration to reconsider its disengagement from Egyptian civil society and find a way to establish partnerships with the many institutions and organizations that can play constructive roles in a transition toward a more open system. That is these anti-Islamic hawks still live in the dead Bushdom era.  

Obama and Mubarak could work on Arab-Israeli issues and Iran, and listen to the voice of the real suffers in Mideast: the Hams and Fatah, the Palestinians who have been split by the Zionist regime. If Egypt could not play the pivotal role in establishing much delayed Palestine state, the very notion that recognition of Zionist regime would promote the process of Palestine state formation become untenable. Mubarak said he had told Obama that his platform included reforms, and that "we have started to implement some of it and we still have two more years to implement it". Hopefully, Palestinians would benefit greatly by outcome of this statement.

The Zionist regime is more concerned about the stability the fascist coalition regime of all anti-Islamic cronies, in stead of peace making with neighbours. Jewish strategists say construction freeze could split the ruling Israeli coalition, correspondents say, as it is dominated by hard-line supporters of the settler movement- as if a replacement is impossible. Such nasty tactics have been going on for decades now regime and after regime playing havoc with the lives of Palestinians leaving thousands dead, including, old, women and children, on the streets of Palestine.

President Obama knows what is at stake now is the image and prestige of USA as a serious pro-humanity nation caring for those who are the victim of global state terrorism. World can certainly hope President Obama would deliver on his mission and rhetoric. Palestine would be free, followed by some other nations now under similar conditions of foreign occupation.  

-----------------------

Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

Specialist on State Terrorism

Independent Researcher in International Affairs, The only Indian to have gone through entire India, a fraud and terror nation in South Asia.