Perfide Egypte
Edward Mortimer
Muhammad Hasanain Haikal relates that Andre Malraux once told him Egypt was like Great Britain. Why? Because it is an island. The densely populated tadpole formed by the Nile and its delta is separated from the rest of the Arab world by desert on either side at least as effectively as Britain from the Continent by the English Channel. This, said Malraux, gives Egypt the same kind of ambivalence about belonging to the Arab world that Britain has about belonging to Europe. The emphasis of Egyptian policy shifts between the desire to dominate the Arab world and the desire to be free of its entanglements.
The analogy is, of course, far from perfect. Egypt occupies a much more central position in the Arab world, both geographically and culturally, than Britain does in Europe. And it is correspondingly more difficult to imagine Arab unity without Egypt than European unity without Britain. Moreover Britain has ties of language (surely the most potent source of cultural identity) with other countries, while Egypt is tied above all by language to the Arab world and has no alternative family to look to. Moreover, as Sadat himself has pointed' out, Egypt and Sudan between them comprise two thirds of the Arab world's population.
To talk of isolating Egypt in the Arab world is therefore nonsense, according to Sadat and his supporters; and they are right if they mean that for the rest of the Arab world to attempt to isolate Egypt would be a futile and self-destructive policy. Few even of Sadat's bitterest critics can have done other than smile at Gaddafi's suggestion that Egypt should be expelled from the League of Arab States, a body which not only has its headquarters in Cairo but throughout its history has been staffed almost exclusively by Egyptian officials. nr Butros Butros-Ghali, the mild-mannered academic who for five crucial weeks was as surprised as everyone else to find himself Egypt's acting foreign minister, is fond of remarking that in the Arab world there is already a 'Common Market of the brain'. He cites the fact that in Libya there are 250 Egyptian judges, while in the United Arab Emirates an Egyptian presides over the Supreme Court.
Butros-Ghali says the Israelis were impressed by this point when he used it to explain to them why Egypt could not make a separate peace. But Sadat seems to be Using the same point to explain why he can afford to ignore the shower of abuse 'from some other Arab capitals. It is questionable whether the premise can really carry both these arguments at once. At the moment, as is often the case, each party seems more dis posed to believe what is said to the other than what is said to itself. The Arabs think that Egypt cannot do without them and that therefore they will be able to sabotage Sadat's attempt at a separate peace, while the Israelis think that Egypt can and will in the last resort get away with a separate peace because the other Arabs cannot afford to take any serious sanctions against her.
Where the Israelis do seem to agree with Sadat's Arab opponents is in believing that, despite all his protestations to the contrary, a separate peace is what Sadat is out to achieve. They believe this mainly because it is hard to see what other result the process which Sadat has set in motion can lead to. In the course of the last six weeks Sadat has created a new relationship between Egypt and Israel which is as yet hard to define but which is clearly not shared by other Arab states.
Sadat may say that this is the fault of the other Arab states, since he has invited them to join him and they have refused. But that is disingenuous, since he not only knew in advance that they would refuse but actually framed the invitation in such a way as to make it virtually impossible for them to accept. His speech to the People's Assembly on 26 November, when he announced the calling of the Cairo conference, was about as calculatedly insulting and patronising towards the Syrian and Palestinian leaders as he could have made it.
Just before he made that speech, I argued in the Spectator that Sadat's main aim in going to Jerusalem had been to undermine resistance both in Israel and in the United States to Jimmy Carter's Middle East policy, which corresponded closely to his own programme. I still believe that, but it is now clear that in order to achieve his aim he thought it necessary not only to give a dramatic demonstration of Egyptian good will towards Israel, but also to create a new form of negotiation in which Israel's leaders would not be able to shift the blame for their own intransigence on to any other party; the PLO had provided Israel with a convenient alibi, since American opinion considered it reasonable for Israel to refuse negotiations with a body officially dedicated to her destruction. Therefore Sadat dropped the PLO.
The Syrians had made it easier for Israel to delay the Geneva Conference by insisting on full PLO participation, by encouraging the PLO to reject Resolution 242, and by rejecting various procedural formulae which might have made it easier to get the conference started. Therefore Sadat decided to go ahead without them. The Russians he blames, probably unfairly, for encouraging both Syria and the PLO to take an unrealistic and obstructive attitude. Perhaps more to the point was the fact that a section of American opinion opposed Carter's pro-Arab policy as a form of appeasement towards the Russians. Sadat has spiked that gun by excluding the Russians from the negotiating process and showing that he himself is as anti-Soviet as the toughest American hawk.
The question is, now that he has done all this, what is left of the Arab cause in whose name he ostensibly did it? He claims that he is prepared to negotiate alone for a comprehensive settlement and can present the results to an Arab summit. But it is impossible to take this literally. Negotiation means trading concessions, and Sadat has no mandate to make concessions on behalf of other Arab parties. The only thing he can negotiate, as long as other Arab parties do not join him, is peace between Israel and Egypt.
What he is apparently trying to get from the Israelis is a declaration of willingness in principle to take the pre-1967 borders as a basis for negotiation on all fronts and to allow the Palestinians the chance to set up an independent state under conditions which could not endanger Israel's security. He could then tell the other Arabs it was up to them whether or not to negotiate with Israel on the conditions specified, but that Egypt had in any case done its best for them and would now go ahead with its own part of the deal.
But what if Israel refuses to make such a declaration — a declaration which would certainly go far beyond Mr Begin's present 1 'peace plan' and would amount to an unsay-1 ing of virtually all official Israeli policy statements of the last ten years? For a time, no doubt, there will be a pause, with many Egyptian complaints about Israeli intransigence and appeals to the world, to Europe and especially America to bring Israel to her senses. (Indeed such a phase may already be beginning, after, the apparent failure of the Ismailia summit.) But if thc deadlock persists Sadat himself will once again become the chief victim of it, and will once again be tempted to find a way out b some new concession, presented as an act o amazing courage and imagination an therefore a great 'victory'. It may not be ful peace. It may be a third Sinai Agreement leading to de facto relations with Israel o the lines of those between the United State and China, with the Palestinian problem a Egypt's Taiwan. The Arab world may no be able to prevent it, but will be bound t( criticise it, and the Egyptian media wi' reassure their public with further waves e anti-Arab propaganda.
Already an image of 'perlide Egypte' being created. Both Egypt and the Ara world have much to lose from such a qua rel, but to judge by their performance du, ing the last few weeks, it is doubtful wheat( the leaders on either side will have ti statesmanship required to overcome it.
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