Special Report: Palestine-Israel Conflicts
by Zhang Yanyang, Huang Heng
JERUSALEM, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Thirty years after former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, Israeli analysts said ongoing geopolitical strife in the Middle East made the historic pact as critical as ever.
¡¡¡¡SUCCESSFUL PEACE AGREEMENT
The peace treaty, which was signed on the White House lawn in the presence of then U.S. President Jimmy Carter on March 26, 1979,required both countries to cease hostile activity and demilitarize the Sinai Peninsula.
Israel withdrew to the pre-1967 border, gave up military bases, settlements, roads and the Sinai oil fields in return for normalized relations with Egypt.
Dahlia Golan, professor of government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, told Xinhua Friday that the peace agreement served both countries very well and continued to be elementary to having any kind of normalcy in relations between Israel and the region.
"I think that the 30-year-old peace agreement has been extraordinarily successful," Golan said. "For a number of years, Israel has been benefiting and using Egyptian mediation, and utilizing Egyptian forces and intelligence on security issues."
"The very proof of the success can be seen in the amount of trust Israel gives Egypt, for example in its willingness to have Egypt involved in training Palestinian security forces," she added.
She said during the 30 years of the peace agreement, Israel has been to war twice against an Arab country and more than twice with the Palestinians and that the agreement still has endured.
"We rely on a very successful observer force along the Israeli-Egyptian border, which is there as a result of the agreement between Israel and Egypt," she said, noting that their main concern was to watch for smuggling, and in particular human trafficking.
"There have not been many ups and downs. The most the Egyptians have done is recall their ambassador at the time of the Lebanon war, which is not at all such a big issue," she added.
Professor Gerald Steinberg of Political Studies Department Chair at Bar Ilan University said the peace agreement, which put to a halt of 30 years of Israeli isolation in the Middle East, is also of great importance to Egypt.
"Egypt had been through so many wars, in 1948, 1956, 1967, and then 1973. The country was on the verge of collapse when the peace treaty was signed and the leadership was wise enough to understand that they could either waste their resources on a conflict with Israel or make peace and focus on other issues," he told Xinhua.
CRITICISM INSIDE EGYPT
Steinberg, however, said the watershed treaty between Israel and Egypt, which was oftentimes characterized as a "cold peace," meant really more of a cease fire rather than a warm relationship.
He said some Egyptians were very critical of the peace agreement because it came without a solution to the Palestinian issue.
Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Yasser Reda said at a meeting held in Jerusalem on Thursday that in order to establish a lasting peace between Israel and all its Arab neighbors first there would have to be a just solution for the Palestinians.
"The tragedy of the Palestinian people is a permanent source of crisis," Reda said. "Certain regional powers and extremist groups feed on it, seeking viciously to exploit opportunities to destabilize the whole region."
While Israel celebrated the 30th anniversary of the peace agreement with Egypt with a ceremony, Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper Thursday waged harsh criticism against Israel in an editorial.
The editorial accused Israel of destroying Egyptian efforts to build bridges between the Arab world and Israel, denouncing Israel for electing right-wing leaders and backtracking from a prisoner exchange with Hamas ruling the impoverished Gaza Strip.
"There is no room for celebration. On this anniversary, there is not an atmosphere of optimism and the facts on the ground are not pushing anyone toward celebration," the article said.
"It is clear to anyone following the mood in Egypt or other Arab countries that they are calling for the burial of the peace process."
¡¡¡¡UNLIKELY TO BE REPLICATED
Following the agreement between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, which also boasted a more far-sighted leadership, signed a peace treaty with Israel in October 1994.
"The real threat to Jordan's survival comes from pro-Islamic groups and Arab nationalist regimes. It makes sense for Jordan to cooperate with Israel. That is the same reason that Sadat pursued a peace agreement with Israel," Steinberg said.
But many experts said a peace treaty with Egypt or Jordan was unlikely to be replicated in the region.
"The conflicts run very deep and most of the countries don't have the kind of leadership Egypt has that is able to look forward to go beyond violence," Steinberg said.
"Egypt is a little bit more of an open society compared to the rest of the Middle East," Steinberg said, adding that the vision required to pursue peace relies heavily on the existence of an open political system.
"With Syria we could have a peace agreement tomorrow if we agreed on the territorial issues," Golan said, though security and water issues that went along with peace would take longer to resolve.
She said Lebanon, very much tied up with Syria, was a different issue, adding that no peace agreement could be possible with Lebanon without any settlement with Syria.
Much of the situation with Lebanon depends on the strength of the Lebanese army, which had so far not been able to challenge Hezbollah in the south, she said.
Steinberg noted that the continuation of peaceful relations with Egypt hinged on its future leaders' foresight.
"My fear is that the young Egyptians have been so propagandized. They could lead Egypt into another conflict, and undo all the efforts made so far," he said.
