{"id":15273,"date":"2018-09-16T12:26:09","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T12:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15273"},"modified":"2018-09-16T12:26:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T12:26:09","slug":"israel-and-egypts-enduring-cold-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15273","title":{"rendered":"Israel and Egypt\u2019s enduring \u2018cold peace\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nCAIRO: Forty years after signing the Camp David Accords, Egypt and Israel live in uneasy peace, as cool diplomatic ties have failed to unfreeze other relations.
\u201cThere is still a psychological barrier between us and the Israeli people,\u201d said Egyptian ex-lawmaker Mohammed Anwar Sadat, nephew of former president Anwar Sadat.
Mohammed Sadat proudly keeps a photo of his late uncle in his Cairo office.
Egypt\u2019s then head of state risked everything in making peace with Israel at the US presidential retreat Camp David on September 17 1978.
The Accords, cemented by a peace treaty in 1979, saw regional powerhouse Egypt temporarily shunned by the rest of the Arab World.
Sadat himself was assassinated on October 6, 1981.
The late president \u201chad great courage and a vision for the future,\u201d his nephew said.
But the peace, he said, \u201chas always been cold.\u201d
While many Egyptians welcome the absence of war, they remain hostile to Israel.
\u201cEgypt\u2019s acceptance of full diplomatic and political normalization\u201d has not translated into \u201ca cultural or popular normalization,\u201d said Mustafa Kamal Sayed, professor of political sciences at Cairo University.
This uneasy but stable status quo is reflected on Cairo\u2019s streets, where many put their antipathy toward Israel down to their neighbor\u2019s policies toward the Palestinians.
\u201cThe normalization failed to gain popular support because of events linked to Palestinians,\u201d said bank worker Mohammed Oussam.
He said he could not forget Israel\u2019s bombing of \u201cschools and refugee camps\u201d during Lebanon\u2019s 1975 to 1990 civil war.
\u201cThe Israelis have not adhered to the principles of peace with the Palestinians or the Arabs,\u201d said another Mohammed.
It\u2019s a sentiment also shared by Islam Emam.
\u201cWe speak of peace, of normalization \u2014 then they kill our brothers and take their land,\u201d he said, referring to the Palestinians.
He blames Israel\u2019s government, rather than its citizens.
\u201cIn the end, nobody truly chooses his government,\u201d he said.
Enmity toward Israel often crystallizes over sporting events.
Egyptian and Liverpool football maestro Mohamed Salah has been criticized at home for appearing in a Champions League match in Israel in 2013, when he played for Switzerland\u2019s FC Basel.
Salah said he did not make political decisions.
Three years later, Egyptian judo Olympian Islam El Shehaby refused to shake hands with Israeli rival Or Sasson at the Rio games \u2014 a gesture that embarrased Egyptian authorities.
Writer and Hebrew translator Nael el-Toukhy said any Egyptian who reaches out to Israelis faces intense pressure.
Israel is a hot topic for Egyptian talk shows, guaranteed to stoke the kind of high feelings seen in debates on gay rights.
More than 65 percent of Egyptians alive today were not yet born when the Camp David Summit took place, according to official figures.
But Egyptian public rejection of Israel is a constant.
National politics is also affected, despite decades of formal diplomatic ties.
In March 2016, Egyptian lawmaker Tawfiq Okasha paid a high price for inviting Israel\u2019s ambassador to dinner at his home.
Accused of discussing issues linked to national security, he was ousted from parliament in a two-thirds majority vote.
Even the country\u2019s all-important tourism industry is a victim of \u201ccold peace\u201d \u2014 of the 3.9 million tourists who visited Israel in 2017, only 7,200 were from neighboring Egypt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAIRO: Forty years after signing the Camp David Accords, Egypt and Israel live in uneasy peace, as cool diplomatic ties have failed to unfreeze other relations.\u201cThere is still a psychological barrier between us and the Israeli people,\u201d said Egyptian ex-lawmaker Mohammed Anwar Sadat, nephew of former president Anwar Sadat.Mohammed Sadat proudly keeps a photo of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}