If democracy comes to Egypt quickly, says Joel Brinkley, a former New York Times Israel correspondent and now a professor at Stanford University, that would be good for the protesters but bad for Israel.
And if the democracy takes a while? Well, that would be good for Israel.
“It’s very likely,” Brinkley said early this week by phone from his office at Stanford, where he has been a visiting professor in residence for four years, that “[Hosni] Mubarak and [Omar] Suleiman will stay on and manage the election, which is not ideal for Egypt, and maybe not ideal for the rest of the world, but then they would put in someone friendly to the current regime.”
And that leader, he said, “would be someone who would understand that it’s very useful to be friendly to the U.S., given that we give them $1.3 billion in aid per year. And that also means being friendly to Israel.”
Brinkley and others interviewed for this article made their comments several days before Friday, when Mubarak stepped down as president and transfered power to Suleiman.
Brinkley said he is closely following events in Egypt as “this is central to what I care about.” He lived in Israel for four years, winning a Pulitzer Prize as a foreign correspondent, and now writes a widely syndicated weekly op-ed column on foreign policy in addition to teaching journalism at Stanford.
He also wanted to stress that his “friendly to Israel” comment wasn’t a prediction, nor was he trying to imply that Israelis shouldn’t worry about the southern anchor of their security unraveling.
“The situation remains too fluid,” he said. “And there certainly are some possible outcomes that could be hostile to the peace agreement” between Egypt and Israel.
For example, even if a radical fundamentalist regime isn’t atop or a large part of any new government in Egypt, Mubarak’s replacement could decide to appeal to Egyptian nationalism by putting a knife into years of good diplomatic relations with Israel.
If that happens, as long as it’s the result of a popular election, then so be it, said Emily Gottreich, a history professor at U.C. Berkeley and the vice chair of the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
“Isn’t democracy, however messy, what we want for the region? Don’t Egyptians deserve their basic rights as much as Israelis, or Palestinians? The rest of world opinion, not to mention history, is on the side of the Egyptian people,” she said in an e-mail from Morocco, where she is on sabbatical.
“The question of what the Egyptian revolution may mean for Israel is, in my view, somewhat myopic,” she added, simultaneously taking a shot at “Jewish leaders like [KGO talk show host] John Rothmann [who] argue that while Mubarak may be a barbarian, he is ‘our’ barbarian.
“If Israel’s future,” she pointed out, “depends on alliances with dictators who have little empathy for the people living under them, especially when the latter number in the tens of millions, peace will remain elusive.”
Countered Robert Zelnick, an East Coast professor who is in the current lineup of fellows at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, “I think it’s one thing to have admiration for democracy, and to pattern your own society in accordance with that appreciation, and to help others that may wish to go that route. But you also have to understand that democracy is not a panacea, and that it can, in certain circumstances, produce more difficulties than it solves.”
Zelnick, a professor of national and international affairs at Boston University, pointed to some examples: “We pushed for democracy in Lebanon and have Hezbollah; we pushed for democracy in Gaza and have Hamas; we pushed for democracy in Iraq, and I would say that when we pull up stakes and finally withdraw, we are going to have a society that will pull itself apart and at the very least be strongly influenced by Iran.”
Like Brinkley, Zelnick said he hopes things move slowly in Egypt.
“The last thing you want to do in Egypt right now is have a popular referendum when emotions are as taut as they are,” he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood would be in position to capitalize.”
Even if that doesn’t happen, Zelnick said, he worries that a lot of Egyptian goodwill toward Israel “is going to evaporate,” which could hurt the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and impinge upon regional dynamics.
“A loss of Egyptian cooperation with both Israel and the Arab states and other factions would be enormous,” Zelnick said, specifically noting that the “cooperation” between Israel and Fatah in the West Bank would be a casualty.
Gottreich sees things differently.
“When it comes to Gaza, the Occupied Territories, and the ‘cold’ peace between the two countries since 1979,” she wrote, “things can’t really get much worse than they already are.
“Where danger really lurks is in the massive economic challenges facing Egypt following decades of fiscal mismanagement by Mubarak … Nonetheless, this is a time of cautious hope for a new Middle East.”
Joshua Teitelbaum, a Bay Area native who was a visiting associate professor at Stanford in 2008, and now studies the politics and history of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, issued a paper this week that addressed the possibility of the protests in Egypt and Tunisia spreading to oil states.
“Although they express admiration, Saudis and Gulf residents have no desire to see the chaos on the streets of Cairo and Tunis repeat itself in the squares of [Saudi Arabian cities] Jeddah and Riyadh,” he wrote for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “Gulf regimes are autocratic, but they do not engender the type of hatred demonstrated toward Mubarak and [former Tunisian President Zine al Abidine] Ben Ali, and they do not run police states … [There is also] a system where oil income is used to placate the populace.”
That report is unlikely to calm Israelis, who reportedly have been shaking in their boots over the prospect of a free Egypt.
“Obviously, we are all for democracy, both in Israel and the United States; we enjoy living in a democracy, and we aspire to the virtues of liberty and freedom,” said Gilad Ariely, a scholar from Israel and former lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces who is a visiting political science professor this semester at Cal State Chico.
“But I believe that democracy is not an aim in and of itself — it is a means for a people, for stability, for a good life, for freedom. If we say ‘democracy at any price,’ we may be missing a more important goal, which is basic, good governance for the people.”
Ariely, an expert in knowledge management and learning, especially in the field of counterterrorism, cautioned against Israel trying to take any active or vocal role in the outcome in Egypt.
“Although it affects Israel so much, the last thing Israel needs is to be seen as being involved in this situation,” he said. “If, for example, Israel says that the Muslim Brotherhood would be a bad thing in Egypt, that could be used as a vehicle to unite [more Egyptians] with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
“Israel is very concerned, and rightfully so, but it should find a way to take a step back. The situation is in flux, and it will continue to unfold, and it could unfold toward many directions.”