During the failed Camp
David II Conference of July 2000, Barak had demanded that Arafat commit
himself to the finality of the Israeli-Palestinian Accords, and Arafat
declined. If one looked at the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Accords of 22 years
ago, where the Egyptians signed an agreement that signaled the end of the
conflict with Israel, one would stop wondering why Arafat rejected Barak's
generous offer.
In fact, the Egyptians
undertook to maintain their ambassador in Israel, but as soon as there is
a problem, they withdraw him: first during the Lebanese war, and now when
the second Intifada broke out. They accepted to put an end to incitement
against Israel and the Jews, but they pursue their virulent anti-Semitic
onslaughts day in, day out, as if the peace accords were never signed.
All this shows that
the anti-Semitic infrastructure is so firm in Egypt and the rest of the
Arab world, that there is little chance to have any of them commit itself
to stop incitement, and if it does obligate itself, it will only be in
order to violate that commitment.
Much of the blame for
this state of affairs lies with Israel, which has been courting Mubarak in
spite of the fact that he has consistently, and expectedly, sided with the
Palestinians. Israel made him the arbiter for peace and is repeatedly
humiliating itself at his feet while he continues to repudiate it and has
refused to clamp down on the vitriol of his state-controlled media. So,
why should he change?
Israel was reluctant to deal with Haider, in spite of
the fact that he apologized for his past utterings, has never done any
harm to Jews, and was left out of the government of Austria. But Mubarak,
who engineered the killing of many Jews, is heading the Egyptian state,
has never desisted from the anti-Semitic onslaughts in his press, and
backed Arafat in his intransigence against Israel, remains the darling of
successive Israeli governments. This is hard to understand and accept.
