Egypt's polls could alter landscape
Egypt's presidential
election, due to be held — if things go according to plan — in three weeks
time, could turn out to be another watershed development in the history of the Middle East. Just like its revolution last year, the
election in Egypt
on May 23-24 is likely to have tremendous impact on Arab domestic politics as
well as on the political landscape of the region. Egypt's military chief of staff on
Wednesday indicated that the army ma transfer power sooner than promised.
Indeed, Tunisia must be credited
for being the cradle of change and democracy in the Arab world, but Egypt
is the key to the long-awaited transition.
Egypt
is not just another country in the Middle East.
It is the heart of the Arab world and what happens in Cairo will inevitably have a huge impact on
the entire region. To further emphasise this point, one may need to recall that
when the Egyptian army toppled the monarchy in 1952, military coups became the
norm in most of the Arab world. When a pan-Arab regime ruled in Cairo, Arab nationalism
engulfed the region as a policy and ideology. When Egypt
signed a peace treaty with Israel
in 1979, notwithstanding the expulsion of Cairo
from the Arab League, the Arab world started to talk about a peaceful
resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Given this long history of influence
on fellow Arab countries, it would not be a far-fetched prediction that if the
Islamists — whether from the Muslim Brotherhood or from the Salafist trends —
rule in Egypt, most, in not all, of the Arab world would come under Islamist
rule.
Just three weeks
before the polls, people and governments in the region and beyond are closely
watching the increasingly fierce election campaign in the biggest Arab country,
with a different emphasis though. Arab people in particular are more interested
in the domestic ramifications of Islamist rule in Egypt and its impact on the future
of democratic change in their own countries. Western governments and regional
powers, on the other hand, care more about the impact of the change in Egypt
on the regional balance of power.
The question that is
being frequently asked is: would the arrival of the Islamists to power in Egypt lead to a
new line up in the region? For Israel,
the vital question is: Would the Camp David Accords and the Israeli-Egyptian
peace treaty be affected by the ascendance of new political elite in Cairo? This question has
been haunting the ruling class in Israel ever since the January 25,
2011, uprising. Indeed, Egypt
has always been the centre of gravity in terms of regional strategic
calculations. For Israel,
it was the major challenge for almost three decades (1948-1978). Most Israeli
analysts agree that the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt
has been the bedrock of Israel's
national security. The very survival of Israel
ceased to be at stake since the end of the state of belligerence with Egypt.
During the 1982
invasion of Lebanon, the July 2006 confrontation with Hezbollah and the 2008
war against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli interests were involved, but not survival.
In brief, for the past 32 years, Israel's existence was not at
stake, nor was it an issue. With the uprising and with the possibility of
Islamist rule, however, that state of affairs may cease to exist, at least from
a theoretical standpoint.
Nutricionistički
aspekti
http://www.egyptdailynews.com/recipes/recipes.htm