The benefits of that “Peace Treaty” (i.e., Camp David Accords) between Egypt and Israel have been tangible and possibly permanent for Egypt, while they have been transitory or illusory, or sometimes both, for Israel. The same “peace” would have obtained without that disastrous treaty, for the same inhibiting factor — the IDF — would have kept Egypt observing the same cold peace that it does now.
But that cold peace may not last much longer. How is it that 20 tons of explosives, not to mention many guns of every kind, have been smuggled into Gaza from Egypt? Can it really be that the Egyptians have made every effort to prevent it, or have they in fact done little or nothing to prevent such arms smuggling, and in fact possibly even aided it? What has Egypt done to merit any confidence that it will fulfill a single one of its solemn obligations under the Camp David Accords? It has prevented Egyptians from visiting Israel, prevented Israelis from participating in Cairo film and book festivals, allowed press campaigns that vilify Israel, put on the state television a series based on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and made Egypt a world center of antisemitism.
And the American government, which pushed the terms of that disastrous accord, has done nothing in the nearly thirty years that have passed to make Egypt obey or fulfill those obligations. And apparently the Americans lost much interest in such fulfillment just as soon as Israel, in three tranches, handed over the entire Sinai with its oilfields, and its roads, all built by Israel. If the Israelis were going to give up the Sinai for the second time to Egypt, they should at least have gotten something substantial in return. Egypt, after all, acquired most of the Sinai only in 1922, and by its repeated aggressive acts against Israel — launched from Sinai — had forfeited any title to it to Israel. Israel’s claim to Sinai is superior to that of Egypt by all the time-hallowed rules of warfare, Israel being the winner in several wars of self-defense.
Now the Israelis, some report, wish to finally put paid to those many smuggling tunnels. Like idiots, some Israeli journalists have reported on this. And now, by alerting Egypt, have possibly made it politically and militarily for Israel to do what it has every right to do, and should do.
Those journalists in Israel should think a bit. Not “well done, thou good and faithful servant.” But shame and disgust at their heedless reporting.
And Israel should not be deterred if the Egyptians are moved up. The tunnels are there. If they are not to be destroyed, the alternative is to retake Gaza. Let that be made clear to Egypt, and to an American administration that is at a complete loss as to what to do, and so, in its failing and its flailing, is unable to extricate itself from Iraq — apparently because of the loss of face it fears it would have to endure. In fact, six months after such a withdrawal, the chaos and confusion and sectarian troubles all over the Muslim world would demonstrate the real “victory” achieved, and inevitably achieved, but never understood or recognized, once Saddam Hussein was removed. Instead, the American Administration will try to pressure Israel all it can, in the hope that somehow — doesn’t Brzezinski believe it? And Scowcroft? and Baker and the Baker Commission? — in some undefinable way, such pressure will lessen the Jihad.
In fact, the reverse is true. The Lesser Jihad against Israel does not cause the Greater Jihad against Infidels, but is only a subset that started earlier, before the OPEC revenues and Muslim migration allowed for an enlarged worldwide battlefield. The Lesser Jihad against Israel has, in fact, for a long time actually protected the West, serving as a lightning-rod for the general anti-Infidel fervor that is not a product of “extremist” Islam, or “Wahhabi” Islam, or “Wahhabi Salafist” Islam, or of something some call “Islamism,” but rather of Islam. Unmodified, unadjectivized, unsuffixed Islam, as delineated by the Qur’an, Hadith and Sira, as well as by the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the unanimous record of Islamic history, and the unequivocal statements of imams around the world today.