La política exterior egipcia.

Las rebeliones árabes han abierto innumerables interrogantes. Uno de ellos es cuál será la política exterior que seguirán. Egipto es un jugador regional clave.  Especialmente en temas sensibles para Occidente, tales como: las relaciones con Irán, Israel y los distintos movimientos palestinos.

 Egypt's Military Pursues Foreign Policy Continuity.

Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces
 of Egypt Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

By Jake Meth | 18 Nov 2011

CAIRO -- On Jan. 28, the Egyptian revolution's “Day of Anger,” revolutionary protesters drove security forces loyal to the ruling regime from Cairo's streets. As Egyptian army tanks rolled into Tahrir Square to fill the security vacuum, thousands cheered the arrival of what they saw as stability amid the chaos of the uprising. And when then-President Hosni Mubarak finally abdicated power on Feb. 11, most Egyptians were relieved to see the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), a body of military leaders normally headed by the president, take control.


“During the Egyptian revolution, you had a sense of the military being distinguished from the police and security forces,” said John Esposito, a professor of international affairs and Islamic studies at Georgetown University.

Since then, however, the military has “shown its true colors,” Esposito said. Despite publicly supporting popular demands in the transitional period, the SCAF-led government has largely maintained the same authoritarian rule and domestic policy agenda as the Mubarak regime.

Meanwhile, hints of a radical break from Mubarak's Western-oriented foreign policy emerged just a week after he stepped down, when Egypt agreed to allow two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal. That raised the possibility of a “worst of both worlds” scenario of domestic continuity and foreign policy change.

Gestures such as this generated concern in the West that Egypt's new military government might move closer to regional rival Iran, said David Schenker, director of the Arab Politics Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Those concerns were heightened by initial signaling by Cairo and Tehran that they would pursue a normalization of diplomatic relations.

The SCAF government's May decision to reopen the Rafah crossing, the only legal border between Egypt and the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, followed the same pattern. The announcement was widely popular with Egyptians as well as Hamas, the political faction that rules Gaza.

In the intervening months, although the military has come under increasing criticism for its domestic decisions, scant attention has been devoted to its foreign policy, which despite the early hints of change has been more characterized by continuity.

“[The military government] created a facade that plays very well at the populist level, certainly vis-à-vis the way things were under Mubarak,” Esposito said. “But nobody knows what's being said behind the scenes.”

To Schenker, the SCAF never intended to significantly change its relationship with Iran, which Egypt sees as a “destabilizing force in the region.” And despite the official policy shift on Rafah, most Palestinians today find it just as difficult to cross through as it was under Mubarak.

The military did make efforts to open Rafah, acknowledged Essam el-Erian, the vice president of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, but no lasting change has materialized.

“This is not sufficient for the Gazans. It must be an ordinary border,” he said.

The military government also declined to downgrade its unpopular relationships with the United States and Israel. Indeed, two days after assuming power, the SCAF announced that Egypt would maintain its more than 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel.

However, although the status quo seems likely to hold, tensions in relations with both the U.S. and Israel remain. Prior to the revolution, observers attributed Egypt's diminished regional influence to Mubarak's allegiance to these two states, a policy deeply at odds with Egypt's strong nationalist tradition.

This friction came to the fore in August, when Israeli commandos chasing Palestinian militants across the Egypt-Israel border accidentally killed five Egyptian border police. Following the incident, many Egyptians who resent Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians were hopeful that Egypt would fundamentally alter its relationship with the Jewish state.

“And that didn't happen,” said Mostapha Kamel el-Sayed, a professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Developing Countries at Cairo University. “I think Egyptian public opinion is resigned to the fact that there will be no change.”

Though the Israeli ambassador and embassy staff were evacuated from Egypt during riots outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo following the border killings, Israel's deputy ambassador and other staff have since returned to work. And the military's continued restrictions on admitting Palestinians through the Rafah crossing allow Israel to maintain its four-year-old blockade of the territory.

The Egyptian government's relationship with the United States is similarly problematic in terms of public opinion. U.S. President Barack Obama's vacillation over whether Mubarak should step down during the revolution only furthered Egyptians' anger with the U.S., which for decades had supported the dictatorial regime.

Yet today Egypt continues to act as a mediator for the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, a key component of Washington’s Middle East policy. In return for this cooperation, the U.S. provides Egypt with more than $1.3 billion in annual military assistance and exclusive sales of military equipment.

“In the point of view of the national security of Egypt, it is important to be [on good terms] with those with power,” said el-Sayed. “If Egyptian relations with the U.S. deteriorate, it would lead to problems with other Western powers.”

El-Erian, whose party is expected to garner a plurality of seats in the forthcoming parliament, is more optimistic about a new Egyptian foreign policy, noting that he has already seen signs of a shift. “But we are waiting for a big change after building a new system,” he said. “We are still in the transitional period.”

Significant adjustments to Egypt's foreign policy will be difficult, though, if the interim government passes a recently proposed supra-constitutional draft law preventing the future civilian government from controlling the military's budget and internal affairs. Shielded from oversight, the military would likely maintain a foreign policy that suits its own interests and ignores popular demands from members of parliament.

The Brotherhood and other political formations plan massive demonstrations Friday, Nov. 18, to protest the draft law.

With parliamentary elections set to begin at the end of the month, the SCAF has still shown no signs of significantly altering the foreign policy it inherited from the Mubarak government. Given the continued influence it will wield even after elections, that is not likely to change for the foreseeable future.

Jake Meth is a freelance journalist based in Cairo. He also works as a copy editor for the English edition of the Egyptian independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, in which his work appears.