Egypt’s clout may wane as Palestinian peace falters

Matt Bradley, foreign correspondent

• Last Updated: October 20. 2009 11:39PM UAE / October 20. 2009 7:39PM GMT

Hosni Mubarak, right, the Egyptian president, with Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, in Cairo yesterday. Cris Bouroncle / AFP

CAIRO // If reconciling the two competing Palestinian factions looked difficult in February, when Egyptian diplomats renewed negotiations to form a unity government, it looks nearly impossible now.

Egypt announced on Friday that it would indefinitely postpone its deadline for Hamas and Fatah to agree to a power-sharing deal.

The lack of a resolution means continuing hardship for the Palestinian people, particularly the residents of the Gaza Strip, who have been under an Israeli blockade since Hamas took control of the coastal enclave in 2007.

But the failed negotiations could also have consequences for Egypt, whose privileged position as the best-placed negotiator in the Middle East has given it considerable diplomatic clout. As the Fatah-Hamas negotiations falter and such powerful neighbours as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Qatar begin to take the lead on the region’s most important challenges, analysts and observers are warning that Egyptian statecraft risks fading into irrelevance.

“If Egypt has no role in the region, the support it gets from the West would decrease, especially from the United States,” said Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow for the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the London-based Chatham House. “It’s the overall relevance of Egypt to US strategic interests in the region. If you look at Egypt’s position since the aftermath of 2001, there’s been gradually, year after year, little tremors, that don’t collapse it but that weaken [its relevance] every time.”

Egypt’s task was never easy. The divisions between Hamas and Fatah, along with sundry smaller political groups, represent a profound divide in Palestinian public opinion.

The rift has often expressed itself through street fights, mob violence and large-scale arrests, but also through bitter name-calling among top officials of both parties, a habit that has increased in nastiness in the past several weeks.

The decision of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, to delay a United Nations vote on the Goldstone report – a blistering indictment of Israel’s actions during its three-week assault on the Gaza Strip – also shifted the balance of negotiations in Hamas’s favour.

The obvious resentment between the factions will not excuse an Egyptian failure to reconcile them, Mr Shehadi said. Egypt has invested a great deal of its prestige in these negotiations, he said, and losing could lead to a damaging loss of esteem.

“You’re still betting on that horse. Whether it’s your fault or the trainer’s fault or whether you trained it the day before or whosoever is at fault, if you’re betting on that horse, the weakness of that horse affects you,” said Mr Shehadi, referring to Egypt’s risky “gamble” on Palestinian peace.

“You lose more when it weakens, and you lose even more when you don’t have enough influence to make it better.”

And Egypt loses more still when other diplomatic powers step in to fill the void. While Egypt’s preference for Fatah over Hamas has never been a secret, other nations may now be better suited to capture the confidence of all parties.

“The Egyptian monopoly in leading the reconciliation effort is just not helpful or conducive to success,” wrote Daniel Levy, a senior research fellow and director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation in a blog for Foreign Policy magazine on October 13. Given a recent political rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Syria, Hamas’s principle patron state, Egypt would do well to open the negotiating space. “Egypt has a role to play, but it cannot be the exclusive mediator,” Mr Levy wrote.

Egypt’s mediation role has its weaknesses, said Emad Gad, a political analyst for the semi-official Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, but it remains the region’s best negotiator because no other country can fill its shoes.

“Frankly speaking, there is no regional partner that can host a conference for reconciliation between the Palestinian factions excluding Egypt,” Mr Gad said. Saudi Arabia, he said, had tried its hand at the negotiating between the two factions for several years with limited success. The 2007 Mecca Agreement to stop hostilities in Gaza ended after only three months. “If you want to have a national unity government in Palestine, you have to deal with Egypt … Unless Egypt is there, we cannot expect any success.”

If Egypt hopes to remain the last, best hope for peace among Palestinians, it needs to rethink its approach, starting with its own internal political system, said Nabil Abdul Fatah, another Al Ahram political analyst. The Palestinians’ internal conflict needs a creative solution that can only come from free political thought in the corridors of power, he said.

“This is related to many Egyptian structural problems in diplomacy, foreign policy and even the weakness of the political regime, internally and regionally,” Mr Fatah said. “There is no political imagination for dealing with the serious and sensitive files in the region independent of the ruling elite.”

mbradley@thenational.ae