When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday, the two leaders were out to court Washington rather than one another, according to experts.
The meeting came just days ahead of Netanyahu's expected official visit to Washington later this month and Mubarak is also planning a meeting with the new US administration.
Gamal Gawad Soltan, senior research fellow at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Xinhua that the visit by the Israeli prime minister to Egypt was more of a show on his part to Washington that his administration is not isolated and not out to destroy relations with Arab states.
For Mubarak, Soltan said the meeting was an attempt by Egypt to present itself as a country that is a peacemaker. Egypt is saying to Washington, "We are willing to talk even with those we have little confidence with," said Soltan.
"It is more of a struggle for Obama. Everybody wants a piece of Obama and his United States," said Soltan.
According to Art Hughes, a scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, Egypt is craving stability and maintenance, influence and authority. "It's a situation where Egyptians have to seem to have some influence in the region and with US government."
Hughes told Xinhua that the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh "was more of a show for Netanyahu and Mubarak that they are players and not isolated."
The meeting also took place in the backdrop of tensions between the United States and Israel regarding Netanyahu's insistence on interlocking any progress on peace talks with the argument that Iran is the number one threat to regional instability in the region. His argument is that peace will not be achieved so long as Iran continues to move to develop its nuclear capabilities.
In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference in Washington, Netanyahu said, "For the first time in my lifetime... Arabs and Jews see a common danger."
"If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it is this: Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons," he said.
But Obama's administration and the Arab states do not entirely see eye-to-eye with Israel on the importance of dealing with Iran before working on a two-state solution.
Hughes said that attempts by Netanyahu to "avoid dealing with Palestinians by saying that Iran's problem is a distraction." "The dividing of the two issues just doesn't add up," he said.
Soltan echoed this belief. He said while Egypt and the United States are concerned about Iranian aspirations in the region, such rhetoric by Netanyahu is understood to be a distraction from getting to the table to discuss a viable and long-lasting two-state solution.
"It's an attempt to distract regional and international actors away from the Arab-Israeli conflict," said Soltan. "Egypt did not fall into this trap," he added.
Mubarak has repeatedly said that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must include an independent Palestinian state next to Israel.
But professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo Sean McMahon believed that both Israel and Egypt share deep common concerns about Iran's regional role and its support of Hamas and Hezbollah.
"What would the two (Egypt and Israel) have to disagree about?" asked McMahon. He argued that both Egypt and Israel do not want to be responsible for Gaza and do not want Hamas as the power-broker there.
McMahon characterized the meeting between the two leaders as "unremarkable" and as just another meeting in a long history of diplomatic protocol that leads to little change.
However, McMahon said that one major difference between the two leaders is that "Mubarak has it much tougher than Netanyahu because he makes recourse to Arab solidarity," and this in turn means that peace between Palestinians and Israelis lists higher on the Egyptian agenda than any possible threat from Iran.
"Israel's done a fairly masterful job at mobilizing regional players around the Iranian threat and it's been completely manufactured to serve Israeli interests in the region," said McMahon.
Despite this, Egypt is well aware that Israel has waged two wars in the region in the past three years, one against southern Lebanon and one in Gaza recently. "The notion that Iran is the regional threat is laughable," he said.
While Egypt is concerned about Iran's regional aspirations and ties to Islamic militant groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, Mubarak wants stability at its borders with the Gaza Strip and so its main concern continues to be trying to find a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis foremost.
And, according to Hughes, there is no indication in Washington that the Obama administration is changing views about the two-state solution as the only viable guideline.
Despite the growing rift between Netanyahu and international actors regarding a two-state solution, Hughes said that Egypt, which became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, shares certain fundamental common interests with the Jewish state.
"There are some common interests and of course those underlined interests are what keep them talking and cooperating even in times of displeasure," said Hughes.
(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2009)
