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> Put together, we’re seeing an Emirati-Israeli axis emerging to balance Saudi hegemony in the Gulf and Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf. I’d expect to se
by delecti 6mo ago
> Put together, we’re seeing an Emirati-Israeli axis emerging to balance Saudi hegemony in the Gulf and Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf. I’d expect to see an Emirati deal with Egypt and India next if this hypothesis is correct.
Don't Egypt and Israel hate each other though? Could UAE feasibly align with both?
- bilegeek 6mo agoThey're not buddies per se, but Egypt was the first ME country to normalize relations.
- wat10000 6mo agoThey've also been cooperating on blockading Gaza for a couple of decades. Israel gets most of the attention for that, mostly rightfully so, but people seem to forget that there's a border with Egypt too and that has also had very limited access.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoTo be fair, part of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel gave Israel some control over the crossing, and they seized it entirely during the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing > The Rafah crossing was opened by Israel after the 1979 peace treaty and remained under Israeli control until 2005... > Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval.
- trollbridge 6mo agoThis is to a large part to give Egypt plausible deniability. They don’t want to deal with Gaza, refugees, or a humanitarian crisis, but also don’t want the political fallout of taking action like the Israelis do.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoEh, 50/50. Israel would not respond positively to Egypt throwing the gates wide open.
- philistine 6mo agoThat is very reductive of the whole situation. The Egyptians are not singularly focused on helping Palestinians; it is far more nuanced than that. Bottom line, Egyptians are not interested in supporting millions of refugees inside their border. So the border stays closed to mass immigration.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoAll that may be true. Also true: If Egypt opened the border and Israel objected, Israel would take swift military action.
- deepsun 6mo agoNo, why? Israel would celebrate. But NONE of the Arab countries want to help Gaza people really.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago> No, why? Israel would celebrate. This is directly contradicted by Israel's actions in the Gaza War. Egyptian control of the crossing was not enough, so they took it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-07/israel-raid-closes-rafah-border-crossing-in-gaza-hamas-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-07/israel-ra...
- JumpCrisscross 6mo agoIsrael would object to aid and weapons flows into Gaza. It would be fine with Gazans leaving the Strip. The problem is there are currently zero takers globally for a significant Palestinian refugee population, in part, as other comments have mentioned, due to the history of Palestinian refugee populations in the Middle East. (To my knowledge, Palestinian Americans have been fine and productive members of society.)
- aprilthird2021 6mo agoPeople don't forget it. But Egypt is a dictatorship aligned with US/Israel, so there's again not much we can do there. Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters
- woodruffw 6mo ago> Ending foreign aid to Egypt is probably very aligned with ending foreign aid to Israel in terms of popularity among American voters I strongly suspect the average American has absolutely zero sense of how much foreign aid we give Egypt. That's not to contradict your point directly, just that it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid).
- BobaFloutist 6mo ago> it isn't a very salient part of American politics (unlike Israeli foreign aid). I feel like Israeli aid, while vastly more salient than it used to be, is still mostly salient as a left-of-center wedge issue, otherwise being about as salient as your average major foreign policy issue - ranking just under the least salient domestic policy issue, which ranks just under the most minor personal quality of any candidate, which ranks under the current state of the economy, which ranks under the current perceived state of the economy. Wow, that's way too many times to use "salient" in one sentence. And for the record, I'm not arguing about how much people should care, just how much they do.
- woodruffw 6mo agoIt's also become a right-of-center (right of far-right?) wedge issue in the past 12 months. But I otherwise completely agree with you; I think there's a veritable chasm between how much the media talks about the US's foreign aid (both to Israel and in general) and how much it actually matters to the average voter.
- aprilthird2021 5mo agoThere's no tension with a policy not being the top or even top 10 priority for voters and the policy being very popular with voters.
- Yizahi 6mo agoEgypt learned on other's mistakes for once. They saw how Jordan welcomed Palestinians on their land and they repaid the kindness by launching a coup against the government in 1970. No wonder not a single anti-Israeli coalition country is willing to deal with Palestinians directly at their own home and are keeping borders watertight :) .
- shykes 6mo agoDon't forget that after being expelled from Jordan, Arafat relocated to Lebanon where he proceeded to take over the South ("Fatahland"), start a civil war, and pull in Israel with constant attacks across the border. Until Israel kicked them out in 1982, the Palestinians played the disruptive, parasitic role in Lebanon that Hezbollah plays today. In fact, Hezbollah rose to power precisely by filling the void left by the Palestinians in 82.
- constantius 6mo agoYou're probably aware of your bigotry, as the stupid smiley at the end of your comment seems to suggest, but your reasoning only serves to support the pre-made conclusion of 'Palestinians are genetically evil'.
- Der_Einzige 6mo agoHow can you not acknowledge that essentialism is basically correct? Some cultures go thousands of years without ever forming civilizations that escape barbarism. Slavs in particular seem especially unable to find their way out of tyranny, for literally thousands of years. Sometimes you call a spade a spade. Essences exist. Copes against it like “intersectionality” have been thoroughly rejected by the body politic and that’s why you see zoomer and gen alpha talking like they’re all from 4chan - because 4chan was the only place where essentialism was not only accepted but encouraged.
- tolerance 6mo ago> and that’s why you see zoomer and gen alpha talking like they’re all from 4chan - because 4chan was the only place where essentialism was not only accepted but encouraged. This bodes well for the future, you say?
- ethbr1 6mo agoAs an Arab friend summed it up, 'All Arab governments like to trumpet the Palestinian cause when it serves them, but none of them are willing to lift a finger to help the Palestinians.'
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- anvuong 6mo agoAre you sure? Jordanians tried and it burned them spectacularly. And if my memory served, Egypt also tried to some extent and eventually was eagerly and happily offloading Gaza into Israel's hands. Then, they built a huge border defensive line to keep Gazan out that would make Trump's Mexican border a joke in comparison. At some points people need to wonder why.
- shykes 6mo agoEgypt is trying to have their cake and eat it too. Total crackdown on islamists at home - whether Hamas or any other incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood - but also making sure they remain a thorn in the side of Egypt's rivals. See for example the massive smuggling tunnels discovered by the IDF in Rafah in 2024, which had been keeping Hamas covertly resupplied through Egypt. Hard to imagine that Egypt was unaware.
- constantius 6mo ago> At some points people need to wonder why. Could you imagine me making the same argument with other historically 'unwanted' groups, like for example Black people or Jews? If these populations keeep getting kicked out and marginalised through millennia, surely you have to start wondering why.
- Der_Einzige 6mo agoWe need actual coherent answers to that question, because whenever the myriad number of kids in school ask such questions and get non answers, they start to actually buy the “global conspiracy” framing of everything. It’s probably more anti-Semitic to lie and say “jews don’t control Hollywood” rather than try to explain correctly why they do. Yet, most people don’t even want to try to explain historical factors.
- j_maffe 6mo agoEgyptians and Israelis hate each other, not their governments. They're on friendly terms relatively speaking.
- shykes 6mo agoIsraelis do not hate Egyptians... The Arab world has a major Jew-hatred problem, but the reverse it not true. Remember that 20% of the Israeli population is Arab.
- huntertwo 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Arabs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Arabs > Death to Arabs" or "Death to the Arabs" (Israeli Hebrew: מָוֶת לָעֲרָבִים, romanized: Mávet la'Aravím) is an anti-Arab slogan originating in Israel.
- diogenes_atx 6mo ago[dead]
- slibhb 6mo agoVirtually all Arabs hate Israel but Arab governments are more varied. The modern Egyptian state is oriented toward close partnership with the US, and a large part of that was peace with Israel post '73. So yes, the UAE could align with both.
- nkmnz 6mo ago[flagged]
- cma 6mo agoIf they join a religion that isn't on the state approved list, they can't get married there and hard or extra expensive to get buried. There are some limits on religious freedom.
- dlubarov 6mo agoThey can just get married abroad. There are even online ceremonies now. A decent number of Israeli Jews have to do that as well, since Israel recognizes Jewish marriages only under orthodox rabbis. Some Israeli Jews are not even considered Jews under strict orthodox rules.
- IAmBroom 6mo agoSo, not a religiously free state, as OP said.
- dlubarov 6mo agoIt's not like it's designed to be discriminatory. In practice it's Jews that are most affected (if they don't conform to strict Orthodox rules), so if anything it's discriminatory against Jews, which wouldn't make much sense. For a much more serious example of lack of religious freedom, we could look to Palestinian law, which only permits Islamic or Christian marriages. Not to mention that selling land to a Jew is high treason.
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- aprilthird2021 6mo agoIf Egypt were a democracy, its government would hate Israel. That's why the current dictator overthrew the last democracy and had its elected leader die in jail, and that same dictator is now supported heavily by US funding
- pjc50 6mo agoThe briefly elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt was .. not as liberal as the Tahrir Square protests demanded.
- g8oz 6mo agoAnd the UAE played a large role in covertly supporting the movement that toppled it.
- ta20240528 5mo ago… for which (if you think women are equal) they should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. (Husband and father of daughters).
- zoogeny 6mo agoI think you might be overestimating how liberal the protesters were. Source: I was in Tahrir square during the protests and spoke with many Egyptians. Almost all of the complaints I heard while I was in Egypt were about corruption and lack of opportunity. It was more frustration with rampant nepotism/cronyism and less a desire for liberalism. From the ground, it appeared to be driven by economic forces and not political ideology. In fact, many Egyptian men that I spoke to made the argument for the continued oppression of women (e.g. the full burqa and absence from work). In general, the populace was decidedly anti-liberal. The election of the Muslim Brotherhood happened after I left the country, but it was no surprise to me at all. The fact that they attempted to change the constitution so quickly after their victory was unwise, and the subsequent coup by the West was just as unsurprising.
- 6mo ago