The Chronikler

Love and loathing in the Middle East

By calling Egyptians who marry Israelis traitors, Egypt has betrayed a group of vulnerable people who are guilty of little more than loving across enemy lines.

10 June 2010

Loving someone against the will of your family is tough enough for many people caught in such a predicament, especially in close-knit societies. Being in an international relationship can pose certain challenges, particularly if the couple do not keep an open mind and fail to live by a spirit of compromise and accommodation. But even when a couple live harmoniously and are completely compatible, the outside world may still not leave them alone, especially if their relationship bridges the unstable fault lines of a conflict.

I know of some Palestinians and Israelis, those most intimate of enemies, who have braved the risk of ostracisation and rejection by their respective communities for the sake of love. But I can imagine that keeping the toxicity of the bitter conflict between their two peoples from seeping into their private lives and poisoning their relationship can be a tough mountain to scale.

Although I know and have heard of a number of Egyptian-Jewish couples, I’ve never actually come across any Egyptians who are married to Israelis. This is hardly surprising as there is minimal contact between the two societies as a cold peace continues to reign between them.

But they do exist and, rare as they are, they’ve become the target of a high-profile hate campaign playing itself out in the Egyptian courts, instigated by Nabih el-Wahsh, that crusading Egyptian lawyer who has brought, mostly unsuccessful, morality cases against Egyptian intellectuals, including Nawal el-Saadawi, artists, religious leaders and government ministers.

The self-righteous lawyer turned his attention to this new demographic group  last year, and launched a law suit to demand that Egypt implement an obsolete 1976 article of Egypt’s citizenship law which revokes the citizenship of Egyptians married to Israelis who have served in the army (i.e. pretty much all Israelis).

A lower court had ruled in favour of el-Wahsh but the Egyptian government appealed the verdict. Last week, the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the appeal and called on the Ministry of Interior to take the necessary measures to strip Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and their children, of their citizenship. The judge who issued the ruling made an exception for Egyptian men married to Palestinian women with Israeli nationality.

The verdict has sparked controversy in Egypt, with many applauding the court’s “patriotism”, while others believed that the government does not and should not have the right to strip an Egyptian of his or her nationality.

Against the backdrop of worsening ties with Israel due to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the Israeli blockage and Israel’s ever-tightening grip on the West Bank, some were somewhat shrill in their applause of the verdict. Sahar el-Gaara, a secular Egyptian columnist, condemned every Egyptian married to an Israeli, even Arab Israelis, as a “potential spy, since he stamped his passport with an Israeli visa”.

By this flawed logic, although I am not married to an Israeli nor did I allow Israeli immigration to stamp my passport, the fact that I visited Israel and Palestine would also makes me a potential spy, even though I was there on a personal peace mission.

I always thought that the basic principle of the legal system is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. So, call me gullible or something, but I thought that, for someone to be guilty of spying, they have to actually be caught in the act of espionage – which, in this case, would be very difficult considering that most Egyptians married to Israelis don’t live in Egypt.

Besides, and more fundamentally, marriage is not a crime, and especially not one so serious that it would entitle the government to strip you of your most fundamental right, the right to nationality. A person’s choice of life partner is theirs alone to make, and society or the government, no matter how much they disapprove, should not have the power to limit that choice.

Of course, in reality, societies do limit that choice unfairly: for instance, gay marriages are not allowed in most countries, inter-faith marriages are completely forbidden in Israel (ironically due to an obsolete Ottoman system which allowed each religious community to set its own personal laws and the disproportionate power of the Israeli rabbinate in this hybrid secular society), and Egyptian Muslim women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men (which is presumably why this court ruling does not apply to them). But revoking someone’s nationality is taking this to another level.

Egyptian human rights activists are up in arms at this preposterous verdict. “Egyptian law says citizenship can only be revoked if the citizen is proven to be spying on his country, [so] this verdict considers marrying an Israeli an act of spying,” Cairo-based attorney and human rights activist Negad al-Borai told Reuters.

The head of the Egyptian expatriate community in Israel, Shokri el-Shazli, suggested that the verdict was hypocritical. “In Israel, there is an Egyptian embassy and consulate which welcome a continuous stream of visiting Egyptian delegations,” he told al-Masry al-Youm.

And I cannot help but think that these Egyptians – small and marginalised group that they are – constitute an easy and soft target to channel popular anger at Israel’s blockade of Gaza and Egypt’s complicity in it.

It is still unclear whether the verdict will be implemented, but el-Shazli doubts it will. “This will create social and political problems internationally, not just in bilateral Egyptian-Israeli relations,” he opined, noting that the Egyptian community in Israel was considering its options and may raise the matter to the United Nations, including the Security Council.

While I’m personally against normalising economic ties with Israel until a comprehensive peace settlement has been reached, I welcome grassroots contacts between Israelis and Arabs, and believe that, if they so choose, couples who straddle the divide can help build bridges between the two sides and aid the process of humanising that we need to replace the current demonisation.

But whether or not they can bridge the gap between enemies is beside the point. The bottom line is that, whether you love or loath thy neighbour, you must recognise that individuals are not responsible for the group and are free to marry anyone they like.

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Profits of war

By Khaled Diab

The economic rewards of peace are supposed to lure Israelis and Palestinians away from conflict. But what if war is its own reward?

January 2009

The heart-wrenching carnage and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza – and the mass fear in southern Israel – is made all the more tragic by the fact that it seems to follow a well-rehearsed script of tense silences followed by sudden, spasmodic eruptions of violence.

Just as the war against Lebanon in 2006 was as shocking as it was sudden and was triggered by the flimsiest of pretexts, the reinvasion of Gaza has also struck like a whirlwind. And just like Lebanon in 2006 and 1982 – as well as the reinvasions of the Palestinian territories following the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada and the election victory of Hamas – the current campaign is unlikely to bring Israelis anything more than a little tense respite.

Like Hamas, which seems incapable of realising the futility of armed struggle and declaring a non-violent peace movement, Israel appears to be completely beholden to the logic of the battering ram. This raises the question of why it is that, despite all the evidence that overwhelming force simply does not work, Israel still has not abandoned its prized “deterrence” policy.

The tragedy in Gaza could be seen as a desperate bid by Israel to reassert its sense of lost deterrence, or simply as another cynical bid by the Kadima leadership to boost their ailing popularity before next month’s elections.

But there are many other factors at play, too. In the past, I’ve explored the role of ideology, including what I call the ‘God veto’, political fragmentation and psychological barriers in perpetuating the conflict. In addition to these, there is an increasingly prominent economic dimension.

At one time, war for Israel meant economic paralysis and crisis, but was sustained by a mesmerising ideology, the fresh memory of persecution and a large array of potentially frightening enemies. But even with Israel as the undisputed regional military superpower and its former enemies falling one by one by the wayside, Israeli violence has risen significantly in recent years, especially towards the Palestinians.

This is partly because a durable peace with the Palestinians requires more fundamental compromises than with the Egyptians and Jordanians as a fair settlement raises issues that strike at the heart of Zionism. Another reason is that, after so many generations, conflict has not only become intrinsically interwoven into Israel’s social fabric, it has also become hardwired into its economy.

During the Oslo years, Shimon Peres – who favoured a “peace of markets” before a “peace of flags” – and the Labour party were backed by influential members of the business community who were lured by the peace dividend Israel could earn from a resolution to the conflict. But under rightwing stewardship in recent years, the Israeli economy has been profiting from its own and global conflict and insecurity.

In fact, for the past few years, Israel has enjoyed one of the highest economic growth rates in the world, and is still registering healthy growth even as western economies falter. Much of this growth has been fuelled by the high-tech ‘Silicon Wadi’ sector, much of it security-related technologies, and arms.

According to the Israel Export and International Co-operation Institute, security and homeland security exports reached $3 billion in 2005. In 2007, Israel overtook Britain to become the world’s fourth largest weapons exporter, selling a total of $4 billion in arms.

On top of that, since the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Israel has boosted its military spending, partly to help salvage high-tech firms. Last year, proved to be yet another record year, with the country’s defence budget subsuming a massive 16% of government spending and 7% of GDP. Add to that, the average $3 billion in military aid which Israel receives from the United States each year, and you have a truly staggering economic dependence on the way of the gun.

This is not to say that this is necessarily a war dividend for Israel as a whole, but those involved wield a powerful lobby. In addition, Israel does not seem to be paying a massive war premium. High-tech industries do not require Israel to be on good terms with its neighbours, while with most western economies, it’s business as usual, regardless of the political situation on the ground. The EU, as a whole, remains Israel’s main trading partner, with bilateral trade at around €20 billion, followed closely by the United States.

Moreover, low-intensity flare-ups seem to give the markets some welcome jolts. Between 27 December, when the Gaza offensive began, and 5 January, the benchmark TA-25 stock index climbed an impressive 8.7%. Similarly, the index gained 3.6% in July 2006 during the Lebanon campaign. In addition, Israel and the occupied territories are slowly being transformed into macabre showcases for security products.

Israel has even managed to wean itself off its dependence on Palestinian labour, with the massive influx of Russian Jews who arrived in massive numbers in the 1990s. This has enabled Israel to close off the Palestinian territories without feeling major economic pain itself. In contrast to Israel, the massive economic deterioration – along with the political deadlock – triggered by the mass closures that began in the Oslo years, suggested to many Palestinians that the quest for peace would not deliver them a dividend, a frustration which culminated in the second intifada.

In addition, while a small elite profits from the political instability and insecurity, the ongoing conflict serves the additional purpose of distracting ordinary Israelis from the growing levels of poverty into which they are descending – much like Arab leaders have exploited the demise of Palestinians.

In conclusion, a sort of alignment of convenience has emerged between influential segments of Israel’s economic elite and ideological opponents of the peace process. Add to that, the revolving door between the military and the upper echelons of politics and industry, and the “war economy” locomotive appears even harder to derail.

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 11 January 2009. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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