The downing of a Russian airliner last weekend in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is another blow to Egypt’s tourism industry, but more importantly the gains that ISIS and other Salafist groups are making are raising growing doubts among Israeli and some US officials about the ability of the junta and its leader, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, to remain in power.
Israeli media are citing a new report coming out by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an AIPAC-affiliated thinktank, which details the concerns of Israeli state and defense officials about Sisi’s position, with many expressing doubt that Sisi will even survive this current term in office, which ends in 2018.
Formerly the defense minister, Sisi seized power in summer of 2013 in a military coup. Sisi followed his coup with an immediately launched war against the Sinai Peninsula, claiming the Islamist groups there were in league with the previously elected government.
The Sinai war has gone extremely poorly, with the largest of the groups in Sinai, the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, growing dramatically in power and, by November of 2014, formally joining ISIS as an affiliate. The group remains active across Sinai, and was credited with bombing the Russian plane.
Former White House counsel Greg Craig offered some of the most stark assessments in the report, from top Israeli national security people who said Egypt was doing “all the wrong things when it comes to counter-insurgency,” and that you could basically make a list of all the things not to do with an insurgency, and Egypt has done them all.
The worsening situation has led to admissions Islamists have tried repeatedly to assassinate Sisi, and as the security situation worsens, even the military leaders who were his primary advocates in the coup are said to be turning their backs on them.
Israel loudly advocated the 2013 coup and has backed Sisi’s continued rule at the expense of democratic reform, arguing that the junta is better for regional security than the elected Egyptian government he replaced was.
Ouch. The US/israel backed Egyptian regime isn't going to survive? America gets nothing right these days, huh?
The Middle-Eastern House of Cards constructed by NATO but primarily by our administrations is about to collapse. Who will be buried under it? The people of the Middle East. Can anyone imagine what will happen if Egyptians (there are some 83 million now) will begin to flee?
Imagine the upheaval in European politics if/when the Arab voting block becomes the largest in say, the UK or Germany.
Egypt a Western democracy — Most perfect for laboring-class slavery
The Pharaohs of Egypt were able to build their pyramids with slave labor as they had an overabundance of slave drivers. For the upper half of society was allowed to hoard all the land and wealth, which made them most eager to beat the slaves as needed to drag all those boulders up the steep sloops.
And so it is today, for even though democracy came to Egypt in the 1950’s, as always the upper half continued to hoard all the land and wealth as they were the voting majority and elected politicians best qualified to enslave the lower half. Which is why the laboring-class lower half is paid only $3.40 a day
The partisans of Israel may not have liked the Muslim Brotherhood or Morsi, but he was the best they were going to get in Egypt. The rest of the electorate wanted far worse for them, save only for the remnants of the old dictatorship. They decided to back re-installing a dictatorship that had just failed — that could only end in disaster.
Morsi had accommodated Israel. They didn't like him anyway, because of their hatred of Hamas and Gaza. Too bad, all they've done is get worse. That is what comes of denying reality.
Egypt and Algeria could have done better if the Islamists were allowed in theower house. Look at India- if on the ground of the manifesto,speeches,utterrings,comments of the RSS ideologues ,of the political wings of the same militant ideologies-Shiv Sena,BJP,Bagranj Dal and on the history of communal riots engineered by BJP ShivSena and RSS ,the foreign government prevented BJP / Modi to assume power India would have faced same turmoil Egypt and Aljeria had faced