Anxious Israel awaits post-Mubarak future (News Feature)

By Ofira Koopmans Feb 4, 2011, 15:22 GMT

Tel Aviv - For the past 11 days Israelis have watched the uprising in the country on their southern border with a mix of emotions.

Firstly, respect for Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak who kept three decades of peace with their country.

Secondly, anger at US President Barack Obama for what they regard as turning a cold shoulder to a long-time pro-Western ally.

Last, but not least - apprehension, mainly of the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the reins of power.

'We are afraid that the Muslim Brotherhood take over, and that the peace treaty will be cancelled,' said Efraim Inbar, a political science professor and the director of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.

'They (the Muslim Brotherhood) want Sharia law. They are anti-West, anti-modern and of course anti-Israeli,' he said.

Not only would Israel have to come to terms with a hostile regional superpower to its south, the Sinai peninsula 'could become a haven for terrorism,' and Gaza would be become more volatile.

'They'll get weapons easier and they will shoot them at Israel,' he said, noting Egypt under Mubarak curbed the weapons smuggling into the strip.

And it would mean 'another victory for Iran,' after the Shiite Hezbollah movement it backs in Lebanon.

He called Washington's response to the Egypt crisis 'childish,' 'naive' and 'incredible.'

'They should know better' than to expect an overnight transition to democracy, he added.

Inbar was only voicing mainstream Israeli thinking. An opinion poll in Israel's biggest-selling daily indicated that almost two- third of Israelis (65 per cent) believe the end of Mubarak's rule would have negative consequences for their country.

Only 11 per cent thought it could have positive ones. The remainder did not know. The Dahaf Institute questioned 500 adults, standard in Israel, for Yediot Ahronot. The survey had a margin of error of 4.5 per cent.

Benjamin Netanyahu, in his most extensive comments on the unrest yet, used an address to parliament earlier this week to highlight the dangers.

'What young people need to understand,' he said, is that 'Israel has only one border of peace with Egypt and one border of peace with Jordan.'

At both fronts, he said 'we enjoyed peace, not only the absence of war, but the absence of a need to defend those borders with all that it entails.'

'There are those who are here,' said the 61-year-old, nodding at lawmakers his age and older, 'who remember what it was like for us when there was no peace!'

He used the example of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution to underscore how a popular uprising could overnight replace a pro-Western regime, with a 'fanatic, religious oppressive one.'

A day after Mubarak announced he would not run for reelection, Netanyahu for the first time took pains to also express sympathy with the Cairo protesters' calls for democratic reforms.

But while some sympathy with the pro-reform movement could be heard in the streets of Tel Aviv, support for Mubarak was far wider.

Many Israelis, grateful of him for preserving unpopular ties with Israel in an otherwise mostly hostile region, find it hard to cast the Egyptian autocrat in the role of the 'bad guy.'

'We think that Mubarak must be allowed to finish with dignity, and not be expelled, because he was an important and serious president,' said Emanuel, 75, a Tel Aviv businessman who preferred only to give his first name.

'We are very angry at the American intervention in what is happening in Egypt,' he added, sipping from his espresso at a cafe table on a central Tel Aviv sidewalk.

He was worried about what role the Muslim Brotherhood would play and what it would mean for regional stability and ties with Israel.

But he added: 'The peace treaty is good for Israel AND for Egypt. Only a fool would cancel it.'

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