Absence of Israel-Egypt war for the last thirty years is unrelated to peace treaty. The Egyptian society changed, and the change began before the 1973 war. Nasser prepared to his wars openly and disregarded casualties; Sadat prepared clandestinely and was so concerned with Egyptian losses that he refused to bomb Israeli troops which drove on Cairo together with encompassing Egyptian forces. Unlike Nasser, Sadat doubted that Egyptians would support a total war against Israel.

Nasser ruled over a poor country with residual discontent from colonial and monarchic times. His people saw little economic prospects and readily channeled their energies into hatred. Nasser rallied them by trumpeting dangerous and obnoxious Zionist enemy around the corner. The fear produced some bravery, and made the masses stick together. Even so, the Egyptian army was unwarlike: the peasants used to the lush scenery around Nile felt little attachment to the Sinai desert.

Consumerism changed Egyptians. Today, city dwellers – those who really influence politics – dislike the Jews rather passively. Everyone thinks of paying off loans, buying something, and preserving the lifestyle. Egyptians don’t go to demonstrations for fear of losing a week’s income while in jail (same for Israelis). While Egyptian economy develops and banks push loans, they don’t care to attack Israel. If there would be a tremendous downturn, unable to pay off loans they would revolt. Riots erupted in 1977 when Sadat increased regulated sugar price a half piastre, but now the government raises prices often and Egyptians are silent. Where people have a chance of economic development, they usually forgo militancy.

On other hand, booming economy produces private sponsors. They not only prop the few radicals financially, but legitimize them politically. Muslim Brotherhood thus evolved from a fringe group of religious crackpots into a moderate, highly respected Islamic organization. Muslim Brotherhood became the major opposition force in Egypt, drew a lot of middle class citizens and youth. To them, Muslim Brotherhood offered Egyptians an acceptable Islam-lite: hijab and occasional mosque attendance but not jihad or caliphate. Muslim Brotherhood positions itself as peaceful organization but it imbues its members with Islamism which drives them to Islamic Jihad in Egypt and Hamas in Gaza. Like the Taliban could not refuse hospitality to bin Laden, so the Muslim Brotherhood cannot abandon militant groups. The Brotherhood’s only concession to moderation is that it formally divests from the militant groups while maintaining ties with them; Hamas is one example. If a sharp-tongued demagogue arises from the Muslim Brotherhood, some Egyptians will abandon the group. Many, probably most will radicalize in response to his calls. Still, they will not launch a total war against Israel but rather support Palestinians, as the Iranian ayatollahs do. Weapons of mass destruction will make the difference; upon coming to power, Muslim Brotherhood could take the risks in return for a realistic possibility of wiping the Zionist state off.

Egyptian government tightly controls the Muslim Brotherhood and recently jailed more than a hundred leaders and confiscated their bank accounts. But the Brotherhood is too useful for the government to destroy. Sadat returned Muslim Brotherhood from Nasser’s exile to counter the communists. The Brotherhood sucks votes from the opposition political parties and dabbles as scarecrow for the US not to press for democratic elections in Egypt too much. Mubarak cracks on Muslim Brotherhood now and then to make them remember who is the boss. Mubarak, it seems, collaborated with bin Laden to woe the Islamic Jihad away from attacking Egypt into the US-first approach. Playing with devil is not easy; Hosni has the required skills, but he is old. His son Gamal Mubarak will be a strong ruler, but slightest error can plunge Egypt into militant Islamism. Many Sunni Egyptians admire Nasrallah, a Shiite. The society’s curiosity about and approval of violent Islamism can momentarily give way to overt support. Egypt retains its militaristic backbone: it continuously upgrades its army with newest American weapons, flirts with Russia, and runs protective racket for Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

Egypt is not an urgent problem for Israel. It’s just a very big problem.

With the ageing Hosni Mubarak soon gone, the American push for democracy in Egypt will bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power. Egypt will become an Islamic fundamentalist state worse than Iran; Persians are generally more civilized and Westernized than Egyptians. Western culture has touched Cairo, but the influx of the impoverished and traditional rural population into the cities changes Egypt’s outlook. Israel should preempt the nuclear fundamentalist state.

The first thing is to create depth of defense by acquiring Sinai. Egyptians hate Israel for the past offenses and wouldn’t hate her more for that. Egypt surrendered the Negev to Israel, Gaza to Palestine, and countless border rectifications to other neighbors.

Egypt never effectively controlled Sinai, and ethnic Egyptians never lived there. The Egyptians dislike the Sinai Bedouins. There has been no independent Egyptian state since Pharaonic times, and a country continuously occupied for 2300 years cannot claim much sovereignty.

Sinai is central to the Jewish national conscience. It is included in the boundaries of Eretz Israel. The Jewish nation was formed there, Jewish law given there. Any nation would consider its cradle central to its conscience.

Sinai contains oil reserves vital for Israel and poor uranium deposits. Egypt did not annihilate Israel in the opening days of the 1973 war only because its army dragged deep in Sinai. If it held Sinai, Egypt would eventually militarize it, just as Germany remilitarized the Rhineland in violation of the treaties.

Israel’s choice is not between confronting Egypt over Sinai or not, but whether to fight now far from her population centers and with Egypt politically unable to use its nuclear weapons, or fight several years or decades from now with Islamist Egyptian nuclear missiles fifty miles from major Israeli cities.

The Israeli-Egyptian situation is more serious than the Cuban missile crisis. The Soviets were unlikely to use nuclear weapons against the United States, but fundamentalist Egypt, with a failed economy and a Jew-hating population will definitely attack Israel. Kennedy preempted and cleared nuclear depth of defense for his country.

The Promised Land stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. The boundary is neither arbitrary nor unrealizable, but the only reasonable and sustainable one.

Egypt never controlled the Sinai, except for the narrow coastal area, and cannot claim the land by any historical or nationalist standards. Egypt itself was continuously under foreign occupation from Pharaonic times until the twentieth century. Egypt tolerated land losses: look at its straight, arbitrary borders. Egypt conceded the Negev to Israel. Why not expect them to concede the Sinai?

Arabs are so-so fighters and pragmatic politicians. Unlike Europeans, they do not perpetuate wars of honor. Egypt could save face by declaring the Sinai non-essential desert like the Negev and acquiesce to Israeli annexation. Egyptians will respect a strong expansionist Israel more than a weakling that gives away land for paper treaties. Current Israeli weakness provokes vengeful attitudes toward her in Egyptian society; the Egyptians want revenge for past injuries. A wtrong Israel has a better chance at lasting peace with Egypt.

Sinai serves as a demilitarized buffer zone now. So was the Rhineland after WWI. No country paid attention to French screams when Germany marched back into the Rhineland. After all, it was German territory. A similar outcome is assured for Sinai. Egypt re-militarized it in 1967 to no more than verbal opposition from the international community. In Egyptian hands, Sinai is a beachhead for attacking Israel. Sinai’s depth of defense saved Israel in 1973. Sinai has oil and uranium deposits. What other reasons do we need to take it back?

Israel need not occupy Cairo—or Egypt for that matter. We don’t want kibbutzim outside Cairo. In fact, we don’t want the socialist abominations in Israel, either. We can take a lesson from America’s example in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and similarly unfortunate places. Israel should demilitarize Egypt, force a peaceable constitution on it, exact territorial concessions, and destroy it totally to fear Israel for decades to come. The Americans did it in Germany and Japan. We would have peace in the Middle East. Yes, peace under the gun, but peace nonetheless. The world won’t be faced with Egyptian nuclear weapons in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. A win-win situation, even perhaps for the common Egyptians.

We won’t occupy Cairo to trade it for Sinai. Land for peace does not work, as any appeasement. That principle, however, is misspelled. For many nations, Arabs peace is not all-important. They do not trade land for peace. They, however, trade some land for assurance of no further annexation. Arabs stopped aggression against Israel after 1967 because they realized that continued aggression could lead to more territorial losses. When Israeli army stood at the Suez Canal, Egypt would have agreed to give up Sinai, as it had given up land to so many nations during its history, to prevent Israeli expansion to her biblically mandated border, the Nile. Yes, Egypt would remilitarize when Israeli government is weak. Yes, the war would renew. But there is no everlasting peace, anyway. Europeans share largely similar culture. Their economies are integrated. But how often they fight? Every few decades, and certainly every century. There will be no eternal peace in the Middle East. The real choice is between short, brutal, and efficient wars, and dragging conflict which bankrupts the economy, damages morale, and leads nowhere.

I learned of the Dahab bombing with mixed feelings. I cannot honestly say I am too sorry for the eighteen dead Egyptians or the few foreigners. Rather, I was glad that my prognosis was correct: I pointed to Dahab as the next target after Taba and Sharm esh-Sheikh, and specifically on Easter. Indeed, I dissuaded a couple of friends from going to Dahab this Easter. The date was pretty obvious: a joint holiday for Egyptian Muslims and Christians and end of the Jewish holidays. The target was clear, too: terrorists had to pick a new town to avoid being labeled a local phenomenon, and picked Dahab over even more jerkwater Nuweiba. What seems really odd to me is, why Sinai? Hurghada and the nearby tourist villages offer much more simple logistics if the perpetrators are the usual suspects, South Egyptian followers of Al Banna. A new Lavon affair being an option, a much more plausible explanation is that we are dealing with a highly distributed insurrection. And yes, Egypt is burning. I hate listening to the peace pitches of my colleagues who have never dealt with Arab mobs. I do. In fact, I recently spent two weeks in Egypt—not at receptions but with common Egyptians.

I rode buses and dime-a-trip minivans, stayed in $3-a-night hotels, and ate fuul in fly-blown eateries. I was shocked. I hadn’t been to Egypt for almost a year, and the change was tremendous. People are no longer afraid of the government. They sense that Hosni will pass away soon, and that any successor will be weak, possibly even a democratic weakling.
Among dozens of people I spoke to, not a single one hesitated to approve of Muslim Brotherhood. That startlingly contrasted the situation a year ago, when many Egyptians disapproved of the group, and many were afraid to approve publicly. Quite a few people now ventured more than tacit approval once prompted. Everyone supported the attacks in Taba and Sharm esh-Sheikh. As usual, most viewed terrorists as Robin Hoods who sabotage hated government and corrupt police. But I also saw an increase in anti-Israeli feelings. Egyptians, as everyone, do not care about Palestinians, but unlike most others, the Egyptians do not pretend they care. They want revenge. Restitution of Sinai left Israel without bargaining chips, and proved insufficient to expiate the offense of prevailing against Egypt. There is much talk of revenge around the corner.

Egyptians know they cannot dominate Middle East if Israel exists. They, like other Arabs, became increasingly nationalist, and want to dominate. Expunging Israel from the region is on the mob’s lips. I saw dramatic increase in Muslim observance among middle class. Several friends who wrank alcohol with me before now seriously spoke of Koran’s infallibility. True, they despise the radicals, but only because radicals threaten stability which the middle class values. Many revolutions showed that the middle class opposition is neither stable nor strong: professionals join radicals or fall prey to them. Many politicians and professors who belong to Muslim Brotherhood or favor them, are ostensibly moderate. Such was the case in all revolutions: moderate intellectuals and passionate activists. Passion has always won; intellect was subverted and subdued.

Egyptian government is desperate. There is more police than usual on every corner: pathetically underpaid, proverbially corrupt, and breathtakingly inept. Automatic rifles are useless in crowded markets and bus stations, checkpoints do not stop bomb traffickers, and security convoys are counterproductive when ambushed. In South Egypt, my taxi driver joined a police-protected convoy, three-mile long line of vehicles. Then, at the middle of the road, the convoy stopped for coffee break. And it does so daily, in the same place. Wanna ambush it?

Post-Dahab measures amounted to laughable show of force: paramilitary troops running around with shields and wooden sticks. The government could do nothing about terrorism. And Muslim Brotherhood already controls the largest faction in parliament. The government recently fired two judges who criticized rigged elections. More to come. Minimally transparent elections will make Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary majority. They have impeccable credentials: they are the only ones who are not corrupt. And they are sufficiently strong - as terrorist acts show - if not to end the corruption, then at least to punish the practitioners awesomely. Muslim Brotherhood will not deliver prosperity, as the ayatollahs did not, but economic problems will become prominent only later. Just as the ayatollahs, Muslim Brotherhood will radicalize foreign politics to divert attention from their mishandling of economy. Unlike with the ayatollahs, the West will accommodate Muslim Brotherhood: you don’t ostracize nuclear imams, lest they go test the promise of seventy virgins.

Egypt is burning. And it will fall to the radicals. We will have a nuclear neighbor state which deals in jihad, sharia, and glorious afterlife, not mutually assured destruction. Islamic nuclear axis will extend to the border of Israel. We could defuse the threat years ago with draconian military measures, massive propaganda, and elimination of the Egyptian nuclear capabilities. Now it’s just too late. The bombs which will detonate in New York and Tel Aviv are being built. The people who will give orders to deliver them are ascending to power. And we are waiting for it.