That changed when the army put on a mere show of riot control: a handful of tanks with fighter jets flying overhead, and nothing more. We did not witness a military putsch, but an act of treason. For three decades, Egyptian generals have drifted into the American orbit. Simple and snobbish people, they became debauched by receptions and high-level contacts. They reported more to the Pentagon and White House than to Mubarak. When the time came to defend the Egyptian regime, the generals thought of democracy, human rights, and their American puppeteers rather than their duty to obey the president. The situation is immediately recognizable for Israelis, whose own generals routinely report to Washington. Both in Cairo and Tel Aviv, American diplomats have developed a habit of talking directly to local generals without bothering to proceed through regular diplomatic channels. Foreign diplomats often talk to generals one-on-one, without the presence of defense ministry officials. Fearful of their image in the eyes of their American masters, Egyptian generals did not nip the riots in the bud as Assad would have done—or as Mubarak once would have done. Their betrayal is only kept in check by the Republican Guards loyal to Mubarak.

Incited by the lack of suppression, the rioters quickly escalated their struggle. I do not subscribe to the view that the Obama administration ordered the protests; they are too stupid for that. The Egyptian debacle is a result of a series of half-truths and blunders. The United States did not support the anti-Mubarak groups, as Mubarak himself believes. Rather, sheepishly straight pro-democracy elements in the US State Dept extended token support to any Egyptian opposition groups who had the brains to utter the magical word, democracy. Opposition parties took that support from fringe officials as a proof of real American support for their cause, and Mubarak took it as proof of an American betrayal. The problem stems from the different political cultures: the Egyptian ruler cannot easily accept that the US administration has many policies, and many of its moves are ad hoc rather than a result of well-thought-out policies. In his world, governments which do not think carefully go down quickly, and officials who contradict the government’s line are sacked even quicker. So by 2009 Mubarak was at odds with the White House, not unlike Netanyahu. This estrangement prompted Obama to step up his support for anti-Mubarak elements instead of mending relations with the Middle East’s lynchpin. Obama’s miscalculation is surprising: a man assisted by America’s immense intelligence apparatus failed to understand that limited peace in the Middle East hinges on a single person, Mubarak. In Israel and the United States, leaders of various political stripes, mentalities, and intellectual abilities came and went while he sat on the Pharaoh’s throne overlooking the Muslim world. Mubarak provided in the war zone of the Middle East the kind of stability that passing democratic rulers could not. Even more, Mubarak stabilized the region after foreign democratic rulers had destabilized it with their solve-all policies and initiatives.

That was not about a name. Sadat—who was widely believed to have been assassinated on Mubarak’s orders, with US acquiescence—played a similar role. Any person of moderate intellect and considerable willpower would have fit the bill. The only prescription unacceptable in principle would have been a democratic merry-go-round of rulers in Egypt—and that is precisely what Obama demands with his democratization mantra.

American policies in Egypt are driven by a fundamental misunderstanding of goals and players. It must be totally irrelevant for the United States whether Egypt is a democracy or anything else. Some of America’s best friends are monarchies, and Mubarak’s Egypt is certainly not the vilest country around. The American concern with the democratization of Egypt is especially odd when compared to near-absence of American support for the Iranian protestors in 2009. America’s only legitimate goal in Egypt is maintaining that country’s cooperation with Israel. Any regime in Egypt which does otherwise would cause a political realignment in the Middle East: militant Sunni and Shiite blocs against Israel and one another. Democracy, human rights, and freedom for Egyptians should be of no concern to foreign powers, especially when their violations in Egypt are well within the regional norm.

The US administration greatly misreads the Muslim Brotherhood. True, it is a moderate organization, unlike the ayatollahs. But the ayatollahs were likewise moderate before the revolution—so much so that they were welcome guests in the West. They spoke of fighting corruption, of traditional values, charity, and similar things of universal importance. That changed when they came to power. We know a political organization by its fruit. The Brotherhood spawned Hamas (also initially a moderate charity), the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and scores of other terrorists, and it is hardly a necessary part of a democratic government.

Nor will other parties be able to contain the Muslim Brotherhood. Granted, secular opposition parties will increase their support base after liberalization. Today, the Brotherhood is the only significant opposition movement because it relies on a network of mosques, while secular parties lack a similar institutional structure. But by the time secular parties—many of which are virulently anti-Israeli—are able to blossom, the Muslim Brotherhood will already have transformed Egypt into a sharia state. Nor will the army help, because the army has been heavily infiltrated by the Brotherhood, and many of its officers are sympathetic to the Islamist cause. The Egyptian army lacks the staunch secularism of the Turkish army, and even the Turkish army is now being Islamicized.

Like the ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood will be more radical abroad than domestically. The Brotherhood already has a strong presence in Syria and Jordan. Acting through its Jordanian branch and through Jordan’s Palestinian majority, the Muslim Brotherhood will topple the monarchy in Jordan. Fatah in the West Bank will find it hard to resist the subversion by local Hamas and the Brotherhood in Jordan. Gaza will become a garrison state: unimpeded weapons deliveries from Sinai will allow Hamas to shell Israel while substantially stemming reprisals through Egyptian-led action in the UN. Most importantly, the Brotherhood will open the Rafah Crossing and subsidize Hamas, making Gaza into a relatively prosperous territory, which would boost Hamas’ popularity in Gaza and the West Bank. Victories in Gaza and Jordan would not even require the Brotherhood to dominate the Egyptian government. By its mere presence, the Brotherhood will force other parties into pan-Arab, pro-Islamic policies.

The Muslim Brotherhood will become Egypt’s bridge to Iran. The alliance of Iran, Turkey, and Egypt will prove unmanageable for the West and too tempting for the Russians to resist engagement.

In Sudan, the Brotherhood will rekindle the Islamic revolution abandoned by Osama.

The biggest problem would be the domino effect on Saudi Arabia. A month ago, the Saudis openly bragged of their intention to render two nuclear devices from Pakistan. It has widely been believed for years that the Saudis own several Pakistani nukes in return for financing the Pakistani nuclear program. It is a matter of contention, however, whether these nukes are held in Saudi Arabia or in Pakistan. The Obama administration voiced no opposition to Saudi planes being kept at a military base in Pakistan, so presumably the nukes are either twenty miles from Riyadh or under Saudi control in Pakistan. But the Saudi monarchy has zero chance of surviving an Al Qaeda revolt if Egypt falls to the Muslim Brotherhood. Unlike the Egyptian regime, the Saudi monarchy relies on its security service rather than its meager army. Saudi riot-control options are slim. So we can expect Islamists eventually to get hold of Saudi nuclear devices, along with the $120 billion-plus top-notch military gadgets the Saudis have procured from the United States in recent years. Cynics might reply that with nuclear weapons available to Islamists through North Korea and Pakistan, who cares about Saudi Arabia?

Both presidential candidates, Amr Moussa and El Baradei, must be the West’s nightmare. Moussa is a demagogue with a long history of anti-Israeli, anti-American rhetoric. In his capacity as the head of the Arab League, he has routinely defied the US and UN demands to lift the Arab embargo on Israel. El Baradei, in his capacity as IAEA chief, acted as a godfather to the Iranian nuclear program, and must be so respected by the ayatollahs that Egyptian rapprochement with Iran would be a no-brainer.

The Muslim Brotherhood will inherit a formidable Egyptian army bolstered by three decades of US military sales to Egypt. With or without formal control over the General Staff or Defense Ministry, the Brotherhood’s mere legitimization will boost its presence in the army. This is similar to Hezbollah’s infiltration of the Lebanese armed forces, which also were beefed up by US aid.

An Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood need not even fight Israel. It would boost the regional nuclear arms race by running the two research reactors. Such an Egypt would open the Sinai for African infiltrators into Israel and arms smugglers to Gaza. It will bother Israel with violations of the peace treaty, such as creating paramilitary units in Sinai from the local population and building dual-use installations. Egypt will return to its traditional role as the Arabs’ UN voice to condemn Israel. The Suez and the Red Sea will be open to Iranian shipments to Hamas. A huge body of information on Israel and her foreign activities accumulated by the Egyptian security service during the years of our cooperation will be made available to Iran. The cessation of US aid may even provide the Egyptian government with due cause to abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. As in Iran, the religious government in Egypt will eventually lose popularity, but by that time the citizens won’t be able to overthrow it easily, and in the meantime Israel’s troubles will multiply.

The Egyptian riots highlight the erosion of modern democracy into what can playfully be termed a mediacracy. Just as media in Israel brought down IDF Chief of Staff Galant and hunted down Olmert, so Egyptian media sold the riots to Western news consumers as pro-democracy protests. Reporters willfully ignored bloodbath riots, widespread looting, and arson in Egyptian towns in favor of the relatively orderly Tahrir Square protests. Rather small demonstrations were amplified on TV screens so they looked like a mass uprising. Nearly no mention was made of the total calm in most of Cairo. Mubarak’s objectively high approval ratings were ignored, and he was portrayed as an Eastern despot though he is the only Western-style ruler in the region. Riots by thugs and Islamists were sanitized into a velvet revolution. The hypothesis of revolution-by-media can be tested in Syria: since foreign media are scarcely represented there, rioters would fail to displace Assad.

The American propensity for nominal democratization—which in this case will certainly bring Islamists to power—is surprising. It is not an isolated error, but the one repeated recently in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and now in Egypt. Democracy has become an idol rather than the means to ensure liberalism. Sacrificed to democracy are staunchly pro-American rulers in Iraq and Lebanon, with others in Afghanistan and Egypt soon to follow. America’s betrayal of its allies is outright senseless, with no imaginable benefits. The White House does not even have a goal, but merely leans toward democratization. It has not approved any successor to Mubarak, or the composition of the next government. At first, it looked like the United States would approve Omar Suleiman as a successor to Mubarak, but that is not the case. Mindful of his intelligence requests to Israel, he worked overtime to quash the riots. The whole issue revolves around a personal quarrel between Obama and Mubarak, who greatly despises the hapless yuppie. And so the White House incited the Egyptian opposition with no clear plan for the day after. While Egypt was falling down, Clinton wasted no time lecturing Middle-eastern rulers about democratizing their own countries. Which left America with still fewer allies.

The US did not work out a common line on Egypt with Israel, its only reliable partner in the Middle East. As a result, Netanyahu wavered between secretly supporting Mubarak (to the extent of an Israeli Navy presence in the Suez) and calling publicly for a democratic Egypt. The Israeli leader who failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program, Hamas’ digging of hundreds of miles of tunnels in Gaza, and the Hezbollah putsch in Lebanon is not a man to prop up Mubarak against the wishes of his own and Mubarak’s American masters. Netanyahu made a mistake by allowing Egyptian troops into Sinai to fight Hamas, the first such violation of the peace treaty. Instead, he should have sent IDF to take control of the Rafah area.

In his usual manner of talking rather than acting, Netanyahu jumped at the opportunity to show the world that Israel is not the root cause of all the Middle East’s evil. That did not help: just as the riots kept raging throughout Egypt, the Quartet urged Israel to continue the peace process no matter what. On the other hand, the fact that Arab countries are in turmoil does not negate the need for real peace with them.

America’s treatment of Mubarak is a warning sign for Israel. America’s greatest lever was its aid to Egypt. At $1.2 to $2 billion, the amount of aid is negligible compared to Egyptian GDP, but it is important to special interests in Egypt who have become used to squandering it over the last few decades. They became the White House’s agents of influence and lobbied for Mubarak’s removal. The same may happen in Israel, which accepts insignificant American aid at the cost of selling her policy-makers to puppeteers in Washington.

We witness a battle of titans. A lone realist, Mubarak relies on his own cash, disbursing money by tens of millions to stay in power. There is no doubt that he strives for the benefit of his country. At the age of 82, Mubarak does not want a Harvard-educated Kenyan to ruin the country he has guided with an iron hand and a clear mind for thirty years. And Obama, president of the world’s empire, employs rightist means for leftist ends. The point of no return has passed: if Mubarak survives, he will never forgive Obama for his betrayal. And neither Mubarak nor Suleiman will forgive Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood for the terrorist attacks they staged in Egypt during its time of weakness.

By supporting Mubarak and Suleiman today, Israel can get the best ally money can buy. Or we can resign ourselves to ‘pro-democratic elements,’ and for the first time in the past four thousand years we can battle both Egypt and Iran simultaneously.

Nasser ruled over a poor country seething with residual discontent from colonial and monarchic times. His people saw few economic prospects and readily channeled their energies into hatred. Nasser rallied them by trumpeting the 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 the Nile, felt little attachment to the Sinai desert.

Consumerism changed the Egyptians. Today, city dwellers—those who really influence politics—dislike the Jews rather passively. Everyone thinks of paying off loans, buying something, and preserving their lifestyle. Egyptians don’t go to demonstrations for fear of losing a week’s income while in jail (the same goes for Israelis). While the Egyptian economy develops and banks push loans, they don’t care to attack Israel. If there were to be a tremendous downturn, the Egyptians, unable to pay off their loans, would revolt. Riots erupted in 1977 when Sadat increased the regulated price of sugar 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, a booming economy produces private sponsors. They not only prop up the few radicals financially, but legitimize them politically. The Muslim Brotherhood thus evolved from a fringe group of religious crackpots into a moderate, highly respected Islamic organization. The Muslim Brotherhood became the major opposition force in Egypt, and drew a lot of middle class citizens and youth. To them, the Muslim Brotherhood offered Egyptians an acceptable Islam-lite: hijab and occasional mosque attendance, but not jihad or war for a caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood positions itself as a peaceful organization but it inculcates its members with Islamism, which drives them to Islamic Jihad in Egypt and Hamas in Gaza. Just as the Taliban could not refuse hospitality to bin Laden, so the Muslim Brotherhood cannot abandon the 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 will support the Palestinians, as the Iranian ayatollahs do. Weapons of mass destruction will make the difference; upon coming to power, the Muslim Brotherhood could take the risk in return for the realistic chance to wipe the Zionist state off the map.

The 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 allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to return from the exile into which Nasser had forced tham, in order to counter the communists. The Brotherhood sucks votes from the opposition political parties and doubles as a scarecrow to discourage the US from pressing too hard for democratic elections in Egypt. Mubarak cracks on the Muslim Brotherhood now and then to remind them who is the boss. Mubarak, it seems, collaborated with bin Laden to woo Islamic Jihad away from attacking Egypt, encouraging the “US-first” approach. Playing with the devil is not easy; Hosni has the required skills, but he is old. His son Gamal Mubarak will be a strong ruler, but the 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 could at any moment give way to overt support. Egypt retains its militaristic backbone: it continuously upgrades its army with the newest American weapons, flirts with Russia, and runs a protective racket for Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

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

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.

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?

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 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.