Apologists for the Bush administration's foreign policy toward Saudi Arabia claimed that "despite all their shortcomings" Saudi Arabia was a willing partner in the fight against the mutual threat represented by al-Qaida.
WILL THE Muslim Brotherhood be a willing partner in the democratization of Egypt and the Arab world at large? The double-talk of its leaders does not bode well for the future. Their promises at the beginning of the uprising in Egypt to run only for 35% of the parliament seats look today like a farcical joke. Ibrahim Munir, a spokesman for the Brotherhood, has denied that the group has given any assurances to Washington about respecting the agreement with Israel.
Essam al-Erian, deputy head of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, declared that the Brotherhood is "not in a position to give assurances."
Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, who met recently with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh during the latter's visit to Cairo, declared that the "Brotherhood has always embraced issues of liberation, foremost the Palestinian issue," and that Hamas has served as a role model to the Brotherhood. Haniyeh described Hamas as the "jihadi movement of the Brotherhood with a Palestinian face" and claimed his visit to the Brotherhood center would confuse and frighten "the Israeli entity."
In Israel, too, some respected voices have proposed talking to Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the name of realpolitik. The new Israeli ambassador to Cairo has been instructed to look for contacts with the Brotherhood leaders.
In the past Israel has been accused of "inventing" Hamas and supporting its activities. In fact, as far back as the 1970s Israeli authorities permitted Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood factions in Gaza and the West Bank to act openly on the religious, social and economic level [so-called da'wa activities] as they did not engage at that time in terrorism like their secular comrades.
The Israeli political and military establishment did not take seriously the declarations of the then-Muslim Brotherhood leaders that they were preparing a new generation of young jihadi fighters for the liberation of Palestine for the purpose of creating an Islamic state.
Only in 1985 had it become clear that the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood was preparing for "armed struggle," but the arrest of its leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin did not stop the militarization process which led to the metamorphosis of the movement in the Hamas terrorist organization at the opening of the first intifada in 1987.
Hamas, together with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad [another faction of the Muslim Brotherhood which became a proxy of the Tehran regime] was responsible for the waves of suicide bombings in the mid- 1990s, in the aftermath of the Oslo peace agreement. That sabotaged the sensitive relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, and during the second bloody intifada derailed the chances for a negotiated solution.
The Brotherhood victory in Egypt presents a serious dilemma indeed for US, European and Israeli leaders alike. They probably have no alternative but to engage with the new Islamist leaders who will control the leading Arab country and the less important ones.
The question is whether they will be able to challenge the Brotherhood's Islamist radical religious worldview and autocratic tendencies as it attempts to impose them on the Arab peoples and lead the region to an obscurantist era, in sharp conflict with Western democratic and liberal values.
