Ofir Winter, a researcher at Israel’s top-tier Institute for National Security Studies, reports on some unprecedentedly positive messages about Israel in a ninth-grade Egyptian textbook. (Winter’s article is included here in the May 2016 issue of Strategic Assessment.)
Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979. Before that—specifically from 1948 to 1973—the two countries fought five wars (in three of them Egypt was joined by other Arab states). Since the peace treaty, with Egypt out of the picture, wars between Israel and Arab states have come to a stop, though Israel has had to cope with a great deal of terror.
The Israeli-Egyptian peace, however, has remained “cold.” While the treaty spoke of “foster[ing] mutual understanding and tolerance,” a 2011 Pew survey found 98% of Egyptians holding antisemitic sentiments. When Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood regime took power in Egypt in 2012, it appeared to many that the peace had collapsed for good and war was imminent.
Morsi, though, was deposed a year later by his then defense minister, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Under President el-Sisi’s government, Egypt has taken a notable turn toward moderation. Regarding Israel, that has meant tight cooperation in fighting ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula and Hamas in Gaza, the return of the Egyptian ambassador to Tel Aviv, and plans for Egypt to start importing Israeli natural gas.
As Ofir Winter notes, the textbook in question, which is called The Geography of the Arab World and the History of Modern Egypt,
blends old and new messages…. As in the older textbooks, Mandate-era [i.e., pre-statehood] Israel is cast historically and ethically as land that was stolen from the Arab residents of Palestine. Zionism is described as a threatening colonialist movement born in sin rather than as a movement expressing legitimate national aspirations.
So much for the old. But when it comes to the new, the textbook has features that reflect the moderating trend under el-Sisi and haven’t been seen so far in Egyptian education.
First, the new textbook is much more supportive of the peace with Israel than previous textbooks. It stresses the economic value of peace “as a necessary precondition for Egypt’s stability, development, and material prosperity.” At the end of the class discussion on the subject, pupils are asked to “memorize the ‘provisions of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel,’ and enumerate the ‘advantages of peace for Egypt and the Arab states’”—no less. CONTINUE AT SITE
