Al-Hayat, April 16, 2009

There is no more prominent sign to the new chapter in Arab collapses than the Israeli spitefulness at the struggle between a major Arab country, Egypt, and Hezbollah, which considers itself the head of the resistance in the region. This is a prominent chapter in the struggle between the legitimate regimes and the resistance movements. No matter what explanation each side uses to justify its stance, this spitefulness doesn't cost the Israelis anything.

The Israelis are sitting back, merely weeks after their vicious attack on the Gaza Strip, to watch a major legitimacy and the resistance party slide towards a confrontation that will only add more marginalization and divisiveness to the Arab reality, a confrontation that will deflect the Arabs' attention away from what Israel is plotting under the reign of the ultra-extremists.

Is it difficult to find an answer to this question: What will the Netanyahu government gain if, for example, Hamas's confidence wavers in the credibility of the Egyptian mediation between the Palestinian factions?

Or what will the Israelis gain if this mediation collapses to leave the scene open to more Palestinian divisions and more struggle over legitimacy between Fatah and Hamas?

Is it odder to uncover a network spying on Jordanian military positions for the Islamic Resistance Movement than to uncover an Israeli spy network in Lebanon, Egypt, or elsewhere?

Thus, this is a battle of legitimacies. This battle is hiding the issue of "eliminating" Palestine, and the continuous Israeli effort to swallow that cause along with the rights of the Palestinian people.

The Israeli efforts continue under the cover of a dense cloud of dust that hides all the common and uniting factors and causes in the region, so that the Israeli spitefulness can continue unabated against the governments, parties, and resistances of the Arab world.

But this dust could lead the Netanyahu government to avenging the results of the July 2006 war on Lebanon; it could exploit any attack on Israeli tourists in Egypt to wage a new war on Lebanon under the pretext of hunting and striking Hezbollah.

The arena and the pretext are both ready while the leadership of the Israeli army continues to insist that UNSCR 1701 is merely ink on paper and that the violations of this resolution come from the "smuggling of the weapons" to Hezbollah and its effort to rebuild its arsenal, and not from the Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace. The dark scenarios of the repercussions of the crisis between Egypt and Hezbollah are given further credence by the fact that the non-Arab regional parties are rearranging their cards to draw the map of their influence in the region with the Americans who are looking for an "exit plan" from Iraq and Afghanistan.

These factions, which are being called upon to help President Barack Obama plan a "safe" exit, are raising the level of their terms and conditions at the expense of Arab political decisions and at the expense of the role of major countries such as Egypt. Perhaps Cairo's concern about Iran's "fishing" in Arab waters is what pushed it to escalate the crisis with Hezbollah. Hamas's defense of Hezbollah and its "cell" which aroused the Egyptian security forces, will definitely not facilitate Egypt's mediation between Hamas and Fatah or the Egyptian effort to stop the division of Palestine into two or three Palestines.

More importantly, these developments will not facilitate reconciliation between Syria and Egypt, as the reconciliation demands were less complicated before the cell was uncovered.

Those who know the series of suspicions and silent crises between Cairo and Washington under President George Bush, who issued seasonal criticisms of Egypt concerning its human right record and the issue of the Copts, also know the channels which express the sensitivities of the Egyptian regime and the Egyptians in general towards anything that is linked to sects or religions. Thus the accusation leveled at the cell that it tried to "spread the Shi'i ideology" strikes the chord of Egyptian bitterness which grew steadily worse ever since the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006.

But the main source of this bitterness comes from any accusation that casts doubts over Cairo's nationalism in treating Arab crises or hints at "secret" [Egyptian] complicity with the Israelis or even with the Americans, who remained up until recently the main enemy challenged by the "defiance front" in the region.

While the supporters of the defiant front do not see any fault in Hezbollah acting to support Gaza and its resistance, even at the expense of Egyptian sovereignty, those categorized in the "moderate camp" find themselves being asked to produce proof of their patriotism and nationalism.

Some of those moderates are waiting for the moment of truth when the "defiants" find themselves forced to divert the struggle towards the major legitimacies while their own allies are negotiating with the Americans at the expense of both the resistance movements and those legitimacies. Thus, the bottom for the Arab collapses is much deeper than the bottom of the tunnels of Gaza.