Western leaders, preoccupied with Libya, seem blithely unconcerned with what is happening in neighboring Egypt, content to accept Egyptian officials’ repeated pledges that of course the treaty with Israel will be preserved. But despite all those comforting promises, there are grounds for serious concern that the new regime in Cairo may end up sparking the first Egyptian-Israeli war in four decades.

In today’s Jerusalem Post, veteran Middle East analyst Barry Rubin lays out his reasons for this fear. I have a different reason: the implications of what’s been happening with Egypt’s natural gas pipeline to Israel.

Last week, the pipeline was shut down by the third terror attack in three months. The first took place amid the chaos of revolution, six days before Hosni Mubarak’s February 11 resignation; it closed the pipeline for almost six weeks. The second occurred on March 27, under the new government, and did no damage only because the bombs failed to detonate. The third is expected to shut the pipeline for another four to six weeks.

Egyptian officials disclaimed all responsibility, and contractually, they’re correct. The contract defines terror attacks as force majeure for which Egypt isn’t liable. Yet protecting the pipeline is hardly mission impossible; the proof is that Mubarak’s government did it. In the first three years after the gas began flowing in 2008, not a single terror attack disrupted the supply.

The difference is that Mubarak deemed protecting the pipeline a priority and devoted the necessary resources to doing so. The new government apparently doesn’t care. Hence even after the two previous terror attacks, it saw no need to beef up the pipeline’s lax security.

Clearly, the pipeline isn’t a casus belli. The interrupted gas supply is an expensive nuisance (since Israel must replace it with pricier substitutes), not an existential threat.

But a government so lackadaisical about protecting the pipeline might well prove equally lackadaisical about protecting its 250-kilometer-long border with Israel. And that would be an existential threat.

Terrorists have long sought to attack Israel from Sinai, but until now, with limited success: Mubarak kept the peace. But should terrorist organizations conclude that the new government is indifferent to border security, attacks will proliferate. And enough successful attacks could ultimately force Israel into a military response.

Precisely because most Egyptians loathe the peace with Israel–a recent poll found that 54% want to abrogate the treaty, while only 36% want to preserve it–the new government will be tempted to treat “protecting Israel” as a low priority. That means Israel’s planned fence along the once-peaceful border is suddenly high-priority.

But it also means that if Western leaders want to prevent a war, they should make it clear now that preserving the peace in reality, rather than merely on paper, is a prerequisite for Western support.

This Independence Day, there is at least one country that Israel can show gratitude to for making pro-Israel positions both respectable and electable.

The people of Canada gave Israel a lovely Independence Day gift last week when they resoundingly reelected Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The vote, of course, had nothing to do with Israel: Harper’s Conservative Party won its first absolute parliamentary majority of his three terms in office mainly due to his economic stewardship, under which Canada suffered far less from the global economic crisis than most other Western countries. Nevertheless, it is good news for Israel, for two reasons.

The first is that Harper is currently one of Israel’s best friends worldwide. Under his leadership, Canada has repeatedly cast the sole vote against anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Human Rights Council – as in a 2009 vote condemning Israel’s operation in Gaza, or a 2007 vote placing Israel’s “human rights violations” permanently on the council’s agenda (European countries, by contrast, abstained on the former and supported the latter).

Harper made Canada the first country, preceding even Israel itself, to announce a boycott of the UN’s Durban II conference on racism in 2009 on the grounds that it was set to be an anti-Israel hate fest. And he has worked to end Canadian government funding for anti-Israel organizations: Last year, for instance, his government defunded several Canadian groups involved in anti-Israel activity; he also slashed Canada’s contribution to UNRWA, the UN organization founded to prevent the resettlement of Palestinian refugees so that the ongoing refugee crisis could continue to feed anti-Israel sentiment.

But perhaps even more important than Harper’s specific actions is the degree to which he has changed attitudes toward Israel within his country.

Before he took office, Canada’s policy on Israel was identical to Europe’s – meaning lots of lip service about being “a friend of Israel” while in practice opposing it in every international forum and lavishly funding its enemies. Shortly after the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000, for instance, Canada voted for a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Israel for the violence, without a word of blame for the Palestinians.

Moreover, Canada has been a hotbed of anti-Israel boycott/divestment/sanctions activity. In 2006, for instance, the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) voted to boycott Israel until it accepts a Palestinian “right of return” – or in other words, agrees to commit suicide.

Thus one would, at least, have expected Harper’s pro-Israel stance to remain strictly confined to his own party. But in fact, while both main opposition parties continue to advocate markedly less pro-Israel policies than Harper does, change has begun seeping into their ranks as well.

This became glaringly evident last year, when the provincial legislature of Ontario – Canada’s largest province – voted unanimously to condemn Israel Apartheid Week because it “serves to incite hatred against Israel, a democratic state that respects the rule of law and human rights, and … diminishes the suffering of those who were victims of a true apartheid regime in South Africa.” The resolution, naturally, was introduced by a member of Harper’s Conservative Party. But the legislature was dominated at the time by the opposition Liberal Party, which had 71 seats compared to the Conservatives’ 24. Thus it could not have passed at all, much less unanimously, had pro-Israel sentiment not spread beyond Harper’s party.

Nor can the vote be dismissed as a matter of electoral necessity, as pro-Israel votes are for, say, New York politicians: Not only is Ontario’s Muslim population roughly double its Jewish population, but powerful vote-getting machines like the local CUPE chapter – Ontario’s largest labor union – were firmly in the anti-Israel camp.

And that is precisely the point: In the few short years since he entered the Prime Minister’s Office in 2006, Harper has managed to make being pro-Israel politically respectable in Canada – so respectable that politicians on both sides of the political fence are willing to take pro-Israel positions even when powerful interest groups oppose them. That message of respectability was underscored by Harper’s resounding victory this week. Just seven months ago, Canada’s chattering classes were up in arms over the “humiliating rejection” of the country’s bid for a UN Security Council seat, which was attributed in part to the fact that Harper’s pro-Israel policy cost him the support of Muslim countries. But that did not stop voters from reelecting him with an even bigger majority last week.

In world where anti-Israel positions are increasingly de rigueur for aspiring politicians, it is no mean feat to have succeeded in making pro-Israel positions both respectable and electable. So thank you, Stephen Harper. And best of luck to you and your country in your new term.

The international response to the Fatah-Hamas unity deal provides yet another example of a troubling development. Alone among the nations, Israel is increasingly denied the protections of the laws of war.

Thus, for instance, the West denounces Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders even as it correctly deems America’s targeted killing of Al-Qaida’s leader perfectly legitimate (a double standard skewered by Alan Dershowitz this week).

Now the same double standard is being applied to Israel’s suspension of fund transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. and Europe have both demanded that Israel resume the transfers. Even the usually sensible Tony Blair, the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, echoed this demand. “The money is Palestinian money so it must be transferred,” Blair told Haaretz. “That is a Quartet position. Hillary Clinton made the same point.”

The money is indeed Palestinian: customs duties that, under a 1994 agreement, Israel collects on the PA’s behalf at its ports to spare importers the hassle of dealing with two separate customs offices. But under the laws of war, this fact is totally irrelevant.

The laws of war permit a country at war to freeze enemy assets in its territory lest they be used to finance the enemy’s campaign. And all countries do so. For instance, the U.S. and other NATO countries now bombing Libya have all frozen Libyan government assets.

No reasonable person would deny that Israel is at war with Hamas. Missiles are routinely fired at Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the Islamist organization still refuses to recognize Israel’s existence. Contrary to Washington’s wishful thinking, the Hamas-Fatah accord hasn’t softened this position, as senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar made clear on the very day it was signed. According to the Jerusalem Post, he told Al Jazeera that his organization “will never recognize Israel,” as Palestinians reject “the rule of Poles and Ethiopians in their land.”

Nor can Hamas be part of a new PA government without benefiting from PA funds. No matter what mechanisms are created to prevent direct transfers from the PA to Hamas, money is fungible. The very fact that the PA will now finance governmental outlays in Gaza for which Hamas previously had to foot the bill frees up funds for Hamas’s war on Israel.

Thus the moment the deal was signed to bring Hamas into the PA government, Israel was entirely justified under the laws of war in freezing fund transfers to the PA. Indeed, none of the Western countries now sanctimoniously protesting the freeze would hesitate a moment to freeze the assets of any government that included a terrorist organization committed to their own destruction.

As far as the West is concerned, though, the laws of war don’t apply to Israel. Unlike other nations, it has no right to take reasonable, legal steps in its own defense. The West may preach equality before the law, but it falls back Orwell’s definition of equality: Some countries are clearly more equal than others.

Do pro-Palestinian activists actually care a whit about ordinary Palestinians? An implicit acknowledgement that the answer is “no” came from a surprising source this week: Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, herself a leading pro-Palestinian crusader.

Hass’s anti-Israel rhetoric is up there with the best of them (she describes Gaza, for instance, as “the world’s largest prison camp” and Israel as “crazy”). But unlike many of her fellow activists, she has actually lived among the Palestinians for years: first in Gaza, and currently in Ramallah. So she sees the results of Palestinian, Israeli and international policy firsthand, and has drawn an unusual conclusion: Even though Palestinians have every right to “defend themselves … by force of arms,” launching Qassam rockets at Israel from Gaza does nothing to further Palestinian independence; it merely supplies Israel with “pretexts” for counterstrikes in which innocent Palestinians are maimed and killed.

After all, the rockets are usually fired from the heart of Palestinian population centers (something Hass neglected to mention, preferring to imply that Israel targets civilians deliberately). That makes civilian casualties from Israeli counterstrikes almost inevitable. Just this week for instance, an errant Israeli shell killed four Palestinian civilians; the target was a group of terrorists launching mortars at Israel “from a grove just beyond our house,” as the brother of one of those killed told the New York Times.

Since the cost of the rocket fire far outweighs its benefits, Hass argued, anyone who cares about real live Palestinians should be denouncing it in an effort to pressure Hamas and other terrorist organizations to stop it. Instead, she charged, pro-Palestinian activists have given it tacit consent:

In the binary thinking of those who oppose the Israeli occupation (Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners), public criticism of the tactics used in the struggle of an occupied and dispossessed people is taboo. It is as if criticism would create symmetry between the attacker and the attacked. To a large extent, this taboo has been broken with regard to the Palestinian Authority: Many opponents of the occupation have no qualms about portraying the PA as a collaborator, or at least as the captive of its senior officials’ private interests. But when it comes to Hamas’ use of arms, silence falls.

She therefore ended her column with a challenge:

So for all those who demonstrated in support of the Gazans when they were trapped under Israeli fire, all those planners of past and future flotillas, this is your moment to raise your voices and say clearly: The Qassams merely feed Israel’s madness. It is not the Qassams that will ensure the Palestinians, both in and out of Gaza, a life of dignity. It is not the Qassams that will topple the Israeli walls around the world’s largest prison camp.

But will other pro-Palestinian activists take her up? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

It’s hard to argue with the Israeli diplomat who called Richard Falk, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestinian rights who accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” an “embarrassment to the United Nations” yesterday. But the problem isn’t that Falk lies, or even that he does so with the UN’s imprimatur. The real problem is the larger trend he represents: The self-proclaimed “human rights community” increasingly treats minor issues as indistinguishable from major crimes.

What enraged Aharon Leshno Yaar was Falk’s demonstrably false claim that Israel practices ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem. The Arab population of Jerusalem quadrupled between1967 (when Israel annexed East Jerusalem) and 2008, from 68,600 to 268,600, while the city’s Jewish population rose by a factor of 2.5. Consequently, Arabs now constitute 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population, up from 26 percent in 1967. Since ethnic cleansing is normally meant to reduce the target population, if Israel were actually attempting such cleansing, it is surely the most incompetent ethnic cleanser in human history.

But to Falk, the fact that Jews build houses in East Jerusalem at all, along with evictions of Palestinian tenants of Jewish-owned buildings for nonpayment of rent, also constitutes “ethnic cleansing” — and never mind that the city’s Palestinian population continues to grow in both absolute and proportional terms.

By defining “ethnic cleansing” so broadly as to even include tenant evictions, Falk is essentially equating such evictions to events like the Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serbs massacred more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, and demanding that the world be equally outraged by both. But humans have a limited capacity for outrage, and the international community has a limited capacity to intervene. Thus demanding international intervention in cases like this actually reduces the likelihood of intervention in genuine cases of ethnic cleansing like Srebrenica — i.e., in precisely those cases where the victims most need help.

Granted, Falk is widely seen as a crackpot outside the UN; even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had to rebuke his promotion of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But he is far from unique. In 2005, for instance, the International Association of Genocide Scholars split because European scholars objected to the Americans’ insistence that the term “genocide” retain some connection to its original meaning of mass murder. The European breakaways, as the Forward noted last month, define genocide so broadly as to see “genocide victims everywhere, from the Aborigines in Australia to the Albanians uprooted from Kosovo” — including, naturally, “the expulsion and killing of Arabs in Palestine during Israel’s War of Independence.”

That, frankly, is ridiculous. Wars, in which both sides fight, always entail casualties, but every war isn’t genocide. Indeed, the Palestinian death toll in 1948 was extremely low — an estimated 2,800-4,000 (compared to Israel’s 6,400). Second, the flight of refugees, or even their expulsion, is not equivalent to murder. Refugees who flee or are expelled are still alive. Genocide victims aren’t.

But this warped definition definitely isn’t harmless. When crimes like genocide or ethnic cleansing are defined too broadly, people lose the ability to distinguish real evil from minor offenses. When everything is “genocide,” nothing is; the world will simply shut its ears to the cacophony of claims arising from all sides, unable to distinguish the important from the trivial. And then, the true victims will be slaughtered with impunity as the world stands idly by.

A Palestinian father prevented his son from becoming a terrorist by giving him up to Israel; the son subsequently became a combat soldier. Last week, Israel repaid the father’s brave actions by denying his residency application.
A Palestinian whose adult son is an Israeli citizen was denied permanent residency last week. He’s hardly the first Palestinian to have his residency application rejected, and there are good reasons for Israel’s stringent policy on this matter. But Adel Hussein is no ordinary applicant.

Hussein’s story first came to light when he, his ex-wife and their son told it to The New York Times in 2003. It began simply enough: Working in Israel in the 1970s, he met and married a Jewish woman. They later moved to Hussein’s West Bank hometown of Nur Shams, where they raised their only son, Muhammad.

During the wave of post-Oslo terror in the 1990s, Hussein urged his son to steer clear of terrorist organizations. But one day in 1998, 16-year-old Muhammad came home wearing a terrorist group’s insignia.

At that point, Hussein made an extraordinary decision: rather than let his son become a killer, he would send him and his mother away – back to Israel. When his wife refused to leave, he forced her hand by divorcing her. “I saw my son deteriorating,” he told the Times. “I have only one son. I have nothing else.”

So Muhammad, now known as Yossi Peretz, finished high school in Israel, did his army service and even volunteered for a combat unit, where he fought during the height of the second intifada. His father, according to Yossi, supported that choice and urged him to serve his new country faithfully.

But when the story became known in Nur Shams, blowback was inevitable: Hussein’s house was shot at, torched and plastered with graffiti calling him a Jew. Fearing for his life, he fled to Israel. The government, after a court battle, eventually acknowledged that his life was truly in danger and granted him temporary residency. The one-year visa was subsequently renewed annually.

Now, Hussein is seeking permanent residency. But the Interior Ministry says it has no power to grant his request, because he doesn’t meet the stringent requirements for family reunification set down by law.

Strict limits on Palestinian immigration are eminently reasonable in principle. The current restrictions, instituted in 2003, were prompted by the discovery that several Palestinians granted residency under the old, relatively liberal “family reunification” policy had exploited their visas to commit deadly terror attacks. Since Israel was fighting a hot war with the Palestinians at that time, it made sense to close this loophole by imposing sweeping immigration restrictions on “enemy nationals,” just as other democracies do in wartime.

Nor did the justification for stringent restrictions lapse after the fighting died down. No country has an obligation to commit national suicide, which is what Israel would be doing by accepting large numbers of Palestinian immigrants hostile to the very idea of a Jewish state. That’s why all Israeli governments have rejected the notion of a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees under a peace deal. But there’s no sense in rejecting a negotiated “right of return” if you’re going to allow it anyway under the guise of “family reunification.” And in the 10 years of lax policy instituted by Yitzhak Rabin after the 1993 Oslo Accord, that is very much what happened: an estimated 140,000 Palestinians moved to Israel under this pretext (as the Attorney General’s Office told the Knesset in 2003).

Nevertheless, there’s something terribly wrong with a policy so stringent that it can’t make exceptions for those rare individuals who have chosen to cast their lot with the Jewish people. And that, effectively, is what Adel Hussein did.

There’s no telling how many Jewish lives were spared because he kept his son from becoming a terrorist, even at the wrenching cost of giving him up. There’s also no telling how many Jewish lives were saved by the three years his son spent instead on the front lines of Israel’s defense.

But there’s one life that Hussein incontrovertibly restored to the Jewish people: his son’s. All he had to do was nothing, and Muhammad would have been irretrievably lost: He would have gone ahead and joined a terrorist organization, presumably served it as loyally as he did the IDF, killed untold numbers of Jews, and never set foot in Israel again unless caught and sent to jail.

Instead, Hussein gave up everything he had – his wife, his son, his home – to restore Muhammad/Yossi to the Jewish people. He didn’t do it for love of Israel, but for love of his son: As he said, he didn’t want his son to be a killer. Yet that in itself is an extraordinary tribute. Unlike so many of the West’s enlightened moral relativists, Adel Hussein understood that there’s a fundamental difference between terrorist organizations and the IDF: that the former are murderers, while the latter fights in justified defense of its country and people. Now, all he wants in exchange is to be able to live out his declining years near his son without fear of deportation.

There’s a very practical reason why Israel should acquiesce: A country that makes a habit of betraying its allies rather than rewarding them will soon have no allies left. Israel has already betrayed too many allies, from its abandonment of the South Lebanon Army to its scandalous neglect of the Druze community, and this habit urgently needs to be broken.

But there’s also a moral reason: A country that has lost its ability to feel gratitude has lost its soul. If there’s truly no leeway for exceptions in the law (which I doubt), then it needs to be amended – because a law that makes it impossible to help those who help us is an abomination.

It would cost Israel very little to say “thank you” to Adel Hussein in the one currency he wants. There’s no excuse whatsoever for not doing it.

The writer is a journalist and commentator.

Aside from avoiding outrageous gaffes, is there anything Israel can do to improve its miserable public relations? The BBC poll Alana cited this week, which once again showed Israel to be one of the world’s least-popular countries, actually points the way: Israel must start making a long-term investment in cultivating ties with Russia, China, and India.

Clearly, Jerusalem shouldn’t delude itself that it can change the hostile policies of these countries’ current governments. Indeed, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s effort to “reset” Israel’s relations with Moscow has failed spectacularly; Russia’s decision to sell cruise missiles to Syria is merely the latest example.

But as the unrest now sweeping the Arab world amply proves, authoritarian governments don’t last forever. Someday, the autocratic regimes in Russia and China will fall, and Israel must prepare for that day now by cultivating ties with the Russian and Chinese peoples — not merely because both countries are superpowers, but because, as the poll showed, they are actually Israel’s best prospects for future allies.

According to the poll, the countries with “the most positive view of Israel were the United States, Russia, Ghana, and China.” At first glance, that is shocking. One would expect Israel to draw the most support from other Western democracies, not the Russian and Chinese autocracies. But in reality, it’s eminently natural.

In Russia’s case, a million Russian-speakers have immigrated to Israel since 1991, one-seventh of Israel’s total population, and the strong network of cultural and interpersonal ties they have created provides a natural springboard on which to build. The two countries also share a common threat: Islamic terrorism.

In China’s case, both countries are products of ancient civilizations that place a strong emphasis on education and family ties. Indeed, Chinese curiosity about Judaism has been surging; it shouldn’t be hard to translate that into interest in Israel. Unfortunately, Israel has yet to reciprocate this interest; it remains focused almost exclusively on the West.

As for India, it was one of the few countries in the poll where positive views of Israel outweighed negative ones. The absolute numbers (21 percent positive, 18 percent negative) were lower than in Russia or China, but that merely means more Indians are still undecided.

Despite its lack of a Security Council seat, India is clearly one of the world’s up-and-coming powers by dint of sheer size. Like Israel, it faces a major security threat from Islamic terror; like Israel, it is proud of its dual identity as both an ancient civilization and a flourishing modern democracy. For historical reasons, it was traditionally in the pro-Arab camp, but that has begun changing in recent years. Yet while Israel has invested some effort in improving ties with India, it has not invested nearly enough.

The silver lining in the BBC poll is that despite Israel’s current grim international situation, it potentially has some powerful natural allies down the road. But to actualize this potential, Israel must begin making the necessary investments now. Come the Russian and Chinese revolutions, it will already be too late.

For the first time in two years, Kadima is ahead of Likud in opinion polls and in a bid to increase his popularity, Netanyahu will take a bold diplomatic step. But the PM is failing to recognize what his constituents really want and why they elected him.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is reportedly preparing a new diplomatic initiative. In part, that’s a response to growing international pressure. But according to Hebrew media reports, it’s also a response to his recent plunge in the polls: Netanyahu allegedly hopes a bold diplomatic move will revive his popularity.

Certainly, media pundits have been telling him for two years now that such a move is his only hope of winning public affection. But it’s a pity he doesn’t listen a bit less to the media and a bit more to his constituents, because his voters are saying something very different. What upsets them isn’t his failure to advance the “peace process” – something they didn’t elect him to do and for which they largely don’t blame him – but his failure to deliver on what they did elect him to do: improve life for ordinary Israelis.

Yesterday Alana wrote that Israel’s government urgently needs to improve its public relations. That’s just become a lot more urgent, and the first step is obvious: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should fire his defense minister immediately.

In an interview in today’s Wall Street Journal, Ehud Barak announced that Israel might ask Washington for another $20 billion in aid due to the unrest now sweeping the region. As an Israeli, I’m cringing in shame.

The U.S. currently faces a massive deficit that threatens the country’s very future, and Congress is slashing ruthlessly in an effort to curb it. Almost nothing has been spared the ax — with one glaring exception: a sweeping majority of Congress still opposes any cut to the annual $3 billion in American aid to Israel, because at a time when Israel is facing an unprecedented international delegitimization campaign, Congress doesn’t want to do anything that might imply faltering support for America’s longtime ally.

It’s an extraordinarily generous gesture, and as I’ve written elsewhere, the only proper response would be for Netanyahu to do what he did during his first term as prime minister 15 years ago: announce a phased, multi-year cutback in aid at a joint session of Congress. Precisely because it is such a tangible expression of American support, American aid sends an important message to Israel’s enemies; thus, eliminating it altogether might be unwise. But Israel’s economy is certainly strong enough to cope with a cutback, and if it were an Israeli initiative, it wouldn’t imply faltering American support. On the contrary, it would strengthen the relationship by showing that it’s not a one-way street, that Israel is also sensitive to America’s needs.

Instead, as if he were blind, deaf, and dumb to everything that’s happened in America over the past few years, Barak declared that he wants to seek an increase in aid. As if America were nothing but a cash cow, with no urgent monetary needs of its own. This is a public-relations disaster, one guaranteed to alienate even Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress unless Netanyahu makes it immediately and unequivocally clear that his defense minister’s proposal is unacceptable.

But it’s also a strategic disaster. Israel does not have so many allies that it can afford to alienate its best and most reliable friend. And someone so utterly lacking in strategic sense as to be incapable of grasping that the goodwill of Congress and the American public is worth far more than $20 billion in aid has no business being defense minister of any country, much less one as genuinely threatened as Israel.

If the American Jewish community yells loudly enough, Netanyahu will listen. So now it’s time to start yelling. Israel’s friends must push him to engage in damage control before it’s too late.

Yesterday, I discussed Israel’s reasons for fearing that the current Arab revolutions could produce even worse regimes. But what if, against all odds, genuine Arab democracies do emerge? In the long run, that’s clearly good for Israel. But in the short run, all signs indicate that the first casualty of Arab democracy may well be Egypt’s peace with Israel — because so far, Egypt’s opposition has been unanimous in demanding that the treaty be either scrapped entirely or “renegotiated” out of existence.

As Jonathan noted, even Ayman Nour, who heads a liberal, secular, democratic party, is demanding the treaty’s renegotiation; that demand has been widely echoed. The veteran secular opposition group Kifaya has long demanded its abrogation, as has the Muslim Brotherhood, which reiterated this just last month. Presidential contender Mohammed ElBaradei effectively conditioned the treaty’s continuance on establishment of a Palestinian state — an impossible demand given that the Palestinians still refuse even to sit in the same room with Israeli negotiators. And so forth.

And while “renegotiating” the treaty may sound less threatening than scrapping it altogether, it isn’t. For the two items most Egyptians want to renegotiate are precisely those that made the treaty viable for Israel: one essential to its economic security, and one to its physical security.

Let’s start with the less important one: Egypt supplies almost all of Israel’s oil and natural gas, and this is highly unpopular. Israel’s own recently discovered reserves can eventually replace Egyptian natural gas. But for oil, Israel has no obvious alternative supplier: No other regional producer will sell to it, while buying through middlemen or distant suppliers like Russia is both more expensive and less reliable, with potentially severe economic consequences. Hence Israel never would have ceded Sinai’s oilfields without promise of a steady Egyptian supply.

But energy is minor compared to Egyptians’ other gripe with the treaty: the demilitarization of Sinai, on which Israel’s defense depends. From northern Sinai, Egyptian tanks could reach Tel Aviv or Jerusalem in a few hours — not nearly enough time for Israel to mobilize its reserves. And since Israel’s standing army is minuscule compared with Egypt’s, its entire defense strategy depends on mobilizing the reserves.

If Egyptian forces are allowed to mass in northern Sinai once again, Israel will be right back where it was pre-1967: facing military annihilation at any moment. Hence Israel would never have ceded Sinai without the demilitarization agreement.

Moreover, Egypt’s army is incomparably better equipped now, after three decades of massive American aid, than it was during the last Israeli-Egyptian war. And it still trains almost exclusively for war against Israel.

“Renegotiation” is thus a euphemism for gutting the treaty of everything that made it viable for Israel. As such, it’s worse than abrogation, since for that, Egypt would be blamed. But if Israel refused to amend the treaty, a world chronically unsympathetic to its security needs would blame it for failing to support Egypt’s fledgling democracy.

Still, would a democratic Egypt really declare war on Israel? Given how rampant anti-Israel sentiment is there, it’s hardly inconceivable. After all, a democratic government must satisfy its voters, yet it will be hard-pressed to produce growth and jobs quickly enough to do so. Playing the anti-Israel card may thus strike any government as the only solution.