Saturday evening Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Israel’s top military and intelligence brass into an emergency session to evaluate the chaotic situation engulfing their neighbor to the west, and its ramifications for relations with the Jewish State.
Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak instructed government officials not to comment on events along the Nile – something nearly unheard of in Israel, where politicos from senior ministers down to second assistant aides regularly update the radio news-talk programs and websites to blab all, including goings-on at closed-door meetings – sometimes before the meetings even conclude.
The last week of mass riots, killings by Egyptian security forces, looting and violence that erupted in Cairo and spread like a hot desert wind across cities throughout Egypt have Israeli officials cautiously watching from the sidelines, and weighing their diplomatic and military options if the 30-year Mubarak regime falls.
Saturday evening Defense Minister Ehud Barak called Israel’s top military and intelligence brass into an emergency session to evaluate the chaotic situation engulfing their neighbor to the west, and its ramifications for relations with the Jewish State.
Outgoing Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, incoming Military Intelligence head Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi, incoming Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet internal security) head Yuval Diskin were among those who convened in the underground headquarters of the “Kiriya,” the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv.
Pulling together such an assemblage of security heads at a moments notice clearly signals Israel’s fears that the closest, and one of the largest, and best-equipped and trained armies in the Arab world may end up with hostile hands on the trigger.
Officials and the Israeli public alike are concerned that the worst-case scenario: an Islamist takeover and abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel, rather than some hoped-for democratic “Cairo Spring.”
There have been no reports that the IDF has ratcheted up its alert status.
But to be on the safe side, Israel’s Foreign Ministry hurriedly flew the families of diplomatic personnel out of Cairo, along with dozens of other Israeli nationals visiting Egypt, fearing for their safety.
However, Foreign Ministry officials said Saturday evening that Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon and other diplomats were safe and would stay on.
“There is no need to flee,” one official told The Jerusalem Post newspaper. “This is not an option. There are no attacks on our envoys, or on other embassies. The other embassies are also not evacuating their personnel,” the official said.
Despite decades of a “cold peace,” the Israeli Embassy and consular services have continued their operations in Cairo, and maintained solid diplomatic ties with Egyptian counterparts.
But despite the ministry’s reassuring comments, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was taking no chances and sent his wife and sons abroad, an ill omen for the future of the regime.
In Tel Aviv, as well as in the capital, Jerusalem, Mubarak’s move to dismiss his government and install military officials into top posts is keeping the lights burning late into the night at the Prime Minister’s Office as well as at the Foreign Ministry.
On Saturday, Mubarak tapped Egyptian General Intelligence Services chief Omar Suleiman to be his second-in-command – the first time Mubarak has taken such a move since he took the reins of power after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Suleiman is intimately familiar with Israel’s leadership and security stance from countless meetings held in Cairo, Jerusalem and with the Palestinians over the years, ostensibly to advance the peace process.
But Suleiman also knows Israel from the battlefield, having fought in both the 1967 Six Day War, and in 1973 Yom Kippur War, when a surprise attack on Israel mauled IDF forces stationed across the Suez Canal in the Sinai.
The 82-year-old Mubarak, who was rumored to have undergone cancer treatments in Europe, is potentially looking at the end of his reign, as well as the end of an era in Egypt, a prospect that has Israel on sharp alert.
But at the same time Israeli officials were meeting in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to gauge the spiraling events in Cairo, closer to home, sparks from the conflagration in Egypt found dry tinder just south of Tel Aviv in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Jaffa.
Saturday night, upwards of a thousand Arab-Israeli protesters and Jewish supporters held a rally in support of the demonstrations in Egypt, and, more ominously, against Israel: protesters waved Egyptian and Palestinian flags and shouted “we’ll liberate Jaffa with blood,” according to the Israeli Ynet daily.
“Only through Intifada and mutiny can revolutions be achieved,” an Arab demonstrator said. “Jaffa is just like Cairo for us.”
Such stark irredentist sentiments coming from Israel’s own citizens pose a fast-growing concern for Israeli security officials, as the cries of Arabs calling for revolution echo through the street and souks of Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen.
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