Egypt Threatens To 'Retaliate' Against Israel

UNITED NATIONS — As diplomatic tensions between Egypt and Israel escalated yesterday, Jerusalem struggled to find the delicate balance between applying pressure to get better security cooperation from Cairo, and the need to keep Egyptian-Israeli relations from deteriorating further.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit of Egypt told a local television station on Monday that his country may "retaliate" diplomatically against what he perceived as Israeli lobbying in Washington against Cairo's interests. Such retaliation may include working against Israel's interests in African countries and elsewhere.

A Jerusalem aide to Prime Minister Olmert said yesterday that Israel does not lobby against Egypt on Capitol Hill. "Our friends in Washington are quite aware of our concerns," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he said Egypt had failed to take action to stop weapons and cash from being smuggled to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. "But we have no interest in worsening relations," he added.

Israel's former ambassador to Washington, Daniel Ayalon, said Egypt's allegations that Israel has been lobbying against it are untrue, and that Cairo may be conducting its current public campaign in an attempt to push Israel to start lobbying for the North African nation. "Israel does not lobby either for or against Egypt," he told The New York Sun yesterday. "It would be stupid for us to do so."

Recently, Congress placed restrictions on $100 million of Egypt's $2 billion in annual American assistance, conditioning the release of the funds on stronger Egyptian action against Gaza smuggling. Mr. Ayalon identified such legislators as Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat of California, as having had long concerns over the issue, but in Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, Israel's legendary power to affect Congress is seen as responsible for the legislation.

If Israelis "continue to push and affect U.S.-Egyptian relations and harm Egyptian interests, for sure Egypt will retaliate and will harm their interests," Mr. Abul Gheit said on state-run Egyptian television Monday. "We have claws capable of retaliating in all directions, and through diplomacy," he added. "Anyone familiar with the Egyptian mentality knows that Egypt will not be starved. Egypt has existed for 7,000 years, and it will exist for 7,000 years more." A Cairo Foreign Ministry official told the Ynet news Web site that Egypt can harm Israel's interests in South Africa and Nigeria, as well as other African and Asian countries, where it has influence. Egypt is capable of turning Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni "into a persona non grata in many countries, and otherwise harm Israel's diplomatic relations with those countries," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.

"It's not like they haven't been doing this already," Mr. Ayalon said. Israel believes that quite far from a new response to the latest diplomatic skirmish, Egypt has long led a campaign against it among poorer countries that are members of such international forums as the U.N. General Assembly and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. The latest diplomatic back-and-forth was ignited when Ms. Livni told the Knesset's Foreign Relations and Security Committee last week that Egypt is doing a "terrible" job at the border with Gaza, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, where weapons are being smuggled into the Hamas-controlled strip. She spoke after a videotape — which showed Egyptian soldiers mulling about while the smuggling was conducted nearby — was made available to Israeli and foreign press outlets.

Preventing a situation that would turn Gaza into a terrorist stronghold against Israel and Western-allied Arab countries is a "strategic" goal of Washington, Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority, and it is also in Cairo's interest, Mr. Olmert's aide said yesterday. Israel is "frustrated" by the Egyptian army's inability, or lack of motivation, to stop Hamas's drive to create such a stronghold, modeled after the Hezbollah's southern Lebanon situation. Egypt could do much more, he said, not only on the border but also by intercepting ships loaded with weapons coming from Syria and Lebanon that land on Egypt's Mediterranean shores.

Cairo officials complained that restrictions on the number of troops Egypt can station in Sinai are limiting its ability to act more robustly against the smugglers. The restrictions were imposed as part of the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. But Mr. Ayalon noted that 750 additional troops were allowed to enter the Sinai after Israel withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005. "Let's see them doing that first," he said. Appeasing Egypt's own Islamic forces, he added, may be part of the reason for Cairo's reluctance to do so.

"We want to encourage Egypt to do more," Mr. Olmert's aide added, "but we also don't want the relations to deteriorate. Egypt is a prominent Arab country, and maintaining relations with it is one of the fundamental pillars of our foreign policy."