{"id":58677,"date":"2018-01-13T17:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-13T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=58677"},"modified":"2018-01-08T15:50:46","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T13:50:46","slug":"12-00-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=58677","title":{"rendered":"Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders\u2019 Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders\u2019 Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

David D. Kirkpatrick<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Arab governments publicly condemned President Trump\u2019s statement on Jerusalem but criticism in state-owned and pro-government media across the Arab world was muted.CreditAbir Sultan\/European Pressphoto Agency<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer quietly placed phone calls to the hosts of several influential talk shows in Egypt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLike all our Arab brothers,\u201d Egypt would denounce the decision in public, the officer, Capt. Ashraf al-Kholi, told the hosts.<\/span><\/p>\n

But strife with Israel was not in Egypt\u2019s national interest, Captain Kholi said. He told the hosts that instead of condemning the decision, they should persuade their viewers to accept it. Palestinians, he suggested, should content themselves with the dreary West Bank town that currently houses the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow is Jerusalem different from Ramallah, really?\u201d Captain Kholi asked repeatedly in four audio recordings of his telephone calls obtained by The New York Times.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cExactly that,\u201d agreed one host, Azmi Megahed, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording.<\/span><\/p>\n

For decades, powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have publicly criticized Israel\u2019s treatment of the Palestinians, while privately acquiescing to Israel\u2019s continued occupation of territory the Palestinians claim as their homeland.<\/span><\/p>\n

But now a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel \u2014 producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s decision broke with a central premise of 50 years of American-sponsored peace talks, defied decades of Arab demands that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state, and stoked fears of a violent backlash across the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arab governments, mindful of the popular sympathy for the Palestinian cause, rushed to publicly condemn it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Egyptian state media reported that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had personally protested to Mr. Trump. Egyptian religious leaders close to the government refused to meet with Vice President Mike Pence, and Egypt submitted a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a reversal of Mr. Trump\u2019s decision. (The United States vetoed the resolution, although the General Assembly adopted a similar one, over American objections, days later.)<\/span><\/p>\n

King Salman of Saudi Arabia, arguably the most influential Arab state, also publicly denounced Mr. Trump\u2019s decision.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank to protest President Trump\u2019s move on Jerusalem, an Egyptian intelligence officer was quietly working to persuade Egyptians to accept the decision. \/ CreditShadi Hatem\/European Pressphoto Agency<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, though, the kingdom had already quietly signaled its acquiescence or even tacit approval of the Israeli claim to Jerusalem. Days before Mr. Trump\u2019s announcement, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, privately urged the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept a radically curtailed vision of statehood without a capital in East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian, Arab and European officials who have heard Mr. Abbas\u2019s version of events.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia publicly disputed those reports.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hosts Captain Kholi called all heeded his advice, and most other voices in the state-owned and pro-government news media across the Arab world were also strikingly muted, even unemotional, about the status of Jerusalem. Such a response would have been all but unthinkable even a decade ago, much less during the period between 1948 and 1973, when Egypt and its Arab allies fought three wars against Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shibley Telhami, a scholar of the region at the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution, called the Arab states\u2019 acceptance of the decision \u201ctransformational.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it would have happened a decade ago, because Arab leaders would have made clear they wouldn\u2019t live with it,\u201d he said. Instead, he said, preoccupied by concerns about their own stability, the Arab leaders signaled that \u2014 while they may not like the decision \u2014 they \u201cwill find a way to work with it,\u201d and \u201cwith a White House that is prepared to break with what had been taboos in American foreign policy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Two spokesmen for the Egyptian government did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Captain Kholi could not be reached.<\/span><\/p>\n

Television talk shows play a formative role in shaping public debate in Egypt, and Egyptian intelligence services often brief the presenters of the programs about messages to convey to the public. The hosts typically prefer to characterize the conversations as journalists talking to sources.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the call with Mr. Megahed, three other audio recordings of strikingly similar telephone conversations with the same intelligence agent, Captain Kholi, were all provided to The Times by an intermediary supportive of the Palestinian cause and opposed to President Sisi. The origin of the recordings could not be determined.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Megahed, in an interview, said that he had agreed with Captain Kholi based on his personal assessment of the need to avoid a fresh outbreak of violence, not on the orders of the intelligence service.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am friends with Ashraf and we talk all the time,\u201d Mr. Megahed said. \u201cAnother intifada would be bad. I have no problem saying all of the things you have heard in that call in public.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for those who disagreed, he said, \u201cWe should have buses pick up all the people who say they want to go fight for Jerusalem and actually drive them to Jerusalem. Go fight if you are so tough. People are sick of the slogans and all that. I only care about the interests of my country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Two of the calls were with other well-known Egyptian talk show hosts. One of them, Mofid Fawzy, quickly denied taking part in any such conversation and immediately hung up the phone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lawyers in Cairo protested the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel while the government was trying to persuade Egyptians to go along with the decision.CreditNariman El-Mofty\/Associated Press<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

read more: Egyptian Leaders\u2019 Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders\u2019 Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move David D. Kirkpatrick Arab governments publicly condemned President Trump\u2019s statement on Jerusalem but criticism in state-owned and pro-government media across the Arab world was muted.CreditAbir Sultan\/European Pressphoto Agency As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58677"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58688,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58677\/revisions\/58688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}