President Obama’s decision to deliver a speech here next month has given significant encouragement to a once powerful ally that has grown increasingly frustrated over its waning regional influence and its inability to explain to its citizens why it remains committed to a Middle East peace process that has failed to produce a better life for Palestinians.
After eight years in which Egypt felt unappreciated and bullied by the Bush administration, Egyptian officials were gleeful about Cairo’s selection last week for the president’s address to the Muslim world. They said that it proved Egypt remained the capital of the Arab world and that it eased concerns that Washington might undermine its Arab allies in exchange for a grand deal with their rivals in Iran.
“The aptest choice was Cairo,” the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, told the state-owned daily newspaper Rose Al-Yousef. “It is the capital of moderation in Islam and the capital of cultural sway in the Arab and Muslim worlds.”
“why it remains committed to a Middle East peace process that has failed to produce a better life for Palestinians.” Egypt didn’t make peace with Israel to improve life for Palestinians. It made peace to improve life for Egypt, a very proper goal for a national government.
“eight years in which Egypt felt unappreciated and bullied by the Bush administration.” Is this whole article by the NY Times an editorial? The U.S. has continued to give large sums in foreign aid to Egypt, and the government supported the Iraq war, being grateful not to have to deal with Hussein itself.
The foreign minister is correct to say that Egypt has enormous cultural impact on the rest of the Arab world.