A vote by Egypt’s parliament to oust a maverick media mogul because he hosted the Israeli ambassador at his home in late February laid bare the limitations of the Cairo-Jerusalem alliance and served as the second notice this week that President Abel Fatah el Sisi and his administration will assert full control over the country’s foreign policy.
Tawfik Okasha, who has been dubbed Cairo’s Glenn Beck, was voted out of Egypt’s newly elected parliament Wednesday after a three hour meeting with Israeli Ambassador Haim Koren in which the legislator asked for Jerusalem’s intervention to modify Ethiopia’s construction of a huge dam in the headwaters of the Nile.
“They (Israel) are the ones building the Renaissance Dam,” Okasha said. “Are we fooling ourselves?”
Okasha has veered between lionizing the Israelis as “real men” and positing a “Zionist- American conspiracy to divide Egypt into 3 or 4 small and weak countries” during broadcasts on his Al-Faraeen “The Pharaohs” TV channel.
In 2014, even the strongest supporters of the Camp David peace accords with Israel winced when Okasha called on the Egyptian army to join the IDF in striking Hamas targets in Gaza.
He’s also been ridiculed for forging a PhD. diploma from a non–existent Florida university.
The week also witnessed the ousting of Egypt’s most senior diplomat, Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Araby after he veered off script on Israeli –Palestinian matters.
As the most populous member state, Egypt traditionally nominates the Arab League’s chief executive and the organization is headquartered directly adjacent to Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
The surprise announcement by 8o year old Al-Araby that he would not seek another term came just days after he told the daily al-Hayat newspaper that Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades “are not terrorists and have a legitimate right to defend their people.”
In public, Al Araby’s “decision” was handled with diplomatic grace as Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry expressed “deep appreciation for the Secretary General’s contributions to support the unity of Arab ranks and protect Arab interests.”
“Al Araby has been deeply unpopular and divisive,” said a Foreign Ministry official on background.
“We are in dialogue with Hamas’ political leadership over Palestinian issues but the Secretary General made a mistake in contradicting our position on terrorism.”
There was no subtlety however in the parliament’s response to Okasha’s freelance diplomacy.
“This is what a traitor deserves,” shouted Nasserist MP Kamal Ahmed as he hit Okasha with his shoe.
While a group of MPs moved to diffuse the brawl on the floor of the Council of Deputies and described Ahmed’s assault as “vulgar”, momentum gathered quickly to out Okasha for meeting the ambassador without seeking approval from the Foreign Ministry.
Egypt’s constitution stipulates that the legislature will respect all international agreements, but extending current security cooperation with Israel to broadened economic and cultural ties is linked in the minds of the public, and it’s newly elected politicians with a resolution of the Palestinian dispute.
“Okasha’s request for Israeli mediation to solve the problem of Ethiopia’s Grand Nile Renaissance Dam in exchange for providing them with one billion cubic meters of Egypt’s water is a national security violation,” said MP Mustafa Barkri, a fierce opponent of normalization of relations with the Jewish State.
The dam will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric facility and anxiety is growing here that the reservoir behind it will divert billions of cubic meters at the source of 97 per cent of Egypt’s fresh water. Conspiracy theorists in the popular press insist Israel is behind it.
A representative example can be found in an opinion piece this month by columnist Haider Mahmoud in the Cairo daily El Badil.
“There is current information about Israel's involvement in the financing of the dam for the purpose of restricting Egypt’s water, but there are no documents to confirm this involvement,” wrote Mahmoud without irony.
“Our last option is military intervention against the dam.”
Now the parliamentarian Okasha seems to have few career options in Cairo- he’s lost his seat in the legislature, been forced to put Al-Faraeen TV up for sale, and reportedly is seeking political asylum either in the United States or Germany.
Yossi Alpher, an Israeli security analyst who served the Mossad in Africa, says that while the Egyptian conspiracy theories are baseless, the concerns about the dam are understandable.
“Egyptian decision makers are quite aware that it’s an Italian firm building the dam and they know that we have no connection to the planning, financing, or design of it,” said Alpher, the author of the book “Periphery” which examines Israel’s attempts to forge strategic alliances with Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia as well as with the South Sudanese and the Kurds.
“We could offer the Egyptians water recycling technology and use our access to the Ethiopians to bridge the issues, but effective mediation efforts need to be conducted discreetly,” Alpher said.
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