Peres' students in Cairo and Riyadh

Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi never misses an opportunity to talk about Egypt’s self-sufficiency in natural gas and ability to export it around the world. Despite this, gas is imported from Israel at high speed. The Egyptian President’s ministers issue statements constantly regarding the “gas boom” that will turn the country into a major global player on the energy production map. However, the details of new import agreements with Israeli companies are spreading.

What we deduce from this is that the term “self-sufficiency” is defined as producing a product on one’s own, on one’s own land, to a degree that is sufficient to cover one’s own consumption and still have a surplus, all of which, therefore, prompts one to think of exporting it. To leave the door wide open to imports by means of long-term agreements and contracts, though, completely destroys the idea of self-sufficiency and raises questions about the purpose of importing, especially from a historical enemy.

Natural gas is not the main issue, of course, whether in excess or shortfall. The ultimate goal of this process is for Israel to spread itself deep within Egypt by means of pipelines or, indeed, through the military presence involved in the destruction of North Sinai. The other goals include a type of existential link and economic and political integration between Al-Sisi’s Egypt and the Israeli occupation state. It was thus natural for Al-Sisi to announce proudly, after signing the twenty-year gas agreement, “We scored a really good goal.”

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Hence, the gas issue shifts from being an economic process, governed by considerations of profit and loss, to the emotional need of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government, which seeks to increase its connection to the Israeli gas project. It is as if it is declaring its full loyalty to the Israeli dream, as formulated by Shimon Peres, one of the founders of the absolute domination project in the region, mentioned in his book The New Middle East. He outlined his goal in 1993: “Building roads, laying railway lines, marking off air routes, connecting transmission networks, advancing avenues of communication, making oil and water available everywhere (according to economics, not politics), and computerising production of goods and services will breathe new life into the Middle East.”

This Israeli project is standing on two feet now: one is planted firmly in Cairo through Al-Sisi; the other is in Riyadh through Mohammad Bin Salman and “Neom”, which comes straight out of the pages of Peres’s book. Bin Salman told Reuters that this city will be the “first capitalist city in the world… this is the unique thing that will be revolutionary.” The city will be built in the North-West of the Kingdom, and will extend into Jordan and Egypt, meaning that the zone will be “adjacent to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba and near maritime trade routes that use the Suez Canal, and the zone will serve as a gateway to the proposed King Salman Bridge, which will link Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”

Al-Sisi and Bin Salman have gone on to realise Peres’s dreams to a point that Benjamin Netanyahu is embarrassed; he cannot believe how far the Arabs have gone in getting closer to Israel. “By empowering Iran,” the Israeli Prime Minister said in New York, “it brought Israel and many Arab states closer together than ever before in an intimacy and friendship that I have not seen in my lifetime and would have been unimaginable a few years ago.” Peres’s students in Cairo and Riyadh appear to have come of age.

This article first appeared in Arabic in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed on 3 October 2018

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