The situation in Egypt does not look dire at this moment, but it does look very serious. Given the speed with which events can move, the situation could change dramatically for the worse in hours or days.
Pursuant to the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Israel withdrew from the Sinai peninsula which it had captured in 1967. The Sinai provided a strategic depth which allowed Israel to withstand the surprise Egyptian attack in 1973.
A key element of the peace treaty was restrictions on the quantity and quality of Egyptian troops and weaponry in Sinai, so that Israel did not need to worry about the well-equipped and well-trained Egyptian army sitting on its border. Other aspects included a right of free passage through the Suez canal and the waterways south of Israel and east of the Sinai such as the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba. It was a blockade of these waterways by Eqypt which sparked the 1967 war.
Unfortunately, while the peace treaty contemplated a normalization of civilian relations between the countries, such normalization never took place on the Egyptian side. Egyptian society, particularly the large segment represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, still does not accept Israel and largely boycotts Israel in civilian affairs. Agitation against Israel and Jews is common in Egypt.
If the Mubarek government falls, as happened quickly to the government in Tunisia, the Israelis rightly would be worried about the impact on the peace treaty. If an Islamist government were to take hold in Egypt, there is no telling how the situation in the Sinai could deteriorate. The role of the Egyptian military as a political force in maintaining the military aspects of the peace treaty would be paramount.
While we are not there yet, I can see scenarios by which a new government in Egypt disavowed the peace treaty either explicitly or by actions. If Egypt moved forces into the Sinai beyond that permitted by the peace treaty or breached the other covenants such as free passage through the Suez canal, Israel would have a hard choice of moving back into Sinai or allowing the establishment of yet another hostile front on its borders, adding to the Hezbollah controlled Lebanon, the Hamas controlled Gaza, and Syria.
Eqypt is not Tunisia. The effects of Mubarek falling without a successor willing to honor its commitments under the peace treaty with Israel could spark a war.
Update: There is a another distabilizing possibility, that the new Egyptian government doesn’t do anything that violates the peace treaty itself, but ceases trying to stem the flow of weapons into Gaza from Egyptian territory.
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Comments
There may have been a 1979 peace treaty, but there is no peace: Egypt never stopped waging war against Israel. Egypt merely stopped shooting guns and stuck to Nazi-style propaganda. (And since we all know that Nazis do not deserve to live, you can guess how I feel about those Egyptians. And now, with the riots, Egyptians can prove whether any significant fraction of them are not bigoted, vicious, intolerant savages.)
Please don't forget that the US and other nations maintain a peacekeeping force in the Sinai, the MNFO. It's a token force, and not enough to stop any serious Egyptian incursion into the designated zones, but even the most radical government we might see take over would hesitate to take on the US Army in any numbers, just to get a crack at the Israelis.
I want Israel to stop being so freakin' delicate with these Muslims. Guys, Israelis, Jews, Muslims want ALL of you dead. They want no more Jews. Get used to it. I'm a Christian. I want you to live cuz you're my older brother. I also know if they succeed in killing you off they're coming after me. They already are. I know that Christianity is a sect of Judaism. Get used to that. Let's trust but verify; let's work together to defeat the Islamic horde. If we give any ground to them we are as good as saying that the God the two of us believe in is a liar cuz the Muslims have a different god, Baal.
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