Leaders in Iran and Israel have given oposing visions of what Egypt’s recent revolution means for its 32-year-old Camp David peace treaty with Israel.
“The emergence of Islamic governments in North Africa has become irreversible,” said Ali Akbar Velayati, chief adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Egypt will never go back to the circumstances that made her sign the peace treaty with Israel.”
“The Islamic awakening of the Middle East is not in the interests of the West and Israel, who are no longer able to impose their policies on Muslims,” Velayati said in statements published in the Financial Times newspaper on Wednesday.
He also said that the Turkish secular system is not suitable for the Arab Spring. “It is a replica of the liberal democracy of the West,” he said.
The newspaper claimed that Iran and Turkey are competing over the future of the Arab Spring, with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during recent visits to Tunisia and Egypt, calling for the separation of the state from religion.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expects any government in Egypt to keep the peace treaty and protect the security of Sinai.
But he also said that Israel should speed up construction of a separation wall along its borders with Egypt. “Infiltrators from Sinai damage our economy, infrastructure and internal security,” he said at a Knesset meeting on Sunday.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
