The recent disputes between Egypt and the United States over the detention of several Egyptian and US nationals on charges of plotting in the revolutionary country and the reactions of popular institutions of Egypt to the cut of annual aid from the US have become so significant for Washington that it has sent the US joint chiefs of staff and several senators to Cairo.

Ahead of the first anniversary of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, some demands were made in Egypt that incited people not to pay their water and electricity bills to force the country’s ruling military Council to resign. The call failed to absorb a lot of fans.

However, there are still some uncertainties about the main intention of the Egyptian army within several layers of Egyptian society. Many want power transfer from the ruling military council to a civilian government to occur as soon as possible. Egypt is not in a good status. Kamal al-Ganzouri’s government does not have many supporters in the Egyptian society. But the significant point is that the new parliament is formed and it seems that there is no choice other than establishing new government in accordance with parliamentary party divisions.

In such an atmosphere and a few days before the anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, the ruling military council in its Facebook page called the American University in Cairo as the source of hatching plots. It happened a few days after the detention of 20 individuals by the Egyptian security forces, who had reportedly received money from three American institutes in a bid to spread the so-called democracy. The International Republican and the National Democratic Institute as well as Freedom House have been accused. Senator McCain heads the former and in his trip to Cairo will try to prevent the military and political leaders of Egypt from bringing their decision into force.

Now that this issue is intertwined with the Egyptians emotions, particularly given the impressions about the US role in Egypt, the Middle East and Palestine, Senator McCain has lowered his expectations ahead of his trip to Cairo, and said he will not attempt to negotiate the release of the staff of US civil-society organizations in Egypt, adding that he will not hold direct talks with the Egyptian government.

The US Joint Chiefs of Staffs in his trip to Cairo had already called on General Tantawi for the immediate release of the detainees. The intervention of US military commanders in a political issue concerning bilateral relations came as a surprise and showed the importance of the issue for Washington.

In the wake of reaching the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, the US committed itself to pay $3 billion annually to Tel Aviv and $ 2.1 billion to Egypt as military and economic aid. Some members of the US Congress have called for the cut or suspension of this annual aid to Egypt, in an effort to reprimand its government. The repercussions of this call were contrary to what Washington expected. One of the Egyptian Islamic preachers urged people in a TV program to create a fund in order to provide the money and put an end to dependence on the US aid which was widely welcome.

Sheikh of Al-Azhar Dr. Ahmed El-Tayeb also expressed support for such a fund, and said that US help is a pressure factor on Egypt. He asked the Egyptians living in the country and abroad to support this fund. Egypt’s Sufi syndicate also welcomed the move. The main goal of the fund is to collect more money than US annual help, which is about 500 to 1000 billion Egyptian pounds.

Given the status of Al-Azhar and other religious institutions among the Egyptians, this plan might be successful, particularly considering the fact that US help is not even about three percent of Egypt’s budget.

Isam al-Aryan, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, has another point of view regarding the issue. He said that the Camp David agreement has three sides of the US, Israel, and Egypt, noting that whenever one of the three does not comply with its commitments, the agreement will not mean anything anymore.

Inside Egypt, al-Arian has come under criticism for his remark which in a way agreed to the Camp David agreement and threatening the US not to abolish it, but doubtlessly one of the constant worries of the United States since the eruption of the revolt in Egypt has been the fate of the agreement. Muslim Brotherhood, as the strongest political movement in Egypt and the country’s parliament, has not adopted a clear stance on Camp David. Some accuse this party and its Freedom and Justice Party of not opposing the persistence of the peace agreement and regarding it as an accord bequeathed from the former regime which must be respected.

Still, one of the movement’s leaders earlier said that the new parliament would determine the fate of the Camp David agreement. Discussing the issue in the Egyptian parliament depends on certain conditions which go back to an agreement with the future government, but foreign elements might rapidly influence this process and accelerate the Egyptian parliament’s final ruling in this regard; elements such as a US threat to cut off its financial aid or Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip or even Iran.

The Egyptian military is dependent on US weapons and the Egyptian economy is so, too. The current tension over a few NGOs that receive financial aid from the US will not lead to a severe and serious crisis in Washington-Cairo ties, but it gradually will come into light that the US needs to reconsider the issue of Egypt and that Cairo will not serve the US in the Middle East the way it did during Hosni Mubarak’s era.

Source: Islam Times