How Egypt Prolonged the Gaza War
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/18/how_egypt_prolonged_the_gaza_war_israel_ceasefire
This process has also shattered another myth — that the primary game in town is about how to achieve a two-state solution between Israel and the PLO. Today, two-state diplomacy seems to be at best in hibernation. The talks in Cairo, on the other hand, are substantial. They cover violence, security, reconstruction, living conditions in Gaza, movement and access to the territory, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, and internal Palestinian governance.
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There is one more troubling aspect of Cairo’s diplomacy that has largely escaped notice. While Egyptian mediators were forced in the end to deal directly with Hamas’s leadership in order to reach a cease-fire, they have tried to mitigate this unpleasant reality in two ways. They have not only been seeking to enhance the role of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — something Mubarak always did in his day — but may also be flirting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a group far more committed to violence against Israel than Hamas. PIJ leaders such as Khaled al-Batsh have been quoted in the Egyptian government-owned media recently insisting that no other state can take Egypt’s place as mediator.
Egypt’s military-dominated regime, then, has proved that it is not against forging alliances with violent Islamists; its only feud is with those allied with the Muslim Brotherhood. The apparent Egypt-PIJ flirtation highlights how the country’s highly polarized politics might cause Cairo’s military-dominated leadership to cultivate clients that are hardly in the interests of the United States or Israel. An Egypt that looks and acts more and more like Pakistan is not something to celebrate.