The man the Israeli-Palestinian crisis needs most ? Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi.

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  • The man the Israeli-Palestinian crisis needs most ? Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi - The Washington Post

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/09/the-man-the-israeli-palestinian-crisis-needs-most-egypts-mohamed-mor

    At the time, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian talks was something of a revelation. After the conclusion of the talks, all sides seemed to agree that Egypt had played the key role in solving the crisis. Here’s how The Post’s Michael Birnbaum put it in 2012:

    The end result — an agreement between Israel and Hamas, which have long refused to acknowledge each other, brokered by a neighboring Islamist government — would have been unthinkable before the Arab Spring reshaped the region less than two years ago, toppling autocrats who had long held political Islam at bay and strengthening the hand of once-isolated groups such as Hamas.

    Morsi had played a different game than his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. While Egypt had negotiated peace treaties before, critics of the Egyptian autocrat had long argued that he had bowed to Israeli and U.S. pressure to isolate the Gaza Strip and Hamas. Morsi, of course, was part of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that eventually gave birth to Hamas. Soon after entering office, he eased travel for Palestinians across the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza, a small but clearly noteworthy change of course.

    As negotiations began in November 2012, no one was surprised that Morsi came down on the side of the Palestinians. What was surprising, however, was that he seemed to be able to do so without alienating the Israelis.