After years of turmoil following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and the collapse in the numbers of tourists visiting the country, Egypt’s cultural tourism is back on a fast track for growth.  In an effort to rebuild the country’s reputation as a safe destination and win back international tourists, the government has introduced measures to restore security infrastructure, upgrade visitor experience and develop new attractions, such as the Grand Egyptian Museum. Although numbers still remain well behind 2010, this recent rebound makes a strong case for the potential that tourism can offer towards the revival of affected destinations.

Recent years have witnessed warming ties between Egypt and Israel. Far from forging a deeper and more comprehensive relationship between the two countries, this rapprochement has successfully glossed over long-standing differences with an eye to addressing immediate geopolitical challenges. A natural corollary of converging strategic, economic and security interests and challenges, the rapprochement is likely to remain intact in the mid-term. It can thus be seen as a continuation of the ‘strategic peace’ established during the second decade of President Mubarak’s rule.

While the 2018 elections are approaching, few believe that anything will change in the army’s control of the Egyptian regime. When the regime imprisoned opposing candidates General Sami Hafez Ana and Khaled Ali and others withdrew from the electoral race, it was made crystal clear that Al-Sisi’-s position would not be at stake. So, why should anyone study the upcoming Egyptian elections? Could there be a real opposition or is Sisi that untouchable?

Egypt’s biggest mass slayings, committed in a mosque in northern Sinai on 24 November during the Friday congregational prayers, have once again underlined the urgency to locate the causes of this by now rather familiar self-immolation across several Muslim regions. With 305 worshippers including 27 children dead and 135 seriously wounded as a result of an orchestrated bombing and shootings from close proximity by at least thirty perpetrators presumably with some ISIS affiliation, one is certainly flabbergasted at the meticulous and no less gruesome planning of a grievous tragedy.[1]

“…consider the vast influence of accident in war before you are engaged in it. As it continues, it generally becomes an affair of chances, chances from neither of us is exempt, and whose event we must risk in the dark. It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong and, to act first, and to wait for disaster to discuss the matter…’’ (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, book one, par. 78).

40 years ago, on Saturday, November 19^th, 1977 Egypt’s President Anwar el Sadat’s landed to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Αirport.

This paper has no intention or ambition to rewrite history and/or teach diplomacy. It simply aims to recollect the facts – some at least – and proceed to the analysis of gains and losses for the protagonists of this extraordinary journey.

Διαβάστε επίσης τη βιβλιοκριτική του Alison Pargeter, Return to the Shadows: The Muslim Brotherhood and An-Nahda since the Arab Spring (Saqi Books, 2016).

A lot of ink has been spilt on the role of political Islam in post-Arab Spring politics. In the beginning, there was an assumption of an almost teleological nature whereby the democratic renaissance of the region would at a minimum bring the forces of political Islam to the fore. There was even the potential for it to be rendered the single most important socio-political actor in part of the region. While the first premise has certainly proved true, Alison Pargeter’s book is a detailed, eloquent attempt at explaining the second: political Islam’s inability to ensconce itself in power, once in its antechamber.

The broader Middle Eastern and Northern Africa region has entered an extended period of turmoil where states are collapsing and regimes are being overthrown. While the roots of these conflicts are long-established, eruptions since 2001 are recurring with a ferocity implying that none will come together again in a capacity of state unity. Patrick Cockburn's indefatigable coverage provides a crucial tour d'horizon of the civil wars and insurgencies that have been shattering the societies' central core while demonstrating the variety of reasons as to why these conflicts are ongoing and foremost, as to why religion in the Middle East is now the glue that holds societies together.