Monday April 23, 2012

I've Been Thinking:

Of course, things could be worse but - the relationship between Israel and Egypt has reached a thirty year low. Egypt has officially cancelled their natural gas deal with Israel. The new policy went into effect on Thursday and was not made public until Sunday.

Thirty three years ago Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty and part of the treaty was that Egypt would provide natural gas for a predetermined price.

Since the ousting of Mubarak the pipeline has been attacked fourteen times. And since the ousting there has been massive public rejection of the special relationship and treaty that Egypt has with Israel.
So they shut the pipeline down.

This will have a huge impact on Egypt. It will set them back economically and will send the wrong message to corporations and countries thinking of doing business with them. The Egyptians are sending out a message saying that they are not reliable. The only country that may view this as a good thing is Iran - and Egypt is unlikely to accept investment from their arch enemy Iran even if they are starving.

The occasion was used as a platform for the candidates running for president in the Egyptian election. They each weighed in on the topic and, not surprisingly, praised the decision.

Consider this typical of current decision making in Egypt. We can look forward to more of the same.

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