Bloodbath in Cairo cannot lead to peace in Jerusalem

There should be some dignity in politics; the lip service by the Western democracies and the Arab autocracies regarding the Adawiya massacre on July 27 is a silent approval of it and a shame.

Egyptians are paying the price, being squeezed between the bad and the worse. It seems that the Saudi/Salafi-backed Gen. Abdul Fatah al-Sisi is not as bad as the people’s chosen president, Mohamed Morsi, whom he toppled for the interests of the West and Arab governments for now. (It is worth recalling that it was Saudi Arabia that sent troops to crush a Shiite-version Arab Spring in Bahrain in fear of Iran.)

It is difficult not to link that indirect support for al-Sisi with the ongoing U.S. efforts to bring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas around a table for a settlement. Netanyahu released a number of Palestinian prisoners in order to give a hand to Abbas, whose bigger adversary is Khaled Mashaal of Hamas. The power of Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been curbed by the fall of Morsi in Egypt, since the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) link in between is broken – together with possible access of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan to Gaza via Egypt, avoiding any touchdown on Israeli soil. One should also note Ikhwan has been the main actor in the civil war in Syria against the Bashar Al-Assad regime. Also note that Ikhwan and the Syrian opposition generally started to get weakened after the emergence of the al-Qaeda-backed Salafi movement of al-Nusra, almost at the same time that Morsi’s rise to power had started in Egypt.

Perhaps it is early to comment, but Morsi could be a victim for the success of the U.S.-led Middle East plan in the second Barack Obama administration, carried out by Secretary of State John Kerry. It is also no surprise that Turkey, which used to play a rather key role in the Middle East talks complimentary to that of Egypt, seems not as vital as before after Egypt coup. On top of the regional Arab issue, Turkey is dealing with its serious Kurdish problem nowadays.

Will the elimination of Ikhwan and also the Iran-backed Hezbollah from the equation bring a Israeli-Palestinian settlement? Unfortunately there is no guarantee of that.

Nevertheless, Egypt is in a dangerous divide that could tumble the country into a civil war. That would be the second after the one in Syria. Nobody is sure what is next, with signs of unrest visible even in Saudi Arabia.

It is possible that the whole ‘greater Middle East’ is heading toward a more painful time during which regimes and borders might change like a century ago, at the beginning of the oil age.