After the shock of the Security Council, will the Renaissance Dam change the index of Egyptian diplomacy?

Cairo -

Egypt did not get the support it aspired to from the Security Council during its meeting held a few days ago to discuss the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis. Rather, it was surprised by international positions in support of Addis Ababa, or at best, committed to neutrality towards the parties to the issue.

It seemed that Cairo had built hopes for the support of the Security Council, based on its strong diplomatic and economic relations with most of the member countries of the international organization, such as the United States, Russia, France and China. However, the facts of the meeting revealed another face to the world that was clearly not in the expectations of the Egyptian authority. .

The Security Council meeting only recommended the resumption of negotiations between the three countries under the auspices of the African Union, talks that did not result in any agreement satisfactory to the parties to the crisis over the past years.

What resulted from the Security Council meeting caused a kind of shock to Egyptian diplomacy, but government officials tried to mitigate its effects, including Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who attributed the interaction between permanent and non-permanent members within the international organization to the intertwining of interests, and “political considerations and accommodations,” as he put it. .

All this prompted some Egyptians to talk about the need to change the index of Egyptian diplomacy, to be according to the countries’ position on the issue of the Renaissance Dam, negatively and positively, citing historical precedents for Egyptian diplomacy in adopting crucial issues as an indicator of their relationship with other countries.

On July 5, Ethiopia notified the two countries downstream of the Nile, Egypt and Sudan, of the start of a second filling process for the dam, without waiting for a tripartite agreement to be reached, and activists circulated pictures that they said appear near the completion of the second filling process of the dam’s reservoir.

Diplomatic compass

Some political voices inside Egypt, which are close to the authority, considered what happened in the Security Council a shock to Cairo and its international allies, while these voices continued to emphasize the ingenuity and wisdom of the political leadership in managing the crisis, as they described it.

They believed that the shock of the international allies about their position on an existential issue for Egypt, makes the question legitimate about the need for Cairo to review diplomatic relations with countries of the world based on their positions on the Renaissance Dam.

This question recalls the Egyptian diplomatic compass, which moved according to the countries’ positions on the crucial issues of Cairo over the past 100 years, such as the English colonialism at the beginning of the last century, and national liberation in the middle of the century, then the Israeli occupation of Sinai in the sixties, an end to the Palestinian issue, and the latter determined for decades the course of relations Diplomacy for Arab countries, not just Egypt.

who betrayed Egypt

In an article entitled "Those who let us down in the Security Council," the editor-in-chief of Al-Shorouk newspaper, Imad El-Din Hussein, spoke about the need for Egypt to reevaluate its diplomatic relations with all countries based on its position on the Renaissance Dam crisis and the degree of its support for its water rights.

The betrayal of Egypt is what the journalist writer close to the authority and appointed as a member of the Shura Council concluded from the course of the Security Council session, referring to what he described as the very weak international position on an issue of great importance to the Egyptians.

Hussein said that "before the October 1973 war, and perhaps even since the catastrophe in 1948, our international relationship was determined on the basis of each state's position on Israel, and the extent of its sympathy with our just Arab rights, and whether it was with us, against us, or on neutrality? In some periods of our history it was Our positions are determined based on Egypt's support to get rid of English colonialism."

He added, "Faced with an existential issue such as the Nile River, resolving relations with countries is what must be followed during the coming period. We have to choose any country between cooperating with us or with Ethiopia."

And he added, "We have the Dabaa nuclear project with Russia worth more than $25 billion, in addition to the huge arms deals, and we have our huge relations with China, Britain, France, America and other major countries regionally and internationally. We have to tell them all, in strict and decisive language, either you are with us or against us."

hard blow

In the same context, a report prepared by the Egyptian Institute for Studies considered the recent Security Council meeting as a severe blow to the diplomacy of Egypt and Sudan.

The report, titled "The Renaissance Dam after the Security Council...Alternatives and Options", stated that the main countries in the Security Council adopted the Ethiopian view of supporting the continuation of the African Union negotiations - which the Ethiopian side insists that the negotiation be through - which failed to find a solution. A satisfactory and binding policy for the three parties over the past years

The report pointed out that Addis Ababa receives all forms of support from the dominant and controlling international organizations to complete the Renaissance Dam, considering that what happened in the Security Council is a new diplomatic victory for Ethiopia.

This is what prompted the professor of political sociology, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, to adopt the viewpoint regarding Egypt’s reassessment of its relations with countries that it believed to be allies, stressing Cairo’s need for a major popular and official effort and a new type of mobilization to save the situation.

Ibrahim added - in press statements - that the recent Security Council meeting proved that there was something wrong with Egyptian diplomacy, criticizing the position of China, Russia, France and other countries "which we Egyptians believed were friendly countries."

He explained that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies, but rather permanent interests, noting that what happened indicates the existence of strong interests that rule the world, adding that European countries and China seek to have a firm footing in Africa, where the future continent is considered with its strategic positions. Unparalleled natural resources.

evaluate ourselves

But there is another point of view that says that what happened during the security session should prompt an evaluation of Cairo's external relations not based on the countries' positions on the Renaissance Dam, "but rather to evaluate our relationship with ourselves," said Cairo University political science professor Hazem Hosni, who was recently released and is under investigation. precautionary measures in his home.

In a tweet on Twitter, Hosni explained that the strength of diplomatic positions is made by the strength of intertwined interests, as well as by the strength of the state, and its ability to present to the international community proposals that are difficult for him to reject.

And he added, "The internal discourse in the face of our swollen selves does not create favorable international paths. Rather, it increases our weakness upon weakness as we fight all our existential battles."

In the same context, the former deputy foreign relations committee in parliament, Gamal Heshmat, said that the world does not support a self-defeating country and does not support those who destroy itself.

Heshmat, the dissident who has been living abroad for years, tells Al Jazeera Net that the authority in Egypt "has acquiesced before the international powers in many regional and international files in order to recognize its legitimacy after the military coup on July 3, 2013," as he described it.

On the contrary, Heshmat saw that the authority in Egypt is not let down by anyone at the international level, as everyone supports it "in achieving what was asked of it of wasting the country's wealth, squandering lands and pursuing the opposition," he said.

With all due respect to Professor Imad El-Din Hussein's proposal in his daily column in Al-Shorouk newspaper that Egypt re-evaluate its foreign relations based on countries' positions on the #Renaissance Dam file, but I see that the positions of these countries call us to evaluate our relationship with ourselves before evaluating our relations with others, otherwise when will we monitor the moment of truth? !

— Hazem Hosny (@Hazem_Hosny) July 12, 2021

Diplomatic success

There is a different view of what happened in the Security Council, which is that Egypt achieved diplomatic success within the international organization, which means that there is no need to change foreign policy.

Under the title "Egyptian diplomacy defeats Ethiopia in the Security Council", Chairman of the Board of Directors of the government newspaper Al-Ahram, Abdel Mohsen Salama, said that Egypt led the battle within the Security Council brilliantly within tight coordination with the Sudanese brother, considering the dam crisis on the agenda of the international organization a success in itself. .

He added that the foreign minister succeeded in presenting the issue before the Security Council as being existential for Egypt, and clarifying Ethiopia's violations of international law with regard to cross-border rivers.

At the same time, Salama pointed out that some countries avoided holding Ethiopia directly responsible for the failure of the negotiations, "but the words mostly made clear the success of Egyptian diplomacy in internationalizing the dam issue and the dangers of the unilateral Ethiopian behavior, and the need to reach a binding legal agreement," he said.

The Chairman of Al-Ahram’s Board of Directors concluded that the coming days are enough to reveal what he described as the ambiguous positions of some countries, and the extent of their seriousness in supporting the legitimate rights of the downstream countries in the waters of the Nile River.