NEW YORK: Egypt is leading a new coalition of Arab states including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip, says the New York Times in a report published on Thursday.
The newspaper said that after the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi might have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated ceasefire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
Battling Hamas in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbours to end the fighting.
However, the newspaper says the Arab states loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Centre in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.
I have never seen a situation like it, where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummelling of Hamas, he said.
The silence is deafening, the newspaper quoted Mr Miller as saying.
Trade gateway to Arab world
Three years after Syria plunged into violence, Israel is reaping an unlikely economic benefit. The number of trucks crossing between Israel and Jordan has jumped some 300 per cent since 2011, to 10,589 trucks a year, according to the Israel Airports Authority. In particular, exports from Turkey food, steel, machinery and medicine have begun to flow through Israel and across the Sheikh Hussein Bridge to Jordan and a few Arab neighbours.
The trade, though still small, is growing enough to encourage long-held Israeli hopes that the Jewish state can become a commercial gateway to the Arab world. Israel plans to invest at least six billion shekels ($1.7 billion) in infrastructure over the next six years to improve the trade route. In the past, some Israeli businessmen and diplomats have lamented the way politics have hurt economic opportunities; others have kept any trade with their Arab neighbours quiet so as not to upset them. Now they see a chance to boost economic and political relations. Israel is returning to its historic role, as a transit country, as a bridge between continents, where historic trade routes passed through, said Yael Ravia-Zadok, head of the Middle Eastern Economic Affairs Bureau in Israels Foreign Ministry.
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