http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/egyptians-condemn-isr...

For 30 years, Egyptians simmered with anger toward Israel, frustrated
that their longtime leader Hosni Mubarak wasn’t aggressive enough
toward their hated neighbor. But under Mubarak’s successor, few in
Egypt seem to be spoiling for a fight.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood, has condemned Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip in
recent days and has sent high-level delegations in support of Hamas,
the Brotherhood-aligned Islamist group that rules Gaza and that Israel
considers a terrorist organization. But Morsi has sought peace, not
war, and few in Cairo interviewed Sunday seemed to think it should be
any different.

From residents of a deeply conservative Cairo neighborhood to visitors
at a memorial to the last major war between Egypt and Israel, almost
no one was seeking war, no matter how strongly they condemned Israel.

“We are all against Israel,” said Adel Mohammed, 35, a music teacher
who was chaperoning a squealing school group during a visit to the
October War Panorama, a large memorial to what is mythologized in
Egypt as a decisive victory over Israel in a 1973 conflict also known
as the Yom Kippur War.

“But Morsi can help people in Gaza through aid or money. We don’t want
to be involved in a war,” Mohammed said. “Egypt is not stable
economically.”

The Egyptian government has been walking a fine line between giving as
much support as possible to Hamas and Gaza without violating a 1979
peace treaty with Israel. The deal strictly limits Egypt’s military
presence in the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Gaza Strip and
Israel. Many Egyptians resented Mubarak for what they saw as an overly
subservient attitude toward the neighboring country. During Israel’s
three-week military campaign against Gaza in 2008-2009, Mubarak was
seen as acquiescing to it.

This time around, Morsi has recalled Egypt’s ambassador in Tel Aviv
and sent his prime minister to visit Hamas’s offices in Gaza City,
which were subsequently destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. He has been
trying to broker a cease-fire and will host U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon in Cairo on Monday. Also Monday, Mohamed Saad Katatny, the
head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, will visit Gaza.

But Morsi has stopped well short of taking an aggressive military
stance against Israel. Actions have been symbolic rather than
explicit. On Sunday, the administrator of his Facebook page posted a
photograph of him meeting with Lt. Gen. Reda Mahmoud Hafez, the
Egyptian minister of state for military production, and another of him
meeting with Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the head of the Gaza-based
Islamic Jihad movement, and Khaled ­Meshal, the leader of Hamas.

Inside the October War Panorama, whose grounds display Egyptian
fighter jets and captured Israeli tanks, a narrator reads a triumphal
account of the attack against Israel that started the 1973 war. That
conflict ended with a cease-fire, Israel retaining control of most of
the Sinai Peninsula, and both Egypt and Israel capturing each other’s
territory.