>It was a balmy spring evening, and the Jewish elite of Los Angeles had gathered in Beverly Hills to hear two U.S. senators provide a top-level briefing on Israel and the Middle East. The dinner at the Beverly Hilton was hosted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the nation’s pre-eminent pro-Israel lobby, and it was a record-setter, with 1,100 in attendance, checkbooks in hand.
Israeli leaders were heartened in late December, when Egypt\’s foreign minister announced that he would come to Jerusalem for talks on promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
At the same time, however, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was moving in Cairo to galvanize international pressure on Israel to dismantle the nuclear weapons it is presumed to possess.Â
These seemingly contradictory thrusts in Egyptian policy highlight the deep ambivalence that has characterized Egypt\’s attitude to Israel since the two countries made peace in 1979.
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