King’s visit to the General between the Sultan and the head of John the Baptist

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The question is not about the visit of the King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz to Cairo where the army was able to resolve the conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood about the constitutional legitimacy leading to the arrival of the General Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi to presidency. Between the two ruling regimes in Riyadh and Cairo there are relationships that seem in their best conditions, the Saudi money is an economic stability factor for Egypt, while the Egyptian supportive position of the Saudi choices politically despite the embarrassment and the reservation constitutes the main Arab coverage for these choices, but the question is about the reason of the delay of this visit, despite what the relationship seems to be from the outside, and about the level of progress and the nature of the transformations which this relationship would witness after the visit, if the delay was due to the waiting for the maturity of these transformations.

When the Saudi member on Twitter Mojtahed says repeatedly that the visit may be canceled due to Saudi Egyptian differences about Syria once, and because Saudi Arabia accused Egypt of lingering in supporting it in the war  of Yemen many times, and because of the Saudi intelligence information about Egyptian Emirati collusion in which the Egyptian President and the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed participated in blackmailing the Saudi King, then this issue may not be taken seriously to admit that there is a crisis that prevents the visit, but when a journalist who is affiliated to the Saudi Royal Court as Jamal Khashoggi says  that the situation in Saudi Arabia and Egypt is as a couple that failed in reaching to a harmony between them, so they decided to stay together for the sake of the children, then it is necessary to think through the visit’s timing by seeing what the Egyptian sites have said about the change of the Saudi dealing with Egypt after the departure of the King Abdullah and the coming of the King Salman, and replacing the policy of the Saudi support because of the Egyptian position against the expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood with the policy of exerting pressure on Egypt to reconcile Turkey and ending the conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Turkish writers who are close to the Turkish President Recep Erdogan bet on the visit of the King Salman by the preparation for the Islamic Summit, and what they expect of a reconciliation between the Egyptian and Turkish Presidents under a Saudi sponsorship, which seems that it reflects the vision of the new Saudi throne and its entourage in forming a triangle led by Saudi Arabia, and includes Egypt And Turkey to go on  in the stage of settlements, and establishes a balance against Iran and its allies. While Egypt seems that it is in a different position except for the urgent need for the Saudi money to provide the guarantees for minimum stability against the threats of the economic collapse, the Egyptians writers who are close to the General Al Sisi are still near to the concept of the national Egyptian security according to the equation of the marriage of the two dangers; the Ottoman and the Muslim Brotherhood, because they see what is going on in the Libyan neighborhood as a part of this equation, they present the Turkish-Saudi, the Iranian-Turkish, and the Turkish- Israeli relationships as the policy of double dealing where there is no place for the confidence in their stability in the alliances.

The General Al Sisi has tried repeatedly what the Romanian Emperor Herod Antipas did in order to please his brother’s wife who became his wife, he asked her about the gift which she wanted in exchange of the dance of her daughter Salome, she replied that she wants the head of John Baptist who has issued a fatwa of the taboo of their marriage, so he ordered the priests and the rabbis to bring the head on a silver tray to Herodias, but Herod said that he regretted deeply for what he has done, so did the General present the decision of blocking Al Manar TV to the King on a silver tray in exchange of the dance of money, and to avoid a dance with the Sultan? Al Manar is as John Baptist the voice of right which issued a fatwa of the taboo of this marriage which Khashoggi has described, so will the General feel of remorse before it is too late?

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,