Through the last fifty years, the preventive sanitary measurements taken by the Egyptian government has resulted in a drastic decrease in infant mortality. This action, inevitably, has lead to intense overpopulation and over crowdedness in almost all of the Egyptian rural farmlands. The fast growing population, accompanied with the low amount of resources has raised the problem of illiteracy among the new generations. The relatively high illiteracy rate in rural areas of Egypt, especially amongst females, has increased poverty, and has made farmers more and more attached to their farms as their only sources of income. One of the most common solutions the Egyptian farmers have found as a response to their psychological need to encourage themselves and to glorify their job in their long and monotonous way of life, is stereotyping the richer urban society, and the different outsider society as corrupt, and furthermore unfaithful. In fact, that is not the only reason for the existence of such stereotypes. It was the stream of the minority of educated people of the rural areas traveling to urban areas, finding work there, marrying from here, and rarely returning to visit their families in their own villages that have really offered a good opportunity for prejudices about urbanized people to appear and have a loud voice among the Egyptian society.
The majority of Egyptian stereotypes grew simultaneously with the historical and political events of the Egyptian history. The outraged feelings of the Egyptians towards the Israeli neighbors, whom they accused of occupying Arab lands and massacring Palestinians, made the stereotypes of Israelis the most widespread and the most accepted stereotypes among the Egyptian society. Moreover, the religious and historical conflict between Islam, the major religion in Egypt, and Judaism, adds a religious aspect to the latter type of stereotypes. Although Islam gives the right to the Muslim male to marry either a Christian or a Jewish woman, the prejudices concerning Israelis are so powerful that the vast majority of Egyptians cannot think that other Egyptians would dare to share their lives with Israelis.
Despite what the vast majority of Egyptians thinks about marrying Israelis, a newly born phenomenon of Egyptian-Israeli marriages has appeared since the complete retreat of the Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, which was the final phase of the peace treaty of Camp David between Egypt and Israel. The number of Egyptian-Israeli mixed marriages occurring only in 1996 was 1,039, which is more than the number of mixed marriages between Egyptians and any other country in the Middle East. When the Egyptian Government began its projects of developing tourism and urban societies in Sinai, a large number of Egyptians moved to Sinai to take part in these projects, and their work became closely related to tourism or desert development. The peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979 allows Israeli civilians to cross the Egyptian borders as normal foreign visitors, and allows Egyptians to enter and even work in Israel. In 1995, 30,000 Egyptians visited Israel, the largest number of visitors to any Middle East country other than for work or pilgrimage. On the Israeli side, the Israeli people are concerned about the decrease of the world Jewish population during the last fifty years. This anxiety has let a remarkable group of Israeli women, under the motive of participating in saving the Jewish population from extinction, accept marrying men from different societies, while keeping in mind that children having a Jewish mother are considered as Jews in Judaism, and are given the right to ask for Israeli citizenship. Gradually, the close distance between the major tourist areas of Sinai and Israel, the relatively large population of Egyptians working in Sinai or Israel and seeking marriage, the free movement of Israelis through Sinai, the Islamic religion allowing Muslim men to marry Jewish women, and the large hope of Israeli women to have Jewish children, all these factors together have created a suitable environment where marriage between an Egyptian man and an Israeli woman can occur.
This phenomenon is totally new among the Egyptian society, and totally in breach of the majority's common feeling towards anything related to Israel. Hence, stereotyping that type of marriage has found its way through Egyptian society, that has begun to speak about the Israeli plan to retake Sinai through Egyptian-Israeli marriages, in which the Israeli wife asks her Egyptian husband for a piece of land in Sinai as condition to complete her life with him. People in Egypt have also begun to speak about "Israeli infiltration of the Egyptian society through mixed marriages."
Titles such as "The Marriage of Egyptian men to Israelis - a Phenomenon or a Conspiracy?" began to appear in the Egyptian daily newspapers. Moreover, the position of the Israeli law towards children of Jewish- none Jewish marriages inspired the Egyptian public to spread more and more stereotypes about Egyptian-Israeli marriages, to deal with people involved in such marriages as traitors, to look at children resulting from such marriages as if they were their future enemies, and to fear more and more possible Egyptian-Israeli divorces that might give the right to Israeli wives to take the children and go to Israel.
Since the raising of the Egyptian-Israeli marriage issue in the Egyptian press in 1998, all Egyptians who were intending to marry Israelis had to think properly about their new situation as betrayers of their society. Couples involved in such marriages have to be adapted to the powerful stream of stereotypes generated by the Egyptian society. In major cases that didn't result in bringing children, divorce was the final outcome. In other cases, couples had no choice except escaping from Egypt and evading to the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or even Israel. In particular, most of the Egyptians involved in such marriages have chosen Israel as a new country for residency, and as a better place for avoiding stereotypes about Jews and Egyptian-Israeli marriages. A few of Egyptians having Jewish or Israeli wives have succeeded in persuading them to convert to Islam, trying to satisfy the society whose acceptance of such marriages is extremely important to overcome the psychological damage caused by the stereotypes.
Actions like these were overwhelmingly accepted and approved by the Egyptian society, because of the certainty that the resulting children will be raised and educated as Egyptians or as Muslims, but not as Israelis. Nevertheless, a relatively smaller group of Egyptian intellectuals and religious people sees that not every Jew is a "typical stereotyped Israeli," and can accept smoothly marriages between Muslim males and Jewish females who do not merely accept the Israeli policy. A wider group of Muslim Egyptian males intending to marry out prefer choosing Christian spouses rather than Jewish spouses, under the pressure of the loud stereotypes that connect Judaism to Israel.
Jews existed in Egypt until they left when the state of Israel was founded in 1948, under the pressure of the outraged Egyptian society. Before 1948, Egyptian Jews were considered as an essential part of the society, and they were not treated as enemies. The Egyptian Jewish population reached 88,000 in 1952, when the last census was made just before the Egyptian revolution. Before the appearance of Israeli-Arab friction in Palestine, marrying between Muslim Egyptians and Jewish Egyptians was very normal, especially in urban areas where the concentration of Jews was. Since the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli wars, first in 1948 and then in 1956, the way the Egyptian society dealt with Jews had become extremely hostile. Jews in Egypt were accused of espionage, and the society had begun stereotyping Israelis and Jews as a whole group.
A vast group of Egyptian intellectuals and politicians see that the present Egyptian society does not know the big difference between Jews, Israelis and Zionists. The Egyptian President's political advisor Dr. Osama El Baz, sees that not every Jew is an Israeli, and that Islam is a tolerant religion that shouldn't be misused by some Muslims to develop enmity with other religious groups. He says that even within Israel, moderate people seeking for a true peace and for true normalization with the neighbor Arabs exist and have a loud voice in their society. El Baz explains his view by saying that "the lack of understanding that stereotypes of Israelis should not be generalized has let the Egyptian society's reaction against Egyptian-Jewish marriages unfriendly". Moreover, those intellectuals see that the Egyptian people should get rid of generalized stereotypes, while condemning "Zionism" and "Zionists" whose goals mismatch totally with the goals of the Egyptian society. Those Egyptian intellectuals accept Egyptian-Israeli marriages, if based on love and loyalty, and away from any political or "Zionist" influence.
Egyptian-Israeli marriages are inextricably linked to the individual motives of the spouses. Hence, this kind of marriage represents a sort of individual opposition to the mutually perceived ideas and stereotypes in both the Egyptian and the Israeli societies. However, the Egyptian and the Israeli societies are still influenced by their inherited stereotypes, and they both fear the spread of these mixed marriages. The future of Egyptian-Israeli marriages is now in the hands of tolerant intellectuals of both sides, who can reach a common basis on which Egyptian- Israeli marriages can happen with no fear of public disapproval. Egyptian-Israeli marriages did not appear until peace was established between the two countries. Moreover, the later conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, amplified by the overwhelmingly accepted stereotypes inside the Egyptian and the Israeli societies, has eliminated severely all forms of economic, political, intellectual and social normalization between Egypt and Israel, including mixed marriages. Therefore, only a fair and a comprehensive peace process in the Middle East, denying all forms of unwarranted stereotypes and inherited hatred and hostility between Arabs and Israelis can transform Egyptian-Israeli marriages into common phenomena widely accepted and approved by both Egyptian and Israeli people.
« return.