As part of Egypt's crackdown on civil society organizations receiving funding from foreign countries, chiefly from the U.S. – a move that has sparked a crisis in Egypt-U.S. relations – a judicial investigation of these organizations' activities is currently underway. In February 2012, Egyptian authorities announced that a raid on premises of these organizations had yielded maps attesting to a plot to partition Egypt.[1]
Subsequently, the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram published an article by journalist Muhammad Duniya claiming that 30 years ago, on orders from the U.S. administration, renowned scholar Bernard Lewis, FBA and professor emeritus of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, had concocted a plan to divide Egypt into four smaller countries and to partition all the Arab and Islamic countries in the region.
It should be mentioned that similar claims regarding an alleged plan by Prof. Lewis to divide Egypt were mentioned approximately two years ago in a sermon by Muslim Brotherhood General Guide Muhammad Badi',[2] and a year ago on the Muslim Brotherhood's official website. Duniya's description of the plot, which he attributes to retired general Sameh Seif Al-Yazal, an Egyptian strategic expert, is strikingly similar to the one posted on the Muslim Brotherhood website; in fact, some portions are identical.[3]
Following are excerpts from the article:[4]
"External and Internal Hands are Currently Stirring the Pot in Egypt"
"Recently, several foreign media outlets attempted to revive the old notion of the dubious plan to divide Egypt. This Zionist-American plan aims to divide Egypt into four small countries: the first, in Sinai and the eastern Delta, will be under Jewish influence; the second, a Christian country with Alexandria as its capital, will extend all the way to southern Asyut; the third will be in Al-Nuba; and the fourth, called the barbarian state, will have Cairo as its capital. In the past, some thought that the warnings regarding this dubious plan... were meant to promote [certain] positions. However, the investigation [currently] underway by the Egyptian judiciary regarding illegal funding of civil society organizations has uncovered division maps at the headquarters of an American organization...
"This plan was leaked to the internet a long time ago under the title 'Dividing Egypt'... Several Middle East scholars and researchers decided to revive this idea and posted the division maps online, which indicates that external and internal hands are currently stirring the pot in Egypt...
"The seizure of the partition map of Egypt at the headquarters of an American organization proves the existence of this dubious plan. The basic idea belongs to the British Jewish Orientalist Bernard Lewis, who formulated the most serious plan to fragment the Arab and Islamic world from Pakistan to Morocco, which was published in the journal of the U.S. Department of Defense. But who is this Bernard Lewis?"
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Bernard Lewis and the U.S. Department of Defense Conspired to Fragment the Arab and Muslim World
"The strategic expert [retired] general Sameh Seif Al-Yazal says: According to existing information, Lewis was born in London in 1916. He is a Jewish-Zionist Orientalist, and a British national with U.S. citizenship, who graduated from the University of London in 1936. He worked in London as a professor of Middle Eastern and African studies. He extensively researched the history of Islam and the Muslims, and is considered an expert on the topic. His writings insult Islamic history.
"In 1980, with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, [U.S.] National Security Advisor [Zbigniew] Brzezinski said that the dilemma that would face the U.S. from then on was how to spark a second Gulf War, in the wake of the first Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, which would enable the U.S. to consolidate the Sykes-Picot borders. After this statement, the Zionist conspirator historian Bernard Lewis, on orders from the U.S. Department of Defense (the Pentagon), began formulating his famous plan for dissolving the constitutional unity of the Arab and Islamic bloc, one country at a time, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and the North African countries. Each would be fragmented into several small countries according to ethnicity, religion, school of thought, and sect. To this detailed plan he added a set of maps prepared under his supervision, which include all Arab and Islamic countries destined to be fragmented."
One Egyptian Province "Will Be Under Jewish Influence, In Order to Fulfill the Jews' Dream [to Rule] From the Nile to the Euphrates"
"As for the details of Bernard Lewis's Zionist-American plan to fragment the Islamic world, Seif Al-Yazal added that it includes dividing Egypt into four small countries. The first, in the Sinai and eastern Delta, will be under Jewish influence, in order to fulfill the Jews' dream [to rule] from the Nile to the Euphrates. [The second,] a Christian country with Alexandria as its capital, will stretch from the southern part of the Beni Suef [Governorate] to the southern part of Asyut [Governorate], and will also stretch westward... to [the city] of Mersa Matruh. [The third,] a Nubian country, will be integrated with South Sudan, with Aswan as its capital... [This third country] will connect the southern part [of Egypt], which lies between Upper Egypt and North Sudan... to the Berber country, which will stretch from southern Morocco to the Red Sea. [The fourth,] Islamic Egypt, with Cairo as its capital, will include the remaining parts of Egypt. [Those behind the plan] want [this fourth country], too, to be under Israeli influence and become part of Greater Israel, to which the Jews aspire.
"According to the strategic expert [Al-Yazal], all this information clearly indicates that there are those who have been lying in wait for Egypt for years. [These] external elements exploited the violent events that took place after the revolution in an attempt to topple Egypt, realize this plan, and revive the notion of re-dividing Egypt...
"The notion [of partitioning Egypt] has already been discussed in the foreign media, and several conferences were held abroad which explored the possibility of achieving a critical [level of] political fomentation in the Middle East in general, and in Egypt in particular, [favorable] to eventually dividing the largest country in the region into small countries that cannot stand up to the current world blocs.
"Al-Yazal warned against being dragged into the realization of this plan. All groups in the Egyptian public, regardless of trend or stream, should be wary of these ideas, bring them out into the open, and do whatever it takes to stop them."
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Ahram (Egypt), February 9, 2012.
[2] www.ikhwanonline.com, October 21, 2010.
[3] www.ikhwanonline.com, January 9, 2011.
[4] Al-Ahram (Egypt), February 10, 2012
