Mediating the Gaza truce was a bravura diplomatic performance by Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi, jacking up his personal stature and reassuring an anxious Washington that the architecture of Middle East peace can survive the Arab Spring.
For nearly two years, Washington has fretted over what would happen in a major showdown between Israel and the Palestinians without the Arab autocrats that kept stability for decades, above all Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak who presented himself as the personal guarantor of its 1979 peace with Israel.
Mubarak was toppled by a popular revolt last year, and his successor Mursi hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group whose rise Washington has feared for decades.
looking beyond borders 