War with Egypt: preemptive or defensive?

With ageing Hosni Mubarak soon gone, the American push for democracy in Egypt will bring Muslim Brotherhood to power. Egypt will become an Islamic fundamentalist state worse than Iran; Persians are generally more civilized and Westernized than the Egyptians. Western culture touched Cairo, but influx of the impoverished and traditional rural population into the cities changes Egypt’s outlook. Israel should preempt against the nuclear fundamentalist state.

The first thing is to create depth of defense by acquiring Sinai. Egyptians hate Israel for the past offenses, and wouldn’t hate her more for that one. Egypt surrendered Negev to Israel, Gaza to Palestine, and countless border rectifications to other neighbors.

Egypt never effectively controlled Sinai, and ethnic Egyptians never lived there. The Egyptians dislike the Sinai Bedouins. There was no independent Egyptian state since the Pharaonic times, and a country continuously occupied for 2300 years cannot claim much sovereignty. 

Sinai is central to Jewish national conscience. It is included in the boundaries of the Eretz Israel. Jewish nation was formed there, and Jewish law given there. Any nation would consider its cradle central to its conscience.

Sinai contains oil reserves vital for Israel, and poor uranium deposits. Egypt did not annihilate Israel in the opening days of the 1973 war only because its army dragged deep in Sinai. If holding Sinai, Egypt would eventually militarize it, just as Germany remilitarized Rhineland in violation of the treaties.

Israeli choice is not between confronting Egypt over Sinai or not, but whether to fight now far from her population centers and with Egypt politically unable to use its nuclear weapons, or fight several years or decades from now with Islamist Egypt that deployed nuclear missiles fifty miles from major Israeli cities.

Israeli-Egyptian situation is more serious than Cuban missile crisis. The Soviets were unlikely to use nuclear weapons against the United States, but fundamentalist Egypt with failed economy and Jew-hating population will definitely attack Israel. Kennedy preempted and cleared nuclear depth of defense for his country.