How did so many western analysts get the Muslim Brotherhood so wrong?

“They accept the treaty with Israel.”

They never will. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration took comfort from Morsy’s handling of the November Gaza war: From Washington’s viewpoint, the Egyptian president resisted using the conflict as a pretext to break relations with Israel, and instead authorized negotiations with the Jewish state to achieve a relatively speedy ceasefire.

From the Muslim Brotherhood’s perspective, however, Morsy preserved the movement’s anti-Israel agenda. He stood by his refusal to meet with Israelis by outsourcing those negotiations to Egyptian intelligence officials; the ceasefire strengthened Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood; and the Egyptian government accepted no new responsibilities to stem the flow of weapons into Gaza. Far from yielding to the reality of Egyptian-Israeli relations, Morsy simply deferred their reassessment so that he could focus on his more immediate goal — consolidating the Muslim Brotherhood’s control at home. Indeed, one day after the Gaza ceasefire, Morsy issued his power-grabbing constitutional declaration, and rammed through a new Islamist constitution shortly thereafter.

This is, in fact, the very order of events that the Muslim Brotherhood envisions in its long-term program. As Shater explained during his April 2011 unveiling of the Brotherhood’s “Renaissance Project,” building an “Islamic government” at home must precede the establishment of a “global Islamic state,” which is the final stage in achieving “the empowerment of God’s religion.” To be sure, consolidating power at home could take years, and the fact that the Brotherhood doesn’t totally control Egypt’s foreign-policy apparatus will also prevent it from scrapping the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty — for now.