JERUSALEM - Israelis are looking fearfully beyond the end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's rule, expecting it will force them to stiffen security across an extensive southwestern border and perhaps reoccupy a strategic corridor between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, The Washington Post reports.

In the long term, it may require Israel to expand its military force and budget if a new Egyptian government comes under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, or otherwise casts into doubt the long-standing peace accord between the two nations.

Israel has relied for three decades on the assumption that it would never again fight a land war against the Arab world's most populous state, or worry about Egypt openly supporting militants in the Gaza Strip or elsewhere.

Many Israelis are now convinced that the Islamist group will play a greater role in whatever government emerges in Egypt, and that their country needs to prepare for anything from a cutoff of natural gas shipments from Egypt to increased arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip. The Muslim Brotherhood opposes Egypt's peace treaty with Israel and is the inspiration for the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza and rejects Israel's existence.

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