Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Egyptian authorities are masters at containing protests -- but street rage at Israel and the U.S. may surge out of control.
Apr 4, 2002 | Since Israel began its military incursion into Ramallah and the West Bank, the government in neighboring Egypt has had to walk a fine line between appeasing public opinion and satisfying U.S. pressure to keep discussion channels with Israel open. Students, intellectuals, opposition politicians and average citizens have taken to the streets in throngs to protest what they see as Israeli atrocities and to vent anger at their government's impotence. Demonstrators from across the Egyptian political spectrum -- moderate and radical Islamists, atheistic communists, socialists, liberals and even the apolitical -- are calling on their government to cut ties with Israel.
That, however, may be asking for the impossible: The stability of Egypt, in the midst of deepening economic crisis, depends to a large extent on the lifeline extended by U.S. economic aid and other forms of international economic assistance. These, in turn, are only assured by the fact that President Hosni Mubarak has made Egypt a key moderate player in regional politics and has enforced the spirit of the 1979 Camp David accords with Israel.
In an attempt to appease the growing radical factions, Egyptian minister of information Safwat Al Sherif -- known here to opposition groups as "Safwat Goebbels" -- announced Wednesday that Cairo would scale down diplomatic contacts with Israel. "The Egyptian government had decided to suspend all contacts with the Israeli government except for diplomatic channels which serve the Palestinian cause," he said through the official Middle East News Agency.
However, that is seen by some as a smoke screen, since Israeli diplomatic staff in Cairo will remain in place. "What does this mean?" exclaims Hisham Kassem, a human rights activist and an astute observer of Egyptian politics. "That the agricultural attaché will not get his calls answered by the ministry of agriculture unless he wants to talk Palestine?"
This move will likely do little to quell the growing anger toward Mubarak that was on display Monday. While the protests started peacefully and within the boundaries of the controlled demonstrations the state prefers and sometimes encourages, protesters soon broke free of Cairo University's main gate, taking the protests into the streets. It also then became clear that public anger was directed not only at the Israelis, but also at Mubarak.
"Oh Mubarak, you coward, you are a client of the Americans," shouted the protesters. Another favorite was "Oh Alaa [Mubarak, the president's notoriously corrupt son], tell your father that millions hate him." But perhaps the most telling slogan was "Oh Mubarak where are you, the blood of Ramallah separates us."
These chants, unusually daring for a country where most are apolitical, gave the green light to Central Security forces, a ragtag contingent of riot police clad in black and wielding bamboo batons, to take more serious action. At Cairo University, the center of the protests, police fired tear gas canisters into the crowd and used water cannons to push back protesters. But government forces, perhaps caught off-guard by the size of the protests, were unable to control what had essentially become a riot. Despite the tear gas that made protesters (and journalists covering the events) unable to see or breathe, and despite the blue-dyed water coming out of fire trucks that many suspected contained skin irritants, demonstrators marched toward the nearby Israeli Embassy, stopping just 50 yards from its gates.
On the way to the embassy, protesters wrecked a McDonald's and a KFC. When I asked one protester why he vandalized the restaurants, he explained that they represented "American imperialism." Since then, other American franchises (90 percent of whose profits, ironically, go to the Egyptian company that runs them, Americana) have come under attack and a nationwide campaign is underway to boycott American products. Generally, there was a lot of antagonism against America. I was often asked if I was American, but with my fluent French, I was able to get away with saying I was Belgian. Another American journalist who was more candid was roughed up by some of the protesters.
Upon reaching the police cordon that separated them from the embassy, protesters began shouting, "Israeli ambassador, out of the land of the Nile." The call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Cairo, Gideon Ben-Ami, has now become a main rallying point for protesters, who still gather every day around Cairo, although in lesser numbers.
Pressure to expel the ambassador is also coming from other fronts. Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian minister of planning and one of Arafat's closest aides, spoke to Egyptian foreign minister Ahmad Maher on Tuesday, urging him to take "practical steps" rather than issue denunciations at an upcoming meeting of Arab foreign ministers scheduled to take place in Cairo on Saturday.
Speaking at a press conference, Shaath said that Arab states should take a strong stand against Israel's recent actions and that Egypt and Jordan -- the Arab countries with the closest relations with Israel -- should cut off relations. Shaath added that the "vast majority" of Arab foreign ministers would come to Cairo for Saturday's meeting, and urged them to confront Israel with "deeds and acts."
There have also been protests outside the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, calling for Cairo to end its relationship with Israel, which officially began 23 years ago when then President Anwar Al Sadat signed the Camp David accords, making Egypt the first country to make peace and have normal relations with Israel.
But, according to human-rights activist Kassem, that is unlikely to happen. "It would really damage the regime abroad," he explains. "It's survived for 20 years on the grounds that it is one of the two countries with full relations with the Israelis. And it's not going to appease the demonstrators either -- they will just push for more."
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