The monster in Egypt's box

The protests in Cairo and Beirut, and today's scaling back of Egyptian-Israeli relations, were the latest signs of just how quickly and severely the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated. Just one week ago, the regional situation as seen from Cairo seemed to be taking a turn for the better. Arab heads of state were gathering in Beirut, and, for the first time, the world seemed to care. Never had a gathering of the Arab League -- arguably the world's most inept regional organization -- attracted so much international attention. The United States had endorsed Prince Abdullah's peace proposal, and while it seemed that a few Arab leaders were not too happy about the Saudis putting forward the plan without prior consultation, it looked like too much was at stake to sabotage it.

Yet, a week later -- after a sabotage of peace prospects by Palestinian suicide bombers and Ariel Sharon -- the situation looks drastically different. Getting back to Prince Abdullah's proposition seems almost as remote as the all-but-forgotten Oslo peace accords.

For Egyptians, the first sign that the wind was changing direction came when their president decided to stay away from the summit. Everyone I talked to in Cairo was perplexed by Mubarak's decision. Of course, as is often the case with the Egyptian media, rumors abounded. Was the president jealous that Prince Abdullah had usurped his leading role as regional peacemaker? Had the Americans warned Mubarak ahead of time of Ariel Sharon's decision to reoccupy the West Bank and raid Yasser Arafat's headquarters?

While the reasons Mubarak did not attend the summit are likely to remain a mystery, the effect of the decision was instantly felt by most Egyptians. Many felt ashamed that their leader -- a key regional figure whose presence would have lent greater weight to the summit's outcome -- had dodged the meeting. As the week went from bad to worse and Israel began the assault on Arafat's headquarters, that shame sublimated into anger -- anger at Israel for its actions and at the United States for its inaction, but also at the sheer helplessness Egypt and the Arab world showed in reaction to the Israeli response and American silence.

That frustration was apparent at a three-day hunger strike organized by the Egyptian Lawyers' Syndicate, which began on March 27. Since the mid-1970s, one of the few ways civil society in Egypt can organize independently from the government -- which otherwise dominates public life -- is in professional syndicates. As such, opposition parties and Islamist groups have been able to gain some influence. The government occasionally tries to impose its own people onto the boards of these organizations. The Lawyers' Syndicate called the strike in solidarity with Palestinians, leading protesters in chants of slogans against Israel, as well as the Mubarak government.

"The strike is a rejection of a humiliated life," said one of the protesters, drawing parallels between Palestinian and Egyptian impotence. Other demonstrators shouted anti-regime slogans -- an extremely rare occasion in a country that has made stability its calling card -- accusing the leadership of not supporting the Palestinians and being cowardly. That demonstration last week, however small, was violently repressed by security forces. But it set the tone for the much larger demonstrations that followed Monday.

Like most demonstrations in Egypt, Monday's protests were centered around university campuses, with the largest taking place at Cairo University. In the past, demonstrations have tended to be organized and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition group. Although banned and persecuted by the government, the Brotherhood -- a moderate Islamist movement -- has vast grass-roots networks that have successfully infiltrated (and in some cases taken over) university departments, professional organizations and other civil society forums.

But the relationship between the Brotherhood and the regime is not straightforward. While the security forces regularly crack down on Brotherhood members, particularly during elections, the government also has accepted that the Brotherhood will not go away. Over the years, the two sides have reached an understanding of sorts that they cannot defeat each other (at least not in the immediate future). As a result, Brotherhood leaders coordinate with security forces when they organize public activities such as demonstrations, drawing clear lines as to what is permissible and what is not. The regime gets controlled unrest that allows people to let off steam, and the Brotherhood gets to maintain a high profile. In many ways, Egyptian security forces have become masters at organizing "protests in a box," which allows the regime to show the outside world it has a public opinion problem to contend with, but without taking any risks.

Hisham Kassem feels that the most recent protests, unlike previous ones, have no clear leadership. "They're a monster without a head," he says, arguing that this will make them all the more difficult for the government to control.

"One thing that is beginning to backfire is the lack of populist leadership. Those kids out there don't really have any leaders -- so there is no way to turn the protests off," Kassem says. In the 1970s, when protests were more frequent, the government could always deal with party leaders and others who held sway over the demonstrators, he explained. The successful depoliticization of the country in the past 20 years has however left no one to mediate between the regime and the masses.

There were also signs that the government was encouraging demonstrators. From last Friday, when Israel began its offensive against Arafat's headquarters, Egyptian TV's normally tame programming -- a tepid diet of soap operas, soccer matches and epic historical dramas -- was replaced by virtually nonstop coverage of the Palestinians' plight. Melodramatic music videos featuring footage of the shooting of Muhammad Al Durra, the child killed by crossfire between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers at the beginning of the intifada, were suddenly played between every program. Heartthrob crooner Amr Diab -- Egypt's answer to Ricky Martin -- sang "Al Quds" ("Jerusalem") with a backdrop of crying Palestinian children. On another channel, a star-studded cast of Egypt's top singers sing "Hilm Al Arabi" ("The Arab Dream") with very much the same dedication with which Quincy Jones and friends sang "We Are the World" 20 years ago.

News coverage, of course, was completely dominated by Palestine. One 30-minute news show covered it from a Palestinian, Egyptian and Arab perspective. The only non-Palestinian item on the show was a 30-second report on the death of Britain's queen mother.

But Egyptian television's most original contribution to the current Egyptian outrage over the situation was the phrase "Zio-nazism," a term coined by TV talking heads last week and since then repeated during demonstrations to describe Israeli policies. Channel One commentators, with a backdrop image combining a Star of David and a Nazi swastika, said that "to get rid of the Palestinians, Israel has opted for the final solution used by Hitler's Germany to exterminate the Jews." Another explained that Zionism stands for "the supremacy of the Jewish people," much like "Nazism advocates the supremacy of the Aryan race." While the comparison between the two is not new -- newspapers have made it a staple of political cartoons -- it is the first time TV has featured such provocative statements.

It is tempting to interpret Egyptian television's aggressive programming as incitement. After all, Egypt, like other Arab governments, has often used the excuse of public opinion for not supporting U.S. initiatives in the region, as was evident with the reluctance Mubarak showed in helping the United States after Sept. 11. But it may just be that, faced with public outrage on an unprecedented scale, the regime had to follow opinion rather than try to direct it.

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