Amira Nowaira writes: As the brutal crackdown against peaceful protesters in Cairo and several other Egyptian cities continued unabated for six days running, the Muslim Brotherhood stayed out of the fray, declaring clearly that it would not join the protests.
In deciding to stay away from these protests, the Brotherhood may have committed its gravest mistake to date. The footage showing a dead protester being dragged by a security officer and dumped near a rubbish heap, appearing on many satellite channels and the internet, has not only shocked and enraged Egyptians, but it has sent them out on to the streets in their thousands to protest against this outrage.
In going out they had no political calculations in mind and no gains to make. They simply wanted their voices to be heard. By staying away, the Brotherhood has sent the message that it rated its self-interest higher than Egyptian blood and its decision has angered many Egyptians, including some of its own members.
While this highlights the rift that has been growing over the past few months between the Brotherhood and a significant segment of the population, it also brings to light the various challenges facing the Brotherhood since the overthrow of Mubarak.
The first is that after having worked for most of its history as an underground movement, the Brotherhood has suddenly found itself exposed to the public gaze. While such exposure has afforded its members far more visibility and freedom of movement than they have ever enjoyed, it has also made them the object of public scrutiny, criticism and at times even scorn.
The New York Times reports: For years, the imposing black gate that sealed the border between Egypt and Gaza symbolized the pain and isolation that decades of conflict have wrought on this tiny coastal strip, especially under Hamas in recent years.
But recently, the gate has come to represent a new turn for the increasingly confident Hamas leadership. The twin arches of the border crossing have swung open twice in recent weeks for V.I.P. arrivals, first to receive hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails as one captive Israeli soldier moved in the other direction, and a second time for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to visit Gaza for the first time in decades.
Both instances lifted the fortunes of the Islamists at a critical time ahead of negotiations scheduled to be held in Cairo this week with their main rival, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who leads the Fatah party.
Hamas’s leader, Khalid Meshal, arrives at those talks with a sense of regional winds at his back. Dictators have fallen, replaced by protest movements and governments that include the Islamist movements those dictators suppressed. Hamas has lost no opportunity to highlight this development as it basks in the growing regional importance of its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most powerful Islamist movement in the world.
“This is a hot Arab winter that has not until now ripened into spring,” a Hamas official, Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, proclaimed in Gaza last month as he claimed the Arab revolutions for Islamic revivalism. The campaigns to oust corrupted leaders have reached a “critical stage,” he said, before concluding, “With God’s help, next year we will see the flowering of Islam.”
Mr. Abbas, by contrast, arrives with mixed success for his plan to gain United Nations recognition of statehood for Palestine. He has gained huge domestic support — polls are 80 percent in his favor — but the bid has faltered and he has alienated a crucial ally in Washington.
Hamas, on the other hand, trumpets its success in trading one captive Israeli soldier, Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit, for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, hoping that the Egyptian-brokered exchange will erase Palestinians’ memories of the increased isolation and blockades that Gaza suffered during Sergeant Shalit’s captivity.
Boaz Ganor, an Israeli security analyst and the founder of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, believes that Hamas is now “much stronger” than it was before. The Shalit deal, he believes, was part of a “very detailed, sophisticated plan” by Hamas, which the United States and the European Union have labeled a terrorist organization, to break free from its Gaza enclave and secure greater legitimacy “at least in the international arena, if not in the eyes of Israel,” before Palestinian elections, scheduled for May.
“As long as they were holding an Israeli soldier against the Geneva Conventions and so forth, they would not be regarded as a legitimate candidate,” he said.
Both Hamas and Fatah leaders say that the Cairo talks will focus on setting up a unity transitional government of technocrats to take Palestinians through to elections, already long overdue.
Nabil Shaath, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, said that the talks would focus on unity, nonviolence and finding a cabinet and a prime minister acceptable to both sides. He said there was now a “much better opportunity” for agreement. Hamas had enjoyed success with the prisoner swap, and Fatah gained domestic support for the statehood bid, he said, and “success reduces the need for competition.”
The military wing of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, has called off a ceasefire with Israel and will allow factions in Gaza to respond to Israeli attacks, Al-Aqsa Radio reported late Friday.
“There can be no truce with the Israeli occupation while it commits massacres against the Palestinian people without justification,” a representative of the militant group was quoted as saying.
Al-Qassam “calls on all factions to respond to the Israeli occupation’s crimes.”
Air attacks have killed at least 13 Palestinians in 24 hours, after Israeli leaders threatened to respond harshly to an operation Thursday near Eilat that left eight Israeli citizens dead.
Israeli officials have blamed a Gaza-based militant group called the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) for Thursday’s attacks, although the faction has denied any involvement. The PRC is not affiliated with the Hamas movement that governs Gaza.
Three Palestinians including a 5-year-old boy were killed and 3 passersby were injured in an attack on a vehicle in central Gazas City. Al Jazeera’s Safwat Al Kahlout reported.
Previously, the latest air strike on the Gaza Strip hit Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza late Friday night, killing two men.
The Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the militant Islamic Jihad, confirmed that one of the men, Emad Abu Abda, was their member. The other man’s identity and possible affiliations were not immediately known.
This was the Israeli air forces’ sixth operation since beginning their raids in retaliation for Thursday’s incidents.
Hours earlier, the Israeli air force targeted rocket launchers, “two weapons manufacturing sites in central Gaza” and “terrorist activity in the north and the south” of the strip”, the Israeli military told Al Jazeera.
Five members of the PRC, including its leader, were killed in Thursday’s overnight air strike in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah and another killed on Friday, Al Kahlout reported from Gaza.
Abu Mujahid, a PRC spokesman, has said the group vows to take revenge “against everything and everyone” for its members’ deaths.
Medical sources said at least three civilians have also been killed, including two boys aged three and 13 who died early on Friday.
As Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants continued to clash Friday, Egypt expressed anger over the deaths of three of its soldiers apparently killed by Israeli helicopters pursuing militants across the Israel-Egyptian border a day earlier.
The incident threatened to destabilize relations between Israel and Egypt, already tense in the wake of the overthrow in February of Hosni Mubarak as Egyptian president.
The Egyptian government submitted a formal protest to Israel and called for an urgent probe into the deaths of the soldiers, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said. Egypt also closed until further notice the Al Awja crossing between Egypt and Israel, used for the passage of trade and exports, MENA said.
Egyptian voices outside the government also condemned the Israeli action.
“The Zionist attacks that killed three Egyptian soldiers on Thursday need a different response than the pre-Jan. 25 revolution period,” said Saad el Katatni, General Secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, referring to the popular protests that brought down Mubarak. “Zionists should realize that Egyptian blood now has a price, and it’s a very high price after the success of our blessed revolution.”
He is an Islamic “preacher of hate” whose views reflect “virulent anti-Semitism” and who has funded Hamas terror operations, according to much of the British media.
The furore last week over Sheikh Raed Salah, described by the Daily Mail newspaper as a “vile militant extremist”, goaded the British government into ordering his late-night arrest, pending a fast-track deportation. The raid on his hotel, from which he was taken handcuffed to a police cell, came shortly before he was due to address a meeting in the British parliament attended by several MPs.
The outcry in Britain against Sheikh Salah has shocked Israel’s 1.3-million Palestinian citizens. For them, he is a spiritual leader and head of a respected party, the Islamic Movement. He is also admired by the wider Palestinian public. The secular Fatah movement, including Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister, were among those condemning his arrest.
Many Palestinians, like millions of Muslims in the Middle East, revere Sheikh Salah for his campaign to protect Muslim and Christian holy places from Israel’s neglectful, and more often abusive, policies. They struggle to recognise the British media’s characterisation of him as an Osama Bin Laden-like figure.
Most in Israel’s Jewish majority would not have been aware of Sheikh Salah’s supposed reputation as a Jew hater either, despite their hyper-vigilance for anything resembling anti-Semitism. True, he is generally loathed by Israeli Jews, but chiefly because they regard his brand of Islamic dogma as incompatible with the state ideology of Jewish supremacism. They fear him as the leader of a local Islam that refuses to be tamed. Those Israelis who conclude that this qualifies him as an anti-Semite do so only because they class all pious Muslims in the same category.
Egypt’s uprising, contrary to most predictions, was initiated and driven by coalitions – including political parties, associations and internet networks – which were dominated by secular and democratic forces. Islamic organisations or their individual members took part on an equal footing with groups of marginal importance before the uprising, and with groups closer to eastern European dissidents of 1989 than to the usual mass parties or revolutionary elites of social revolutions.
The discretion of Tunisia’s Islamist movement can be explained to a large extent by the harshness of its suppression under Ben Ali, impeding the ability of the Islamic Nahda party to act. However, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was also discreet, but for the opposite reason: because it was a party tolerated by the military regime (although not legalised).
Anwar Sadat, when he came to power after Gamal Abdel Nasser’s death in 1970, favoured the Brotherhood’s return to the public stage and its enhanced position as a counterbalance to the Nasserist or radical left. The Brothers fully subscribed to the economic liberalisation (infitah) of Sadat when he embarked on dismantling Nasser’s legacy. This led to increased influence of members of the new Egyptian bourgeoisie within the Brotherhood. Even so, it continued to assert its piety against rampant corruption; this was a key argument for the petit bourgeois, the Brothers’ favourite constituency.
The Brotherhood built itself as a reactionary religious political movement, whose main concern was – and still is – the Islamisation of Egypt’s political and cultural institutions and the promotion of sharia as the basis for legislation. This programme is summed up by its main slogan: “Islam is the solution”. At the same time, the Brotherhood has served as a political antidote to extreme and violent fundamentalist groups.
The pro-Isreali neocons in the United States and their Zionist counterparts in Israel compare the Egyptian and Iranian revolutions because they are frightened out of their wits by a massive revolutionary uprising in a major Arab country that may no longer allow the abuse of the democratic will of a people for the cozy continuation of a colonial settlement called “Israel”.
Echoing the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Iranian neocon contingencies like Abbas Milani of the Hoover Institute think tank in California fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over the Egyptian revolution and create an Islamic Republic—habitually turning a blind eye to the fact that a fanatical “Jewish Brotherhood” has already created a Jewish Republic for more than sixty years in the same neighborhood.
Soon after Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas Milani, and from precisely the opposite ideological direction, Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic and the vast petrodollar propaganda machinery at his disposal, celebrated what is happening in Egypt as a reflection of Khomeini’s will and legacy and the commencement of an “Islamic awakening”. Not so fast, interjected an almost instant announcement from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This was not an Islamic Revolution, they explained, but an Egyptian revolution that belonged to all Egyptians—Muslims, Christians, people from other ideological persuasions.
In between the frightful Zionist propaganda and Islamist wishful thinking myriads of other opinions have been aired over the last two weeks in one way or another measuring the influence of the Islamic Revolution in Iran over the revolutionary uprising in Egypt.
This is a false and falsifying presumption first and foremost because what happened in Iran during the 1977-1979 revolutionary uprising was not an “Islamic Revolution” but a violently and viciously “Islamised revolution”.
A brutal and sustained course of repression—perpetrated under the successive smoke screens of the American Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981 and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, and the Salman Rushdi Affair of 1989-1999—is the crucial difference between an “Islamic” and “Islamised” revolution.
A cruel crescendo of university purges, cultural revolutions, mass executions of oppositional forces, and forced exile, took full advantage of domestic and regional crisisis over the last three decades to turn a multifaceted, modern, and cosmopolitan revolution into a banal and vicious theocracy.
The CIA-sponsored coup of 1953, the massive arming of Saddam Hossein to wage war against Iran, and the creation of the Taliban as a bulwark against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, all engineered by the United States, and the continued armed robbery of Palestine by Israel have been the regional contexts in which the Islamic Republic destroyed all its ideological and political alternatives and created a malicious theocracy, consistently and systematically abusing regional crisis to keep itself in power.
That historical fact ought to be remembered today so no false analogy or anxiety of influence is allowed to mar the joyous and magnificent uprising of Tunisians and Egyptians to assert and reclaim their dignity in a free and democratic homeland.
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Tunisians or Egyptians will allow such a treacherous kidnapping of their dreams and aspirations by one fanatical ideological absolutism or another.
What we are witnessing in Tunisia and in Egypt today, as we in fact have been over the last two years in Iran, is a people’s democratic will to retrieve their cosmopolitan political culture, wresting it from colonial (Tunisia), imperial (Egypt), or tyrannical (Iran) distortion, deception, and corruption.
Whether we like it or not, the Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt’s major Islamist group – is going to play a significant, perhaps crucial role in a post-Mubarak Egypt. Too often, American policy makers fall under the illusion that they can somehow have Arab democracy without having the largest opposition groups participate. A “democracy” that excludes a group with hundreds of thousands of members is unlikely to be seen as much more legitimate than the autocracy that came before it.
This brings us back to a critical question: do Islamists, in fact, want to rule Egypt? A careful consideration of the evidence suggests that mainstream Islamists display an odd ambivalence – and even aversion – to executive power. Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood very rarely run full electoral slates. In a recent article for the Journal of Democracy, I looked at the five countries where Islamist opposition groups contest elections on a regular basis – Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Morocco, and Yemen – and found that the average percentage of seats the major Islamist groups contest is a mere 36 percent.
Because they put a premium on self-preservation, Islamist groups go out of their way to avoid provoking the government or the international community. As Islamists themselves will often say, the world is not yet ready for them (they even have a phrase for this: “the American veto”).
This is not to say that the Muslim Brotherhood won’t ever try to win an Egyptian election. It just means that it won’t anytime soon. What then does the group want in the interim? It is worth recalling that the last several years saw one of the most intense periods of anti-Islamist repression since the 1960s. The Brotherhood has had businesses closed, financial assets seized, and thousands of its members imprisoned. Its priority, then, is to slowly rebuild its battered infrastructure, boost membership, and sort out internal frictions between “reformists” and “traditionalists.” The Brotherhood is not a political party, so, presumably, it won’t act like one. For a mass movement whose lifeline is social-service provision, preaching, and educational activities, safeguarding organizational interests takes precedence.
With all of this in mind, the Brotherhood has stayed on message since the protests began, emphasizing the need for a “civil, democratic state.” A civil, democratic state is precisely what will grant it the greatest freedom of movement. On the other hand, advocating for something more “Islamic” or adopting a higher profile would threaten to derail the uprising, which benefits from the perception that it is secular. This is the sort of cautious, calculated strategy that will define the Brotherhood’s approach in the coming years.
“Never insult the Arabs,” advised Amos Gilead, former head of Israel’s Political-Military Bureau, speaking on Monday at the influential Herzliya national security conference.
But he wasn’t appealing for an improvement in Israeli-Arab relations since he only had a few Arabs in mind — Hosni Mubarak and other leaders “that are supporting stability and are coping with terror and have proven themselves along decades.”
As for Gilead’s views about the advance of democracy in the region, such a prospect presents nothing less than a path to hell.
“If we allow,” Gilead said, then edited himself realizing that democracy should not be presented as something Israel can allow (or forbid) and thus he continued in less instrumental terms, “or if there is democrative process in the Middle East, it will bring for sure — or, let’s say, quite sure — dictatorships which will make this area like hell.”
The Obama administration — which has yet to face any form of governmental pressure it was willing to resist — is now showing itself in much deeper sympathy with those voices who present democracy as a threat than those who claim democracy as their right.
As the Obama administration gropes for the right response to the uprising in Egypt, it has not lacked for advice from democracy advocates, academics, pundits, even members of the previous administration. But few voices have been as urgent, insistent or persuasive as those of Egypt’s neighbors.
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates have each repeatedly pressed the United States not to cut loose Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, too hastily, or to throw its weight behind the democracy movement in a way that could further destabilize the region, diplomats say. One Middle Eastern envoy said that on a single day, he spent 12 hours on the phone with American officials.
There is evidence that the pressure has paid off. On Saturday, just days after suggesting that it wanted immediate change, the administration said it would support an “orderly transition” managed by Vice President Omar Suleiman. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Mr. Mubarak’s immediate resignation might complicate, rather than clear, Egypt’s path to democracy, given the requirements of Egypt’s Constitution.
“Everyone is taking a little breath,” said a diplomat from the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing private conversations. “There’s a sense that we’re getting our message through.”
While each country has its own concerns, all worry that a sudden, chaotic change in Egypt would destabilize the region or, in the Arab nations, even jeopardize their own leaders, many of whom are also autocrats facing restive populations.
Like frogs that refuse to jump out of pot of hot water because its temperature is only rising slowly, those autocrats and their Western allies who now equate stability with their ability to act as a judicious brake on change, have a will to survive that is guiding them down a path of self-destruction.
Slow but sure are the watchwords of the proponents of an “orderly transition” to democracy in Egypt. Yet even as they profess a desire to see democratic change unfold and claim no interest in dictating the outcome of a democratic process, this posture of non-interference is contradicted by a clear intent to dictate the pace of change. The will of the Egyptian people will be respected — but not just yet.
What the West is telling the Arab world is this: be patient living under dictators we like because if you get rid of them you’ll end up being ruled by dictators we don’t like. Now, as ever, the West treats Arabs as being incapable of building their own democracies.
But beneath this veneer of contempt lies a much deeper fear: that a Middle East made up of truly self-governing independent nations fully in control of resources upon which the West depends will no longer bow to Western interests. That’s a prospect the West dreads to contemplate.
“The Iranian nation has become a model for the other nations through its resistance and insistence on Islam and Islamic establishment and due to the eye-catching progress it has made on this path throughout the last 32 years,” Ayatollah Khamenei said while addressing a military gathering in Tehran today.
But the Muslim Brotherhood is more interested in expressing its solidarity with its secular co-revolutionaries than its Iranian co-religionists. This isn’t an Islamic revolution, they say — stating the obvious. It’s an Egyptian revolution.
Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website editor in chief Khaled Hamza has stated that the current uprising in Egypt is a revolution of the Egyptian people and is by no means linked to any Islamic tendencies, despite allegations nor can it be described as Islamic.
Hamza stressed that the revolution is peaceful and calls solely for reform and a democratic civil state initiated by the youth through the social networking service Facebook and is far removed from any Islamist groups.
He criticized allegations and reiterations by some countries that the uprising was Islamic and denounced claims by the Iranian Supreme Leader Mr. Khamenai that the protests are a sign of an Islamic Awakening inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Hamza maintained that the Egyptian protests are not an ‘Islamic’ uprising, but a mass protest against an unjust, autocratic regime which includes Egyptians from all walks of life and all religions and sects.
Anyone in any doubt about the difference between the Khamenei regime and the Muslim Brotherhood’s conservative and pragmatic political movment, should listen to the following from Dr Maha Azzam, Chatham House and Dr Shadi Hamid, Brookings Doha Center:
If in the first days of the Egyptian people’s uprising, the Mubarak regime imagined it could ride out the storm, two weeks later we can see that the revolution is, on the contrary, growing in strength.
The Guardian‘s Jack Shenker describes the scene in Tahrir Square today:
There is more energy and optimism in Tahrir today than almost anything I’ve seen before – an aimless wander through the packed crowds is a dizzying, exhilarating experience, revealing a hundreds of little micro-dramas playing out all over the square.
It’s so difficult to convey the atmosphere of this place through words or images; Tahrir may have dropped down the international media agenda somewhat in recent days, but honestly if you go down there and just stare around you – at the picnicking families, the raucous flag-wavers, the volunteer tea suppliers, the cheery human security cordons, the slumbering bodies curled up in the metal treads of the army’s tanks, the pro-change graffiti that adorns every placard, every tent, every wall space in vision – it’s impossible not to feel as moved as we all did in the very first days of this ongoing revolution.
As the streets appear safer and security more guaranteed, the numbers of those joining queues to enter Tahrir is growing, not falling – dozens told me today they were here for the first time. Politicking at the top may give the impression that the uprising has lost momentum, but clearly for many in Egypt it’s only just getting started.
An Al Jazeera report from Alexandria confirms the nationwide surge in demonstrations that has been driven by the impact of the Wael Ghonim interview broadcast on Egyptian television yesterday. The re-appearance of Ghonim — an activist leader and Google executive who was released from detention yesterday afternoon — “really had an impact on many Egyptians and forced a lot more to come out to the streets. This was the first time Egyptian television showed some of the most graphic images and stories that have happened over the last two weeks. So there’s definitely a surge in the number of pro-democracy, anti-government protests here in Alexandria,” said Jamal Elshayyal.
Egypt’s new vice president, Omar Suleiman, has long sought to demonize the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in his contacts with skeptical U.S. officials, leaked diplomatic cables show, raising questions whether he can act as an honest broker in the country’s political crisis.
U.S. Embassy messages from the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks cache of 250,000 State Department documents, which Reuters independently reviewed, also report that the former intelligence chief accused the Brotherhood of spawning armed extremists and warned in 2008 that if Iran ever backed the banned Islamist group, Tehran would become “our enemy.”
The disclosure came as Suleiman met on Sunday with opposition groups, including the officially banned Brotherhood, to explore ways to end Egypt’s worst political crisis decades.
Meanwhile, Channel 4 News reported on today’s protests in Tahrir Square:
Maybe my judgment is skewed because pro-Mubarak thugs tried to hunt down journalists, leading some of us to be stabbed, beaten and arrested — and forcing me to abandon hotel rooms and sneak with heart racing around mobs carrying clubs with nails embedded in them. The place I felt safest was Tahrir Square — “free Egypt,” in the protesters’ lexicon — where I could pull out a camera and notebook and ask anybody any question.
I constantly asked women and Coptic Christians whether a democratic Egypt might end up a more oppressive country. They invariably said no — and looked so reproachfully at me for doubting democracy that I sometimes retreated in embarrassment.
“If there is a democracy, we will not allow our rights to be taken away from us,” Sherine, a university professor, told me (I’m not using full names to protect the protesters). Like many, she said that Americans were too obsessed with the possibility of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in elections.
“We do not worry about the Muslim Brotherhood,” Sherine said. “They might win 25 percent of the votes, but if they do not perform then they will not get votes the next time.”
Sherine has a point. Partly because of Western anxieties, fundamentalist Muslims have rarely run anything — so instead they lead the way in denouncing the corruption, incompetence and brutality of pro-Western autocrats like Mr. Mubarak. The upshot is that they win respect from many ordinary citizens, but my hunch is that they would lose support if they actually tried to administer anything.
For example, in 1990s Yemen, an Islamic party named Islah became part of a coalition government after doing well in elections. As a result, Islah was put in charge of the Education Ministry. Secular Yemenis and outsiders were aghast that fundamentalists might brainwash children, but the Islamists mostly proved that they were incompetent at governing. In the next election, their support tumbled.
It’s true that one of the most common protester slogans described Mr. Mubarak as a stooge of America, and many Egyptians chafe at what they see as a supine foreign policy. I saw one caricature of Mr. Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead and, separately, a sign declaring: “Tell him in Hebrew, and then he might get the message!” Yet most people sounded pragmatic, favoring continued peace with Israel while also more outspoken support for Palestinians, especially those suffering in Gaza.
I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”
Little does she seem to know: the Democratic Party is no better.
Let the Islamists share in governance — then they’ll lose their popularity.
It’s easy to see why this argument appeals to many an American liberal. Strangely, an equally persuasive argument — let them govern, they might govern well — has yet to gain any traction, at least in the US.
But look at Turkey. Are we supposed to believe that the success of the AKP has come in spite of them being Islamists, or, is it possible that lack of corruption presents such a stark contrast with politics-as-usual that the success of the Islamists has more to do with their integrity than anything else.
If the contest is not between Sharia and democracy, but between integrity and corruption, shouldn’t we be rooting for integrity, irrespective of the banner it might carry?
[T]he Brotherhood said earlier this week that it would recognize all of Egypt’s international treaties, a thinly veiled reference to the country’s longtime peace agreement with Israel.
To many observers, the reference signaled a willingness by the Brotherhood to negotiate with Western powers. Still, the Brotherhood eventually would like to put Egypt’s pact with Israel on the ballot in a national referendum, which would all but assure its rejection.
Israeli leaders have long professed the desire for peaceful relations with all their neighbors — as though the Egyptian people and the Jordanian people counted for nothing, Mubarak and King Abdullah being the sole peace contractors.
The fictitious peace that may soon be in jeopardy has merely been secured by American bribery, without the consent of the American taxpayer. Shouldn’t we be demanding a real peace and shouldn’t Israelis want such a peace — one that does not hinge on the “stability” of dictatorial rule?
“Freedom lies behind a door closed shut,” the great Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi wrote in the last century. “It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist.” More than that is bleeding in the Arab world at the moment.
The uprisings we are witnessing in Egypt have been a rude awakening for all those who imagined that the despots of the Arab world could be kept in place provided they continued to serve the needs of the West and their harsh methods weren’t aired on CNN and BBC World. But while Western establishments lull themselves to sleep with fairy tales, ordinary citizens, who are defeated and demoralized, mull their revenge.
The French government seriously considered sending its paratroopers to save former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pleading with officials in Washington to delay Hosni Mubarak’s departure from Egypt so that Israel has time to prepare for the likely outcome. Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is even describing the Egyptian dictator as a “force for good.”
The almost 200 pro-democracy citizens who have been killed don’t bother him too much. That’s small beer compared with the tens of thousands dead in Iraq. And a desperate Palestine Liberation Organization is backing Mubarak and repressing solidarity demonstrations in Ramallah on the West Bank.
President Obama has promoted the lie that Hosni Mubarak as the capacity to lead an orderly transition towards a democratic Egypt. Mubarak’s thugs, by spilling the blood of Egyptian people on the streets of Cairo today, have exposed the lie.
It’s time for Obama to stop hiding from the press and come out and call for Mubarak to resign now.
Mustafa el-Gindy, a former independent member of the Egyptian parliament and current member of the opposition, presents the opposition’s plan through which the opposition in concert with the army can lead the the post-Mubarak transition.
The New York Times, in its role as state storyteller, spins a fine yarn about how the White House artfully engineered Hosni Mubarak’s removal. A pivotal place in the narrative goes to “Frank G. Wisner, an adroit ex-diplomat whom President Obama had asked hours before to undertake a supremely delicate mission: nudging President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt out of power.”
Senior officials say that as Mr. Wisner traveled to Egypt, Obama officials in Washington were working on his message to Mr. Mubarak: to announce that he would not run for re-election (he did that), and to promise that his son would not run for election (he did not do that).
“No one wanted it to seem as if we were pushing him out,” one administration official said. “That would not serve American interests. It was important for President Mubarak to make the decision.”
Two hours after Mr. Wisner’s plane left Andrews Air Force Base, White House officials sent an e-mail to more than a dozen foreign policy experts in Washington, asking them to come in for a meeting on Monday morning. “Apologies for the short notice in light of a very fluid situation,” the e-mail said.
The Roosevelt Room meeting, led by Benjamin Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and two other National Security Council officials, Daniel Shapiro and Samantha Power, examined unrest in the region, and the potential for the protests to spread, according to several attendees.
Significantly, during the meeting, White House staff members “made clear that they did not rule out engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of an orderly process,” according to one attendee, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to talk publicly about the meeting. The Muslim group had been suppressed by Mr. Mubarak, and Bush administration officials believed it was involved in terrorist activities. It renounced violence years ago.
Several times, two other attendees said, White House staff members said that Mr. Obama believed that Egyptian politics needed to encompass “nonsecular” parties: diplomatic-speak for the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Orderly transition” is now the name of the game, but what remains unclear is whether Mubarak intends on sticking to the script.
After a half-hour conversation this evening, the only element of Mubarak’s thinking that Obama disclosed during his televised remarks was this: “He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and that a change must take place.”
That seems to leave open a wide range of possibilities — and one inconvenient fact: Mubarak is still Egypt’s president.
Dictators invariably see themselves as uber-nationalists — right to the point of seeing themselves as indivisible from the nation. Mubarak’s refusal to bow out swiftly means he has chosen chaos. The US and the rest of the world no longer have the luxury of meekly watching from afar.
Mubarak wants to stick around for a few more months — game not over.
Frank Wisner, a former ambassador to Egypt who has good relations with the Mubarak regime, traveled to Cairo at President Obama’s behest to talk to the Egyptian leader about the country’s future.
Wisner delivered a direct message that Mubarak should not be part of the “transition” that the U.S. had called for, according to Middle East experts who spoke on condition of anonymity.
One expert on the region said that in his regular conversations with the Obama administration about the unrest in Egypt, he learned that Wisner’s message to Mubarak was that “he was not going to be president in the future. And this message was plainly rebuffed.”
Reuters — Mubarak will say in a televised speech that he will step down at the next election but would stay in office till then to meet demands of protesters in that period, Al Arabiya TV reported on Tuesday.
New York Times — “President Obama has told the embattled president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, that he should not run for another term in elections in the fall, effectively withdrawing American support for its closest Arab ally, according to American diplomats in Cairo and Washington.”
The Rorschach test from Cairo: a dignified and disciplined act of collective prayer? Or a dangerously large gathering of Muslims?
Perhaps more than anything, American perceptions of Islam reveal the extent to which this nation celebrates religion without the slightest notion of piety — not surprising, given the degree to which religion and nationalism have become interwoven.
— —
“It needs to be understood that if the Egyptian government will fall, the Muslim Brotherhood will take its place, and that will cause even worse problems not only for the Middle East, but for the whole world.” This is the assessment of Israel’s Deputy Minister for Galilee and Negev Development Ayoub Kara.
What’s interesting about these kind of the-sky-is-falling predictions coming from Israel and its febrile supporters is that in a matter of months their fears are likely to be proved baseless. To begin with, the great Islamist bogeyman of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, is likely to move from unofficial to legal participation in parliamentary politics quite cautiously. This is a conservative organization in the traditional sense of the term “conservative” — as opposed to the histrionic modern American meaning of the word. Indeed, I doubt that any single political group will be in a rush to grab power during the most difficult period of Egypt’s political rebirth.
The most immediate point of tension between a new Egyptian government and Israel will be over Gaza and this will be the test of the new government’s democratic credentials. Hopefully it will do the right thing and refuse to be complicit in the siege. But of course I’m getting way ahead of events now …
Jeff Jarvis: “Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one — not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media — can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can.”
As the region reconfigures itself, the US should help Israel adjust to a new reality – convincing Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories would be the best option, but just explaining to Israel that America now has to deal with an Arab politics that is in its post-dictatorship phase and will henceforth have to be more responsive to public opinion – that will be a necessity.
Indeed — but that could be asserted even more strongly, which is to say, come the day that the US government no longer has at its disposal a clutch of autocratic rulers who depend for their survival on US support, the US will no longer be able to afford the luxury of deferring to Israel’s interests. In other words, this is an opportunity for everyone to grow up — no more pandering to a whiny Zionist brat that has long relied on its ability to manipulate its over-indulgent American parent.
11.16 — Alaa Abd El Fattah: “it looks like across the nationion 4-6 million went out, that’s %5–%8 of the population folks”
The Guardian — Bibliotheca Alexandrina and other cultural sites across Egypt are being protected by Egypt’s young people:
In a statement on the library’s site, Ismail Serageldin tells “friends around the world” that the library is being protected by the city’s youth from the threat of looting by the “lawless bands of thugs, and maybe agents provocateurs” who have materialised since the popular protests sweeping through Egypt’s major cities began several days ago.
“The young people organised themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria,” he states. “They are collaborating with the army. This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns.”
The Clash of Conservatives! Egyptian revolution causes a split between right-wing xenophobic isolationist Glenn Beck and right-wing xenophobic US hegemonist Bill O’Reilly. Hopefully it won’t take long before all of their hysterical fear-mongering predictions are exposed as baseless. They and many other Americans would be well-served by remembering the courageous and inspiring example that many Egyptian Muslims showed in early January when they offered themselves as human shields, protecting fellow Egyptians who are Christians.
9.04 — While the US State Department is organizing the evacuation of American citizens from Egypt (even though the US acknowledges that there have been no signs of hostility towards Americans), Al Jazeera reports that some tourists from several countries, rather than trying to leave have instead joined the revolution. There are claims that as many as eight million Egyptians across the country are now protesting, calling for Mubarak to stand down. As many as two million are now gathered in Tahrir Square in the center of Cairo.
8.30 — Al Jazeera: Opposition leaders say they will enter into dialogue with Vice President Omar Suleiman after Mubarak stands down.
Simon Tisdall writes: “Suleiman is, in effect, heading a military junta at this point, with all the principal civilian power positions – the presidency, the vice-presidency, the premiership, the defence and interior ministries – held by former senior officers, and with the military itself in full support.
“Mubarak is now reduced to the role of figurehead, sheltering behind this clique. But they will not sacrifice him if they can avoid it. There will be no ignominious flight to Saudi Arabia, like Tunisia’s deposed president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Mubarak’s pride won’t allow it. The military’s pride won’t allow it.”
New York Times — Obama sends envoy, Frank G. Wisner, to meet Mubarak. No word on what if any message he’s carrying.
Scenes from Tahrir Square:
Interview with anti-government protester at Tahrir Square:
Ahdaf Soueif writes: “Today we have rejected the passivity our rulers have been imposing on us. Our country’s security is being provided by its citizenry. People have automatically taken over the running of their neighbourhoods. On the streets there is unfailing courtesy. The atmosphere in the square sit-ins is celebratory and inclusive.”
Al Jazeera — Erdogan calls for Mubarak to stand down:
EU calls for an orderly transition to a broad-based government:
Bloomberg — The Washington lobbyists in bed with Mubarak
Steven Cook writes: “If anyone ever doubted it, recent events highlight that the armed forces is the pillar of the regime. The National Democratic Party no longer exists. Big business has fled. The police (remember all those arguments about how the police supplanted the military?) forces have collapsed. Only the military remains and thus far they don’t seem to be budging. We are getting into existential territory. The result could be a drawn out stalemate with the military pursuing a holding action while Omar Soleiman’s intelligence service tries to split the opposition. These guys are brutal, but not dumb.”
Helena Cobban writes: “There are many objective reasons why Washington has been unable to intervene to prop up its longtime ally. What, after all, could Washington have hoped to do? It has no strike force of its own capable of swooping in and beating back the protesters, in the way that the British or French empires might have attempted in similar circumstances 100 years ago. And in an era in which protesters can immediately hold up for the cameras of the global media tear gas shells or rubber-coated steel bullets that clearly signal “Made in the USA,” there is not a lot of indirect help Washington could have given Mubarak’s security forces, either.”
Jeremy Scahill writes: “The real threat Al Jazeera poses to authoritarian regimes is in its unembedded journalism. That is why the Bush Administration viewed Al Jazeera as a threat, it is why Mubarak’s regime is trying to shut it down and that is why the network is so important to the unfolding revolutions in the Middle East. It is the same role the network plays in reporting on the disastrous US war in Afghanistan.”
Wadah Khanfar, Director General, Al Jazeera Network, says:
As I write, Egyptian President Mubarak is closing our offices and arresting our journalists. The Egyptian government has removed Al Jazeera from NileSat, the state-owned satellite carrier, delaying our ability to be found on the dial in Egypt and North Africa. We have reappeared through other carriers, while instructions on how to find us go viral across the Internet.
Elsewhere, in the United States, Al Jazeera faces a different kind of blackout, based largely on misinformed views about our content and journalism. Some of the largest American cable and satellite providers have instituted corporate obstacles against Al Jazeera English. We are on the air and on the major cable system in the nation’s capital, and some of America’s leading policymakers in Washington, D.C., have told me that Al-Jazeera English is their channel of choice for understanding global issues. But we are not available in the majority of the 50 states for much of the general public.
We believe all Americans, not just those in senior governmental positions, could benefit from having the option to watch Al-Jazeera English — or not to watch us — on their television screens.
We know the demand is there. We have seen a 2000 percent increase in hits on our English-language website, and more than 60 percent of that traffic originates in the United States. We have seen Jeff Jarvis, in the pages of the Huffington Post, make the case publicly that many are making privately. While millions of Americans have turned to the Internet and to Internet-connected-devices, many more millions should have the freedom to flip to our channel on their remotes — especially when the Middle East is on everyone’s mind.
As long as the masses in Egypt and in the entire Arab world continue seeing the images of tyranny and violence from the occupied territories, Israel will not be able to be accepted, even it is acceptable to a few regimes.
The Egyptian regime became an ally of the Israeli occupation. The joint siege of Gaza is irrefutable proof of that. The Egyptian people didn’t like it. They never liked the peace agreement with Israel, in which Israel committed itself to “respect the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” but never kept its word. Instead, the people of Egypt got the scenes of Operation Cast Lead.
It is not enough to have a handful of embassies in order to be accepted in the region. There also have to be embassies of goodwill, a just image and a state that is not an occupier. Israel has to make its way into the hearts of the Arab peoples, who will never agree to the continued repression of their brothers, even if their intelligence ministers will continue to cooperate with Israel.
If there’s one thing shared by all factions of the Egyptian opposition, it is their seething hatred of Israel. Now their representatives will rise to power, and Israel will find itself in a difficult situation. Neither will anything remain of the virtual achievement that Netanyahu often paraded – the alliance with the “moderate” Arab regimes against Iran. A real alliance with Egypt and its sister-states can only be based on the end of the occupation, as desired by the Egyptian people, and not on a common enemy, as an interest of its regime.
So what has happened so far? A corrupt president in Tunisia flees, to cheers from around the world. Protests erupt in Egypt, and gloom descends. Protests are held in Iran, and the world cheers. A prime minister is deposed in Lebanon, to fear and dread. An Iraqi president is overthrown in a military offensive, and it’s called democracy. Raucous demonstrations take place in Yemen, and they’re called interesting but not terribly important.
Why the different reactions? This is supposedly the new Middle East the West always wanted, but something still isn’t working out. This isn’t the Middle East they dreamed of in the Bush administration, and not what nourished Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wildest dreams. A new, unexpected player has appeared: the public.
Up to now, the world has been divided into two camps: “complicated” countries where the government represents the public and every decision is subject to public oversight, and “easy” countries where business is conducted at the top and the public is just window dressing. The dividing line between the two has always been starkly clear. Everything north of the Mediterranean belonged to the first group and everything to the south and east to the second.
The north had political parties and trade unions, a left wing and a right wing, important intellectuals, celebrities who shaped public opinion, and of course, there was public opinion itself. In the south the division was simple. It was the distinction between moderates and extremists, meaning pro-Westerners and anti-Westerners.
If you’re a Saudi king who buys billions of dollars of American weapons, you’re pro-Western and therefore entitled to continue to rule a country without a parliament, one where thieves’ hands are amputated and women aren’t allowed to drive. If you’re an Egyptian president who supports the peace process, you’re pro-Western and have permission to continue to impose emergency rule in your country, jail journalists and opposition members, and fix elections.
The events of the last few days in Egypt – apparently the most important regional development since the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Egyptian-Israeli peace deal of 1979 – are also an expression of the decision-makers’ nightmare, the planners and intelligence agents in Israel.
While in other countries many are watching with satisfaction at what looks to be possibly the imminent toppling of a regime that denied its citizens their basic rights, the Israeli point of view is completely different.
The collapse of the old regime in Cairo, if it takes place, will have a massive effect, mainly negative, on Israel’s position in the region. In the long run, it could put the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan in danger, the largest strategic assets after the support of the United States.
The changes could even lead to changes in the IDF and cast a dark cloud over the economy.
Western intelligence in general and Israeli intelligence in particular did not foresee the scope of change in Egypt (the eventual descriptor “revolution” will apparently have to wait a little longer). Likewise, almost all of the media analysis and academic experts got it wrong.
In the possible scenarios that Israeli intelligence envisioned, they admittedly posited 2011 as a year of possible regime change – with a lot question marks – in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but a popular uprising like this was completely unexpected.
More than this, in his first appearance at a meeting last Wednesday of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee the new head of military intelligence Major General Aviv Kochavi said to member of Knesset, “There are currently no doubts about the stability of the regime in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is not organized enough to take over, they haven’t managed to consolidate their efforts in a significant direction.”
If the Mubarak regime is toppled, the quiet coordination of security between Israel and Egypt will quickly be negatively affected. It will affect relations between Cairo’s relationship with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, it will harm the international forces stationed in Sinai.
It will mean the refusal of Egypt to continue to allow the movement of Israeli ships carrying missiles through the Suez canal, which was permitted for the last two years, according to reports in the foreign press, in order to combat weapons smuggling from Sudan to Gaza. In the long run, Egypt’s already-cold peace treaty with Israel will get even colder.
From the perspective of the IDF, the events are going to demand a complete reorganization. For the last 20 years, the IDF has not included a serious threat from Egypt in its operational plan.
In the last several decades, peace with Cairo has allowed the gradual thinning out of forces, the lowering of maximum age for reserve duty and the diversion of massive amounts of resources to social and economic projects.
The IDF military exercises focused on conflict with Hezbollah and Hamas, at most in collusion with Syria. No one prepared with any seriousness for a scenario in which an Egyptian division would enter Sinai, for example.
If the Egyptian regime falls in the end, a possibility that seemed unbelievable only two or three days ago, the riots could easily spill over to Jordan and threaten the Hashemite regime. On Israel’s two long peaceful borders there will then prevail a completely different reality.
“No internet, no SMS, what is next? Mobile phones and land lines? So much for stability. #Jan25 #Egypt” tweets CNN’s Ben Wedeman.
The shutdown came shortly after the release of this AP video showing a protester being gunned down.
With major protests just hours away, scheduled to follow Friday morning prayers, Issandr El Amrani reports:
I have received eyewitness reports from three people that Central Security Forces (the riot control police) are pulling out of multiple locations in Cairo. Plainclothes security has been seen at various locations pouring gasoline on vehicles and setting them on fire, also trying to burn storefronts in the following Downtown Cairo locations:
Falaki Square
Omraneya
Near the American University in Cairo
Earlier in the day, I received an eyewitness report from a friend in Downtown Cairo (near Champollion Street) that policemen were loading vans with clubs, nails, metal bars and other objects that could be used as weapons by Baltaguiya, the hired thugs sometimes used by police to attack protestors.
Anonymous leaflets circulating in Cairo also provide practical and tactical advice for mass demonstrations, confronting riot police, and besieging and taking control of government offices.
Signed “long live Egypt”, the slickly produced 26-page document calls on demonstrators to begin with peaceful protests, carrying roses but no banners, and march on official buildings while persuading policemen and soldiers to join their ranks.
The leaflet ask recipients to redistribute it by email and photocopy, but not to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter, which are being monitored by the security forces.
Alaa Al Aswany, the Arab world’s bestselling novelist, describes his experience of participating in the demonstrations.
It was an unforgettable day for me. I joined the demonstrators in Cairo, along with the hundreds of thousands across Egypt who went on to the streets on Tuesday demanding freedom and bravely facing off the fearsome violence of the police. The regime has a million and a half soldiers in its security apparatus, upon which its spends millions in order to train them for one task: to keep the Egyptian people down.
I found myself in the midst of thousands of young Egyptians, whose only point of similarity was their dazzling bravery and their determination to do one thing – change the regime. Most of them are university students who find themselves with no hope for the future. They are unable to find work, and hence unable to marry. And they are motivated by an untameable anger and a profound sense of injustice.
I will always be in awe of these revolutionaries. Everything they have said shows a sharp political awareness and a death-defying desire for freedom. They asked me to say a few words. Even though I’ve spoken hundreds of times in public, this time it was different: I was speaking to 30,000 demonstrators who were in no mood to hear of compromise and who kept interrupting with shouts of “Down with Hosni Mubarak”, and “The people say, out with the regime”.
I said I was proud of what they had achieved, and that they had brought about the end of the period of repression, adding that even if we get beaten up or arrested we have proved we are not afraid and are stronger than they are. They have the fiercest tools of repression in the world at their disposal, but we have something stronger: our courage and our belief in freedom. The crowd responded by shouting en masse: “We’ll finish what we’ve begun!”
Mohamed ElBaradei, who many in Egypt are calling a latecomer to the revolution, returned to Cairo from Vienna on Thursday.
“This is a critical time in the life of Egypt and I have come to participate with the Egyptian people,” he said. “The regime has not been listening.
“If people, in particular young people, if they want me to lead the transition, I will not let them down. My priority right now … is to see a new regime and to see a new Egypt through peaceful transition.
“I advise the government to listen to the people and not to use violence. There’s no going back.”
In reference to reports from commentators who point to the apparently small role that the Muslim Brotherhood has played in the Egyptian intifada so far, Jonathan Wright says:
From my own experience on the streets (see my earlier reports passim), I believe people are understimating the level of participation by members of the Brotherhood, though I will readily concede that they have not taken part at full strength and at a level which reflects their demographic weight. There are several possible and obvious reasons for this. Let me offer a few of them:
The Brotherhood, from long experience of confrontation with the Egyptian authorities, is always wary of commitment to street protests. It will calibrate its level of participation to its assessment of the chances of success. If it overreaches, it runs the risk of a massive crackdown. For the moment, probably rightly, it is not convinced that the protests will overthrow the regime.
The Brotherhood knows that the world (especially the United States and Europe) are watching events in Egypt closely. If the protests appear to be Brotherhood-led, the government will feel free to use much more brutal methods to disperse protesters. For the moment it suits the Brotherhood’s interests to give the impression that there is a broad coalition united against Hosni Mubarak, including liberals and leftists. This explains why Brotherhood members who have taken part in the protests have refrained from chanting slogans with religious connotations. The impression of a broad coalition also helps domestically — if the Brotherhood take the lead, it would frighten off some of the other groups.
At Wired, David Kravets puts the significance of social media and the internet in perspective.
Don’t call it a Twitter Revolution just yet. Sure, protesters in the Middle East are using the short-messaging service — and other social media tools — to organize. And yes, there are sporadic reports coming out of Egypt that the Mubarak regime has shut off Internet access — despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call “not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including social media.”
But don’t confuse tools with root causes, or means with ends. The protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are against dictators who’ve held power — and clamped down on their people — for decades. That’s the fuel for the engine of dissent. The dozen or more protesters that self-immolated in Egypt didn’t do it for the tweets.
“It’s about years of repression and dictatorship. Revolutions existed before Twitter and Facebook,” Issandr el-Amrani, a Cairo-based writer and activist, says in a telephone interview from Tunisia. “It’s really not much more complicated than this.”
Only about a quarter of the Egyptian populace is online, el-Amrani estimates. So street protests have grown the old fashioned way: via leaflets and spontaneous amalgamation.
“I’ve seen a lot of small groups of people wandering the streets and people spontaneously joining them. At every house, they would yell, ‘Come Down,’” says an expert on Middle Eastern censorship in an interview from Cairo.
The source, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution, added: “This is much, much bigger than Twitter and Facebook.”
Rising food prices, corruption, endemic poverty, high levels of youth unemployment and authoritarian governance are common factors linking street protests currently raging through the Arab world from Algeria to Egypt.
But as seasoned Middle East analysts such as the Financial Times‘s Roula Khalaf have noted, grassroots opposition to the increasingly prevalent practice of dynastic succession or tawrith – inherited rule – among non-monarchical, secular regimes is also fuelling the unrest. Across the region, Arab rulers are seeking to perpetuate their rule by passing on power to favoured sons or other male family members. But such cosy succession schemes are anathema to demonstrators pushing for expanded democratic rights. They also underscore the low status afforded to women.
After this month’s successful intifada in Tunisia, which overthrew the self-perpetuating ruling family, would-be dauphins, pretenders and heirs-apparent throughout the Middle East are wondering whether their dynastic great expectations may yet be thwarted.
There’s a thin line between well-organized and over-organized. On the one hand, the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood will be joining tomorrow’s regime-crushing demonstrations in Egypt looks likely to bring mass mobilization to a level that even an authoritarian government lacks the power to stop. At the same time, the fact that the Islamist movement has waited this long to join the action calls into question its capacity to lead the revolution and dominate a new government.
After decades of political apathy in this society of 80m people where few bothered to vote and protests usually drew tiny numbers, the explosion of anger has also taken the country’s opposition politicians by surprise.
Although the demonstrations are essentially leaderless, organised by youth activists on the internet, the opposition is now scrambling to use the opportunity to press for an end to the Mubarak era.
Politicians in Cairo say the National Association for Change headed by Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate and former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was due to land in Cairo last night, will emerge from the Egyptian “intifada”, or uprising, with enhanced credibility. But whether the regime will allow Mr ElBaradei to assume a leadership role remains to be seen.
The national association comprises several leading political figures and intellectuals, youth groups like April 6 which has been instrumental in mobilising demonstrations through the internet and a few political parties, including representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Islamist group is considered the movement with the largest grassroots support in the country but has always been reluctant to provoke the regime. It gave only timid support to the youth activists’ call for a “day of wrath” on Tuesday, though it is calling for participation in the rallies that are planned on Friday.
Opposition leaders say Mr ElBaradei, in particular, has played a crucial role in encouraging young Egyptians in their activism. He returned to Egypt a year ago, after living abroad for three decades, amid activists’ calls on him to run against Mr Mubarak in the September presidential elections.
His response was that he would heed the calls if the constitution was changed to allow independent candidates. Recent amendments to the constitution, as it stands today, give the ruling National Democratic party of Mr Mubarak control over the presidential election process.
Mr ElBaradei’s contribution, say opposition leaders, was to articulate the calls for reform and demonstrate that there are alternatives to Mr Mubarak. “No one can claim this wave . . . but what ElBaradei said and did helped light the flame,” said Osama el-Ghazali Harb of the Democratic Front party, which is part of Mr ElBaradei’s National Association. “He put forward the demands of the opposition and he gave them international attention.”
Issam el-Erian, a brotherhood leader, concurs. “El Baradei had a big role in starting this wave,” he says. “The system was always saying there is no alternative and the only one is the Ikhwan (Brotherhood), but he offered an alternative, and he has a Nobel prize, so he’s a respectable alternative.”
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“The Iranian nation has become a model for the other nations through its resistance and insistence on Islam and Islamic establishment and due to the eye-catching progress it has made on this path throughout the last 32 years,” 
