Free Alaa Abd el-Fattah from Egyptian prison: symbol of the 2011 youth revolution, he has been on a hunger strike for 200 days.

COP27 climate change conference: The struggle against climate change cannot be separated from the struggle for human rights.

Protest vigil at the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv | Thursday November 10, 5:00 p.m

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COP27, the global climate summit, opened on November 6 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where Egyptian President el-Sisi is hosting over 100 heads of state. While world leaders are coming to Egypt to discuss the planet’s future, tens of thousands of political activists are languishing in Egyptian prisons.

The most prominent of them, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, expanded his hunger strike on COP27’s opening day and is now also refraining from water. There is a danger that within a few days this will lead to his death, since for more than 200 days he has been on a partial hunger strike (consuming only 100 calories a day), which has greatly weakened his body.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah was one of the most prominent activists in the 2011 Arab Spring. Since then he has been imprisoned repeatedly, continuing his activism in the intervals and publishing a book of articles in English. In 2019 he was released after serving five years for participating in a non-violent demonstration in Cairo. Within a few months he was again arrested and tried a second time in a military court, this time together with his lawyer, Muhammad Albaker, and activist Mohamed (Oxygen) Ibrahim. Alaa was sentenced to 5 years in prison and his two friends to 4 years. The charge: publishing false information on the Internet.

Alaa Abd el-Fattah has British as well as Egyptian citizenship. Despite this, Wadi Natrun prison authorities prevent him from receiving a visit from British Embassy representatives. In addition, and contrary to Egyptian law, the authorities deny him access to newspapers, books and radio.

A large-scale international public campaign has been going on for the past few months, in parallel to the hunger strike started by Alaa in April. Alaa’s mother and sisters, who are also central activists in Egypt’s democratic movement, are leading the call to release him from prison. Pressure is also being directed at the British government.

Public pressure has intensified ahead of the climate summit. Prominent personalities, including dozens of Nobel laureates for literature and science, as well as environmental and human rights organizations, called on the Egyptian regime to release Alaa and his friends ahead of the conference. These calls emphasize the fact that the struggles against climate change and for human rights cannot be separated, and that it is unfitting for the climate conference to be held on Egyptian soil while the country’s authorities are brutalizing a freedom fighter like Alaa Abd el-Fattah.

Khalid Abdalla, an Egyptian-British film actor who is active in the campaign to free Alaa, explained in an interview with the Sky News on November 5: “We are very concerned about the future of the earth and humanity in light of the climate crisis, but if all the heads of state cannot guarantee justice for Alaa Abd el-Fattah and the Egyptian prisoners of conscience, how will they manage to save  humanity?”

For more details and media interviews, contact Yoav Gal Tamir, spokesperson of the Daam Party: +972-50-7859475

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After more than 100 days of hunger strike in Egyptian prison, Alaa Abd al-Fattah is determined to continue struggling until his rights, and those of tens of thousands of political prisoners falsely imprisoned by al-Sisi’s regime, are recognized.  Israel maintains close cooperation with the dictatorial regime in Cairo, ignoring its shocking human rights record. Lapid and Bennett, like Netanyahu, are interested in cooperating with al-Sisi so that he will help them control the region and silence the Palestinians.

On Sunday, July 10, the new Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, had a phone conversation with Egyptian President Abd al Fattah al-Sisi. According to the report, the conversation dealt with the expected visit of US President Biden to the area, the Palestinian issue, and an investigation into the unknown fate of dozens of Egyptian commandos buried in Latrun in 1948.

Not on the agenda was the condition of Alaa Abd al-Fattah in Wadi a-Natrun prison, although the leaders were conversing on the 99th day of his hunger strike. The fate of Egypt’s prisoners of conscience is not an issue that interests anyone in the Israeli political system. In the eyes of the Israeli public, including the circles of Labor and Meretz, the Arab world is divided into lovers and haters of Israel. Accordingly, al-Sisi is considered a positive factor with whom one should maintain good relations. What dictators do at home vis-à-vis their political opponents, many of whom have no connection to terrorist and violent activity, is a matter of indifference here.

Although al-Sisi’s regime now appears to be stable, it is Alaa Abd al-Fattah and his comrades who represent the future of Egypt and indeed, the future of the entire region.

Alaa (41) is a leader of the young revolutionaries, a symbol of the generation that led the January 2011 revolution. Since then he has been in and out of prison for a decade. In 2013 he was arrested by the military government and imprisoned for 5 years for participating in an illegal demonstration. After being released in early 2019, he remained in his home for several months, until he was imprisoned again and sentenced to an additional five years on a fabricated charge of “spreading false information.”

For years he was held in the notorious Tora Prison south of Cairo, where he was denied access to books and newspapers. Contrary to Egyptian law and human rights conventions, the authorities also deny him the possibility to leave his cell for walking and sports, and visits of one person were allowed only every few weeks. Although he holds both British and Egyptian citizenship, Egyptian authorities prevent British embassy representatives from visiting him.

In response Alaa decided to commence an open hunger strike, demanding improved conditions.  The strike is carried out according to the method of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, and includes consumption of 100 calories per day (the average daily consumption of an adult in a state of inactivity is 2,400 calories). Begun in early April this year, it has been going on for more than 100 days.

About a month after the start of the strike, because of public pressure from within Egypt and the international arena, Alaa was transferred out of Tora Prison to Wadi a-Natrun Prison northwest of Cairo. Here the conditions are slightly improved. For example, he was allowed a mattress after being forced to sleep on exposed concrete for years. Yet Egyptian authorities still refuse his main demands, and do not allow him to receive visits from family, lawyers, or members of the British embassy.

Alaa Abd al-Fattah belongs to a revolutionary family. His sister Sanaa was imprisoned for 18 months and only recently released. His mother, Dr. Laila Soueif , is a lecturer in chemistry at Cairo University. She has accompanied him for ten years, visiting him regularly and speaking bravely for the freedom of the Egyptian people. His father, the lawyer Ahmad Saif al-Islam Abd al-Fattah died in 2014, while Alaa was in prison. During the Mubarak regime he was known as a leading jurist and human rights fighter; in 1999 he cofounded the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a human rights group which he headed for years.

In 2021 Alaa published a book of articles in English entitled You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, in which he reviews years of struggle by the youth of Egypt’s Al-Shabab revolution.

Egyptian prisons – Torture and neglect resulted in the deaths of many

The call for the release of Alaa Abd al-Fattah has become a banner of the struggle against the al-Sisi, who is estimated to hold some 60,000 people in his prisons because of their views.

In anticipation of Biden’s visit to the Middle East and his meeting with al-Sisi in Saudi Arabia, the New York Times published a comprehensive investigation into arbitrary arrests in Egypt. The article was published on July 16 under the headline “Egypt’s Revolving Jailhouse Door: One Pretrial Detention After Another.”

This is a comprehensive investigation that relies on the testimonies of volunteer lawyers who come daily to the courts in Cairo and elsewhere to locate detainees whose families have lost contact with them. These lawyers, together with the family members, prepare endless lists of detainees about whom the Egyptian authorities withhold information.

The investigation shows a Kafkaesque reality of pre-trial detention that lasts two years, after which new charges are often filed against the detainee. According to the report, the despair and difficult conditions have caused the deaths of hundreds of detainees since al-Sisi came to power.

Amnesty International also recently published a report on the extent of human rights violations in Egypt under the heading Egypt: Flawed investigation into death in custody missed opportunity for justice. The report focuses on the deaths of inmates held without trial (at least 52 deaths in 2021), citing credible reports that their deaths resulted from torture, abuse and denial of health services.

Torture and abuse are used especially during the interrogation phase and the first period of detention, as part of an attempt to extract confessions and punish dissidents. Human Rights Watch, as well as a public inquiry conducted by UN Committee Against Torture, found in separate investigations that torture in Egypt is systematic and widespread.

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Since Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon’s last visit to Washington, tension between Israel and the White House has only increased. The State Department and the White House refused to have anything to do with Yaalon, who once accused Secretary of State John Kerry of having a “messianic fervor,” and he was left talking shop with his US counterpart, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. For the others, he has become a persona non grata. This boycott of the Israeli defense minister caught most of the headlines, but the important interview Yaalon gave to the Washington Post, appearing on the paper’s website on October 24, was mostly ignored. This interview reveals that the Israeli government has buried Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to the two-state idea.

In the interview, Yaalon was explicitly asked if he believed in the two-state solution. His reply was military in its brevity: “You can call it the new Palestinian empire. We don’t want to govern them, but it is not going to be a regular state for many reasons.” When the interviewer asked what he meant by a Palestinian empire, Yaalon replied: “Autonomy. It is going to be demilitarized.” There are two reasons for this, according to Yaalon. Firstly, any territory vacated by Israel will be taken over by Hamas. Secondly, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is no partner for peace because he refuses to recognize the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Thus Yaalon takes us back 30 years to when Israel, under Menachem Begin’s leadership, held negotiations with Anwar Sadat’s Egypt over the establishment of Palestinian autonomy – without Palestinian participation.

Netanyahu’s vision

In his recent Knesset speech, Netanyahu substantiated Yaalon’s words. It turns out he is not in despair at all about the political dead-end; on the contrary, he is grasping the changes in the Arab world hungrily, and is greatly encouraged by the new regime in Egypt, which resembles Sadat’s regime: “Because there is hope, change is taking place, slowly but clearly, important change in the central states of the Arab world, who see eye to eye with Israel on many of the challenges we face. They understand that the greatest dangers for them and for us come from radical Islam. Together with them, we will continue to explore possibilities for advancing regional solutions, which can help solve our conflict with the Palestinians. It has always been said that an arrangement with the Palestinians would improve our relations with the Arab world, and there is something in that. But there is also another truth – an arrangement with the Arab world can help us settle our relations with the Palestinians. A regional settlement would benefit everyone.”

According to Netanyahu’s understanding of reality following the Arab Spring, Israel has enemies in common with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. The Brotherhood is the main enemy of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, while Shiite Iran aspires to regional hegemony at the expense of the Sunni states. In Netanyahu’s view, these are positive developments which may enable him to reach a regional settlement while skirting the Palestinian issue. Later, he will impose autonomy on them, as Sadat did.

Netanyahu’s understanding of reality is in direct opposition to that of Europe and the US, who see recent developments in the region as no less than a disaster. From their point of view, Saudi Arabia is trying to prevent democratic change in the region, as expressed in the Arab Spring, and was behind the military coup in Egypt and the murderous suppression of the Egyptian opposition. Media in the US publish information almost daily about serious human rights violations in Egypt and continuously condemn Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime, which has become Israel’s “strategic” ally. In the opinion of the West, the situation in Egypt suggests that Sisi’s fate will be no different from Sadat’s, and that he is leading the country to national and economic disaster.

From the Oslo Accords to autonomy

Netanyahu’s path has no international support because it relies on regimes which are waging a rearguard battle against the democratic forces of change. For this reason it is untenable. There is not a single state in the region or in the world willing to support the Netanyahu-Yaalon vision, because it means the death of the Oslo Accords and all that this entails. Oslo was a response to the Begin-Sadat autonomy plan, and it gave a partial but insufficient answer to the demands of the Palestinians during the first Intifada. Oslo was an interim solution which was to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, but Israel had no intention of fulfilling its side of the deal by reaching a permanent settlement: it has never indicated what the permanent borders of the future state would be, because the government was not prepared to confront the settlers, and it left other critical issues unsolved such as the fate of Jerusalem.

The Oslo Accords also determined the economic mechanisms that enabled the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which relies almost entirely on foreign aid. The US and Europe funded the wages of the police and civil service as well as economic development projects and infrastructure. But they did this only as long as they believed the aim was to pave the way towards a Palestinian state, and not to shore up autonomy under Israeli occupation. This arrangement was very convenient for Israel: the US trained Palestinian police officers who acted in “security coordination” with Israel, while the Israeli governments strengthened their hold on the West Bank undisturbed, through massive construction in the settlements. However, Netanyahu decided that his political survival was more important than anything else, and he’s killing the goose that laid the golden egg. By casting Abu Mazen in the mold of enemy of the Jewish people and supporter of terror, he has also cast doubt on the continued existence of the PA and of security coordination with Israel.

Now Netanyahu and Yaalon are aiming to go even further. Making the PA an “empire which means autonomy” – the mountain that gave birth to a mouse – puts an end to the idea of a Palestinian state and to the PA itself. So far, there has been no Palestinian leader willing to head an autonomous entity in the shadow of occupation. The separation barrier, separate buses for Jews and Palestinians, land expropriation, magnetic cards, limitations on freedom of movement and arbitrary arrests create a reality which no Palestinian leader can accept. Yaalon is fooling himself and all Israelis, since there is no way of compelling Palestinians to accept autonomy while not continuing to rule over them. Israel has been controlling the Palestinians for almost 50 years, from determining their ID numbers to controlling the water they drink and the electricity they use. The false reality it created through the PA is coming to an end.

In despair, Abu Mazen does all he can to escape Israel’s grasp by what are generally called “unilateral steps,” crawling towards the UN where he will meet the US administration, which will send him away empty-handed as usual. It will refuse to recognize a Palestinian state and refuse to compel Israel to leave the West Bank. The frustrated Americans have no option but to grit their teeth, curse Netanyahu, call him a spineless coward, and… veto Palestinian demands. The strategic alliance between Israel and the US has so far only perpetuated the conflict, and it is now bringing Abu Mazen’s political demise ever closer, together with that of the PA itself. Bankrolling states are warning that if this should happen, they will cease funding the PA. The bill for the occupation will have to be paid by Israeli citizens, who even now find it hard to make ends meet. It is true that Netanyahu benefits from the fact that he has no opposition within Israel, but he faces increasing international criticism as well as millions of Palestinians who are not willing to dance to his tune.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

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[Published in Hebrew on July 30, 2014, before Hamas captured an Israeli soldier]

The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for three weeks already, and no one knows when it will end. It has killed more than 1,100 people in the Gaza Strip, of whom 80% were civilians, including 220 children and 120 women. It has wounded thousands and displaced some 400,000. It has destroyed water and electricity infrastructures and hundreds of homes. But like most wars, it did not begin when the first shot was fired. We may take as its starting point June 15, when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Hamas to be responsible for the abduction of three yeshiva students in the Hebron area, although Hamas denied all involvement. Netanyahu used the abduction as a pretext to make war on Hamas, re-arresting Palestinians who had been released from Israeli prisons as part of the 2011 deal freeing Gilad Shalit. Netanyahu provoked Hamas, and now he is requesting help from the US, Egypt, and even Abu Mazen to get him out of the hole he dug.

The war that was not meant to be

Netanyahu was motivated by narrow political considerations. His war on Hamas had nothing to do with Gaza. The government of Israel had just abandoned nine months of futile talks with Abu Mazen, mediated by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Israel’s refusal to discuss core issues, particularly borders and the dismantling of settlements, had caused the talks to break down. Moreover, Netanyahu had violated his promise to release a group of Palestinian political prisoners. As a result, the White House blamed Israel for the breakdown, and Israel became isolated on the world stage. This was the moment Hamas had waited for: It approached Abu Mazen to form a Palestinian unity government. While Netanyahu reacted by calling Abu Mazen the “head of a terror group,” the US and Europe expressed support for the unity government.

According to Netanyahu’s calculations, the current war was not supposed to happen. Hamas was almost finished: The military coup in Egypt had brought down the elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’ main friend there. Egypt’s new president, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, added Hamas to the list of terror organizations. He did all he could to crush it, destroying the smuggling tunnels between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, as well as closing the above-ground Rafah border-crossing. In the new situation, Hamas’ ardent wish was that Abu Mazen would take responsibility for paying the wages of Hamas government officials and act to lift the siege on Gaza. But Netanyahu, certain that Hamas was on its last legs, took advantage of the abduction of the three students to begin the above-mentioned arrests in the West Bank. He also pressured the US to prevent Qatar from sending money to Hamas that could have been used to pay public servants in the Strip. Today the magnitude of his error is apparent. Hamas has bounced back thanks to Netanyahu’s generous assistance, while Israel’s citizens and thousands of Gazans are paying the price.

The military operation began on July 8. For an entire week, Israel bombed the Strip from the air, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing 250 Palestinians, including women and children. Israel’s Iron Dome rocket-defense system held its own against Hamas rockets and prevented Israeli losses, while the Palestinians received the full force of the onslaught. Netanyahu and his partners – Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz – were sure the war was winding down. On July 15, Egypt came up with its ceasefire proposal: stop fighting now, talk later. Israel accepted it, because it suited its policy of “quiet in exchange for quiet.” The Egyptian proposal was like a gift for Israel, but it signified punishment and surrender for Hamas, because General Sisi was not prepared to guarantee the opening of the Rafah crossing or the lifting of the blockade on Gaza.

Hamas’ rejection of the ceasefire proposal supplied Netanyahu with an excuse to step up the operation, and he sought an acceptable justification for sending in limited ground forces. It seems the US was not willing to give him a blank check, so Netanyahu found a new issue – the tunnels. Since July 18, Israeli TV channels have brought up this subject again and again, until every Israeli has become an expert on the technical intricacies of tunnel construction and the difficulties involved in digging them.

The leftwing is with Netanyahu… the US is not

Using the tunnels, Netanyahu has managed to unite the entire nation behind his war, from the ultranationalist settlers to liberal-left Meretz. The incursion of ground troops created an Israeli consensus which holds that this is Israel’s most justifiable war in many years. The sirens in Tel Aviv brought Hamas into every home, and Israelis were suddenly attracted to Netanyahu’s “balanced reasoning.” The Iron Dome intercepting Hamas rockets above the cities made people forget that it was Netanyahu who set the bloody ball rolling, and all the world’s wisest are having a hard time stopping it. Meretz fell in love with the Egyptian proposal and the possibility of resuscitating the “moderate axis,” which includes Abu Mazen, the Jordanian and Saudi Abdullahs, and of course General Sisi.

The celebration could have continued if two important factors had not arisen. First, unlike the previous Gaza incursion (“Cast Lead”), in which 10 Israeli soldiers died, the current war has claimed the lives of 53 soldiers so far. Second, the international community was not prepared to accept the images of death and devastation in Gaza. Two days after the start of the ground incursion, the magnitude of the destruction became apparent with the flattening of the Shijaiyah neighborhood. Kerry’s response, “A hell of a pinpoint operation,” expressed the revulsion felt around the world. For the first time in its history, Israel discovered that the US does not necessarily stand by it automatically.

Not only was the US administration disgusted by the images from Gaza, it also rejected the Egyptian proposal as the basis for ending the war. When Hamas presented the Qatar-Turkey proposal, which made a ceasefire dependent on lifting the Gaza blockade, the US located itself between the two proposals. For this, it was reviled by the entire political spectrum in Israel, including the leftwing, which had always sided with the US administration against Netanyahu’s government. This is a strange situation; after all, the elements – Egypt, Abu Mazen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and of course Israel – are all US allies. It is an internal “family dispute,” and there is no axis of evil against which to unite.

But in fact, the stand of the Obama administration is consistent. The Israeli Left fell in love with the “moderate” Arab camp, and embraced it in its struggle against the extreme Israeli Right, which refuses any political agreement; however, the US views the moderate camp as problematic and unable to bring regional stability. The US considers the Saudi regime to be a base for the Islamic fundamentalism that nurtured Bin Laden, while the Egyptian regime is seen as a caricature of the Mubarak regime, which came to power following a military coup and resulted in a harsh dictatorship. In contrast, the US sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderating influence on fundamentalist extremism (as represented by the Islamic State of Iran and Syria—ISIS). The US believes that the Brotherhood has deep roots in and significant influence on Arab society. It believes that under normal circumstances, the Brotherhood would be willing to play the democratic game, as Islamic parties do in Turkey and Tunisia. The US thinks that the path of General Sisi and his Saudi partner leads only to a dead end—to ongoing political instability, corruption and oppression—and that it fails to address the economic problems besetting Egypt.

Between harsh alternatives

US policy is based on cooperation with the Muslim Brotherhood. This explains US support for the Palestinian unity government against which Netanyahu has been waging an all-out battle. But Netanyahu has no alternative to Hamas or a Palestinian unity government. He himself fears Hamas’ total collapse, because ISIS, from the House of Saud, is likely to fill the vacuum; he therefore seeks a way out which will not compel him to make far-reaching concessions.

Thus those who want to strengthen Abu Mazen at Hamas’ expense, on the basis of the Egyptian initiative, find themselves in the same camp as Netanyahu. Only the Palestinian people can strengthen Abu Mazen, but the more that Israel and the Zionist Left embrace him, the more the Palestinian people reject him. At the same time, all those who want to strengthen Sisi at the expense of the Muslim Brotherhood, like many of the secular liberals in Egypt, are joining up with a murderous dictator. Currently, Egypt is negotiating an interim agreement, known as the “amended Egyptian initiative.” The US is trying to bring its quarrelsome partners back together and work out a compromise between Egypt and Qatar. The agreement being cooked up looks something like this: Abu Mazen will get control of the Rafah crossing; Hamas will get the blockade partially lifted; Sisi will earn himself some legitimacy; and Israel will get its yearned-for quiet. In the meantime, the residents of the Gaza Strip are suffering death and devastation for the third time since Hamas took control of the territory.

The war will eventually come to an end, but the problems underlying it will only get worse. The Occupation, source of all evil, will continue to shake up Israel again and again. Those who support Netanyahu’s “justified war,” including the Israeli Left and opinion makers in the media, forget that the world is sick of the Occupation, of gross violations of human rights, of closures and the Separation Wall, of the settlements and settlers, of the checkpoints, of bored soldiers who fire at students, and of the repeated destruction in Gaza.

Instead of waking up only when rockets are fired in its direction, Israeli society must take responsibility for the fact that the government imprisons the Palestinians in its name and embitters their lives. The wide-eyed innocence of many Israelis who repeat the mantra, “We got out of Gaza, so what do they want from us?” is sanctimonious hypocrisy. Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip unilaterally—while continuing to control the air, the sea, and most of the land gateways—as punishment for the Palestinians. It was an attempt to weaken the West Bank and divide the Palestinian people. Tricks like these—plus various alliances, military and technological superiority, and the Iron Dome—cannot purify what is rotten to the core. The Occupation must end and a peace agreement must be signed including both parts of the Palestinian people, those in the West Bank and those in Gaza. Only in this way will Israel regain international legitimacy, and only in this way will it halt its headlong rush towards catastrophe. The more it destroys the future of the Palestinian people, the more it will become a barbaric and Kahanist society.

– Translated by Yonatan Preminger

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On July 19, 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the resumption of talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The announcement did not come from Jerusalem or Ramallah, but from the Jordanian capital Amman, which has become the US State Department’s front line in the region. In the present tour, Kerry did not meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, because it was clear to all that Netanyahu was not the one who must make the decision. The ball was in the court of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen); he’s the one being asked to accept Israel’s familiar terms – talks with no preconditions, or in other words, talks for the sake of talks, as has been the norm since the Oslo Accords were signed.

For the last three years, Abbas has been against resuming negotiations with Israel as long as Netanyahu does not commit to halting the settlement project and to recognizing the pre-1967 borders as a basis for talks. Netanyahu, as we all know, rejected the Palestinian terms. This raises the question: has something changed in Israel’s position which opened its way to negotiations? For the answer, we must look to the changes in the region, especially the revolution in Egypt.

Saudi Arabia, Abu Mazen and the Egyptian revolution

Before Abu Mazen made his decision, Kerry met with 11 Arab foreign ministers, mostly from the Gulf states, in order to receive their blessing for the move. If we look at the details of that meeting, which received scant media coverage, we see that the agenda included the situation in Egypt. If we want evidence of this, note that immediately after Kerry’s announcement Jordan’s King Abdullah visited Cairo – the first leader to do so since the coup that brought down President Morsi. What’s the link between the situation in Egypt and the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority?

There is certainly a link, and it is very well known, but now the events in Egypt must be added to the equation, especially the defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood. Consider the following:

In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has managed to overcome the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria by forcing its own man, Ahmad Assi Jarba, onto the Syrian National Coalition. It was Saudi Arabia, likewise, that planned and funded the overthrow of Egypt’s elected leader, Morsi, helped by its bosom friend the Salafist al-Nour Party, which ditched its alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Just as the fall of Mubarak was a blow to Abu Mazen, so the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood is a blow to Hamas. Just as Abu Mazen lost his most important regional ally in Mubarak, now Hamas has lost its major card. Hamas was banished from Syria after expressing reservations about the massacres ordered by Assad, and it is now besieged on all sides: in the south by Egypt, in the north by Israel, and now by the Palestinian Authority, which has waited long to settle accounts with it.

Hamas faces an unusual wave of incitement from the leaders of the Egyptian National Salvation Front, which supported the military coup. This group is using Hamas to undermine Morsi’s legitimacy; the Front accuses him of being too tolerant towards terror in the Sinai Peninsula, harming Egypt’s national security. The Tamaroud movement has also opened a front against the Brotherhood entitled “the war on terror,” thus endorsing the Egyptian security forces’ suppression of Brotherhood activists and leaders. At the same time, the Egyptian army is annihilating the “smuggling tunnels” between the Gaza Strip and Sinai, which constitute an important economic lifeline for the Strip.

Saudi Arabia sacrifices Palestine

When the Brotherhood leadership in Egypt sits behind bars, and when the Hamas leadership is besieged in the Gaza Strip, the time is ripe for Abu Mazen to tighten the noose on Hamas by cooperating with Israel. It will be remembered that Morsi took advantage of the last war in Gaza to get US support by brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas; immediately afterwards he made the famous declaration that put himself above the constitution (this declaration, by the way, marked the beginning of the end for his regime). In the same way, Saudi Arabia today is taking advantage of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to gain US support for the shady military coup in Egypt. Just as Morsi sacrificed Hamas to win US support for his totalitarian declaration, so Saudi Arabia is sacrificing the Palestinian cause to gain US support for its status in the region and the new regime in Egypt.

This strategy is doomed. With all due respect to the US, governments are dependent on popular support. If Morsi failed the aspirations of the Egyptian people,

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The Egyptian revolution of 2011 was a rare opportunity to drive the country towards the future by creating a democratic regime which would enable Egyptians to develop a political awareness. The Muslim Brotherhood is incapable of turning Egypt into a modern state, because its religious outlook directly opposes cultural and scientific freedom, while the oppression of women prevents Egypt from shaking off backwardness and social introversion. But this is no reason to support the generals and the military coup. The only way of contending with these issues is via democratic elections.

On July 7, the masses gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in an attempt to show the world that this was no ordinary military coup, but a correction to the revolution of January 25, 2011 that would lead Egypt to democracy. To enforce this picture, air force planes circled the skies over Cairo leaving trails of smoke in the colors of the Egyptian flag. The revolutionaries were angry with Obama because he didn’t give his blessing to the ousting of Morsi, and they pleaded with CNN to change its version and cease calling the events a coup.

But already by the following day the atmosphere had changed completely. The 51 victims, killed by the army as they demonstrated in front of the Republican Guard base where Morsi was being held, spoiled the party and brought the Egyptian nation and the world face to face with reality. The army and police explained that they had been attacked, but these explanations were insufficient. The world was not persuaded that the army had become the people’s army overnight. Straight after the massacre, the Salafist al-Nour Party and the Strong Egypt Party, which had split from the Muslim Brotherhood, announced they were leaving the coalition which supports the army. Al-Azhar, seat of Islamic learning, did the same. Egypt’s liberals, who gave their blessing to the overthrow, supported the army’s version and didn’t even bother to express sorrow at the deaths. While they halfheartedly called for a committee of inquiry, the army hurried to apportion blame and arrested 650 people associated with the Islamic faction suspected of terror acts.

The army: source of authority

The day after the killings, interim president Adly Mansour published a new constitutional order, basing his authority on the military order of July 3, 2013. He thus unequivocally revealed who really rules Egypt. The presidential order caused embarrassment among the political partners to the coup, especially the Tamarod movement and the National Salvation Front. They criticized the order, claiming it had been prepared by the army in secret and without consulting them. They were also concerned to discover that the order grants the interim president totalitarian authority.

While Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have already transferred 8 billion dollars in support of the new regime, in order to ensure the death of the Arab Spring which threatens the Saudi kingdom, the US administration is still dithering, unsure whether to define the events as a coup – which would mean the end of US aid. Israel’s call to continue the flow of support clearly demonstrates that for the Israelis and Americans, democracy in Egypt was never the issue – the most important thing was maintaining the Camp David peace agreement.

To make things easier for Obama, Mansour announced that new elections would be held within six months. But the absurdity is clear to all: how can free elections be held with the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood, as Obama demands, when the army is shutting down its offices and television channels and running a campaign of delegitimization, accusing them of terror? Thus the real intentions of the army, the National Salvation Front and Tamarod partners are exposed: to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from participating in elections, just as Mubarak had done before. The oft-repeated slogan since the unseating of Morsi has been, “There’s no going back.” But how can Egypt not go back if in six months’ time free elections are held and the Muslim Brotherhood is victorious, as it has been repeatedly since 2011?

Returning to the Mubarak era

The behavior of the “revolutionaries” shows clearly that democracy is of little interest to them. The appointment of Hazem el-Beblawi as prime minister indicates the regime’s intentions. Beblawi is a neoliberal economist whose role is to persuade the International Monetary Fund to support the regime and to dismantle the Egyptian system of food subsidies, which would lead to even greater poverty and hunger. The new regime has nothing to offer the workers’ movement, which is demanding a range of changes including an increase in the minimum wage. The stance taken by the National Salvation Front leader Mohamed el-Baradei shows just how much their position has changed: Baradei, who once demanded that the army withdraw from politics and spoke of human rights, is now granting the army a free hand. This is the same army that controls some 25% of the economy and is responsible for the killing of 51 Egyptian citizens as well as the undermining of freedom of association and freedom of speech.

Indeed, Egypt has returned to the old formula that ruled before the revolution. The Egyptian people are once again caught between Mubarak’s old regime, represented by the army and the liberals, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The television channels rapidly adjusted to the new situation; all speaking with one voice; and Mubarak’s spirit once again hovers over the Maspero Building from which official television is broadcast, just as it did for 30 long years. The position adopted by the leftist party and the Wafd Party in Mubarak’s days – better the army than the Muslim Brotherhood – once again reigns. The Egyptian people are caught in the middle, wallowing in poverty under the dictatorial and corrupt regime which makes citizens mere shadows lacking all rights – the same regime against which it rose up just two and a half years ago.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a symptom of Egypt’s problems, not the cause. Its rise to prominence is the result of 60 years of dictatorship, of rapid population growth, of poverty and illiteracy, of the collapse of crucial infrastructure, and of disconnection from the modern world. This is the cradle of the Islamic movement.

The weakness of the Left

The Egyptian revolution was a rare opportunity to drive the country towards the future by creating a democratic regime which would enable Egyptians to develop a political awareness. The Muslim Brotherhood is incapable of turning Egypt into a modern state, because its religious outlook directly opposes cultural and scientific freedom, while the oppression of women prevents Egypt from shaking off backwardness and social introversion. But this is no reason to support the generals and the military coup. The only way of contending with these issues is via democratic elections.

Egypt took the path of military coup not because of Morsi and Islamization, but because of the weakness of the Left and of the liberals. They didn’t believe they could win in free elections, they fear and loathe the poor because they can be bought for “a bag of sugar and a can of oil,” and thus they preferred to take Egypt back to the old regime. Moreover, their economic outlook is no different from that of the Islamists: both seek the support of the US and the IMF.

A revolution is not a quick fix; it is a long process of struggle between different worldviews, over programs to take Egypt forward. But the youth of Tamarod, the Left, and the Muslim Brotherhood have no such program. Nor does the army have a solution to Egypt’s pressing problems.

The future is uncertain of course, but it is impossible to erase the revolution of 2011 and the deep change of consciousness it wrought. The enormous rallies in Tahrir Square supporting the coup, and the rallies in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, should make it clear that one cannot ignore half a nation, and that the fighting between the two sides plays into the hands of the army. The choice is stark: either the two camps cooperate and set up a democratic regime to save Egypt, or the country will continue to rot under the burden of dictatorship for many long years. If the political forces don’t come to their senses, the Egyptian people will get rid of them. The Egyptian nation sparked the revolution of 2011; the political parties have merely sullied it. The youth of the revolution should create a revolutionary “roadmap” of their own, to save democracy and to ensure their future and the future of their nation.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

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The military operations in Gaza are a direct result of four years of time-wasting by Netanyahu’s right wing government, which persistently refused to negotiate an agreement to put an end to the conflict. During this time, this same government continued to build settlements in the occupied territories.

This latest military operation will not solve the security problems of Israel’s residents in the south. On the contrary, the operation will merely grant legitimacy to the Hamas government and its claims that Israelis not interested in peace. The operation weakens the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and makes his overtures to Israel the target of mockery and derision among the Palestinians.Israelis also putting Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood leadership in an awkward position, provoking President Mohammed Morsi.

Under cover of the warfare in Gaza, Netanyahu’s government is trying to marginalize demands for social justice and present the security issue as the only legitimate issue for public debate. Poverty, unemployment, the retrenchment of welfare services and of course the austerity program and budgetary cuts planned by Netanyahu’s future government are presented as irrelevant.

Furthermore, we must not ignore Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s maneuver in trying to use Gaza to win another term of office, as his prospects to gain a seat in the Knesset after he found out that his prospects to gain a seat in the January 2013 elections look poor.

Two sides will benefit from Israel’s military action: the rightwing government in Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza. The extremism on both sides will continue to thrive while the two peoples, who seek peace and social justice, will pay the heavy price.

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 It was 25 January 2011. Although, Shaimaa Abdel Rahman was spending her summer vacation in the coastal city of Alexandria, she decided to join the protests that were planned in almost every Egyptian city that day.

She didn’t know it then but she would participate in Egypt’s most important event in decades: the 25 January Revolution.

The 31-year-old teacher is one of millions of Egyptian women who played an active role during the revolution and the events that followed.

“I had never been politically active before the revolution, but I was always in the forefront of all the movements demanding the improvement of our
working conditions in my work place,” she says.

According to Mona Ezzat, an activist and leading figure of the Socialist Alliance Party, Egyptian women had participated in the protests and events that led to the revolution.

Ezzat says: “From 2006 on, Egypt witnessed a massive wave of social protests”.

Women, along with men, actively participated in different protests demanding not only improved working conditions, but also putting an end to the process of privatisation and rampant corruption in state-owned companies and factories.

This rising labour movement was one of the factors that radicalised Egyptians ahead of the 25 January Revolution.

During the 18-day sit-in in Tahir Square, Abdel Rahman met with activists from the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions.

“I met with Kamal Abu Eita whom I knew before as a political and labour activist. It was the first time to meet him face-to-face. I also got to know a number of teachers who were active as trade unionists in the Independent Teachers’ Union.”

From that day on, Abdel Rahman started her career as a trade unionist, participating in all activities aimed at improving working conditions for teachers.

 

Influential role

According to Ezzat, the rise of the independent trade union movement is one of the revolution’s most significant achievements.

“Unfortunately women’s issues are not among the movement’s priorities,” she laments.

“Men and women join forces to meet general objectives, though they never address women-related problems. Although women constitute a large proportion of the independent unions’ membership, their representation in leading positions is limited,” she explains.

The board of directors of the Independent Federation of Trade Unions is made up of 21 elected members, five of which are women (as rules state that 30 per cent of the board should be female).

Unfortunately, women did not achieve such positive results in the first parliamentary elections after the revolution, held in June. “Only 10 females succeeded in obtaining seats in the parliament out of 508 members,”Abdel Rahman says.

The parliamentary election on 16 and 17 June was one of the first indicators that the influential role played by women during the revolution is not being reflected in Egypt’s political scene.

Feminist activist Zizi Kheir suggests that both what we might call Islamic and civil parties undermined the participation of women in the elections.

“The elections law stated that each electoral list should have a woman on it, but it didn’t specify in which position,” she remarks.

“So women were always at the bottom of the lists, meaning there was very little room for them to enter the parliament, since the number of successful candidates from each list is determined by the percentage of votes each list gets, and they are chosen from [the] top down.”

 

Obstacles

Participating in the events of the revolution and the demonstrations that followed was not easy for Abdel Rahman.

“Coming from a conservative family made it difficult for me to take part in political activities. Sometimes I had to hide what I am doing, especially from my father,”

Almost one month after the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, the armed forces brutally broke up a peaceful sit-in in Tahrir square.

A number of female protestors were detained and subjected to virginity tests. For Abdel Rahman this was an attempt by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), to reinforce the traditionally-held idea (that a woman is little more than a body) to the revolutionaries.

“SCAF used humiliating virginity tests to intimidate revolutionaries. Sexual harassment during protests was also used for the same purpose,” she adds.

Fortunately, SCAF’s actions bore little fruit.

The protests continued – as did female participation in them.

Kheir considers this to be a clear indicator that the presence of women in the public sphere is strong enough to endure all attempts to end it, especially with the rise of conservative Islamist political parties.

“On 20 December 2011, Egypt witnessed what was described as ‘the biggest women’s demonstration’ since the 1919 revolution [against British occupation]. Thousands of women, joined by men, took to the streets condemning the assault and undressing of a female protester by military police. Women from different ages and social backgrounds participated in the demonstration under the slogan: ‘the military stole our revolution and women will restore it,’” Kheir says.

 

Waiting for change

“On 25 January, Egyptians took to the streets chanting ‘Bread, freedom, dignity’. And now, after the passage of a year and a half, they are still waiting for the fulfillment of their demands,” Ezzat says.

“Over the past few weeks in Egypt, several demonstrations were organised against the social and economic policies, along with a wave of workers strikes and sit-ins.  There is the potential to integrate womens issues in these social and political movements, provided a women’s movement is developed.”

For Abdel Rahman having a female strong presence in various organisations and trade unions is the first step towards integrating women’s issues into wider social and political movements.

“Our presence in different organisations is the best way to make us a real force on the ground, and enable us to stand in front of the government and fight for our demands.”

Ezzat proposes that NGOs working in the field of women’s rights should take the initiative for developing such movement, cooperating with political parties and movements.

“NGOs and [political] parties usually coordinate on specific issues, but they need to develop a comprehensive program addressing women’s issues in order to start building a women’s movement,”she says.

Abdel Rahman believes that women took a huge step forward during the revolution.

“It’s now very evident that we are equal partners in the revolutionary process. Egyptians could have not overthrown the old regime without the contribution of millions of women, and Egyptians won’t achieve the rest of their demands without them. It’s now time for us to acknowledge our power and to start pursuing our special demands,” she says.

 

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The movie is bad, the standard of living is worse

The Arab world hates America. Nobody denies this fact, but it’s not just the Arabs. The Iranians hate America, the Russians can’t stand America, and even Benjamin Netanyahu loathes America. Hatred for America is not unique to Arab genes – it is trans-cultural and trans-ethnic. However, the world also admires America to the same extent that it hates it, because America is an economic and military power. What is more, Hollywood has caused us to identify with America’s heroes – and as we well know, cinema has a hypnotic influence on the psychology of the masses.This influence was recently manifested in the violent events which led to the murder of the American ambassador to Libya and the siege of the American embassy in Cairo. Surprisingly, this influence did not stem directly from the movie slandering the Prophet, but was spread by rumors. After all, those who took to the streets to protest and burn are not great cinema-goers, and most are unable to afford a computer. It is enough that the infidel Americans insult the Prophet for them to rampage against anything associated with America or the West, even though the producer of the movie is in fact an Arab.

Islam in power

It’s interesting that these events broke out in Egypt after the Arab Spring had handed the regime to the Muslim Brotherhood on a silver platter. It’s also interesting that the Arab Spring endeared itself to the West, which admired the Egyptian and Tunisian youth who brought down the corrupt dictators. Of course, corruption and a regime of tycoons are not an exclusively Arab phenomenon, but in fact very western – and thus the East and West come together. However, this time those attacking and burning were not the educated Facebook youth, able to distinguish between a good movie and a cheap provocation whose only aim is to incite the masses. Those responding to the call to guard the Prophet’s honor came from remote villages, from neighborhoods of poverty, from the slums. These people were forgotten by the Arab Spring and abandoned on the margins of society: After the revolution, the main themes of the demonstrations and public discussions did not concern the problems of the poor, but rather issues like religion or secularity, democracy or Islam, the role of the Army and how to deal with the culprits of the Old regime. When the poor asked for something, they were accused of being selfish.

Commentators in the Arab media are united in their firm opposition to the violence. In Egypt some made the effort to find out who the protesters were, and noted soccer fans, the “Ultras,” residents of the poorest quarters, who are always present in clashes with the police. These youth were at the vanguard of the revolution, yet—judging from the daily Arabic press over the past year—the way the new regime treats them is no different from the way the old regime treated them: You’ve done your work, now get out.

Until recently, the slogan “Islam is the solution” had been used to incite millions of young people against the old regime, the infidel regime which had sold its soul to the American-Zionist Satan and squandered the state’s resources at the expense of the people. The trick worked; the Muslim Brotherhood won the hearts of the oppressed and now they are in power. Apparently, there is no need for demonstrations in front of the American embassy, because the new Islamic president can simply close it and declare war on America in the name of the Prophet, as bin Laden and the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

But this won’t happen. Mohammed Morsi as president is not the same as Morsi in opposition, and religious demagoguery has made way for state pragmatism. When the riots broke out, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to ride the wave and even called for a demonstration of millions in Tahrir Square. But a single telephone call from Obama worked wonders, and the demonstration was cancelled. While still in opposition, Morsi preached in the name of religion against the International Monetary Fund, because its loans bear interest—a thing forbidden by Islam. Today, Morsi requests financial aid from the IMF while asking the US to cancel a billion dollars of Egyptian debt and invest millions in the Egyptian economy. Then this awful movie appears and mars the celebrations.

“Islam is the solution” but capitalism is the means. Morsi faces a broken economy, and his regime is shaky. To rebuild the ruins left by the preceding regime, Morsi has no choice but to count on capitalists at home and abroad. He may be Islamic, but Morsi is first and foremost a capitalist; thus the riots in front of the American embassy are a direct challenge to his regime and expose its real face.

For years Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood sowed seeds of storm, and now they are reaping the hurricane. Those who made cynical use of the pain of the masses to undermine Mubarak’s regime see their extremist Islamist competitors using the same method against them. The moment Morsi turned his back on those he brainwashed in the past, he created a vacuum which was quickly filled by Islamists more extreme than he, people who see him as an infidel. If proof is needed, they can note how he turns to the IMF, cozies up to the West, and has even made haste to send an ambassador to Tel Aviv.

Walking the wire

Morsi is walking a very thin line. On the one hand, in an attempt to maintain his popularity, he asks Interpol to bring the filmmakers, who hold Egyptian citizenship, to justice. On the other hand, he sends pacifying signals to the West. But America will not accept mixed messages. Morsi is no longer in opposition, and Egypt, a nation of great strategic significance, must take a clear stand before it drags the whole region into anarchy. The US has frozen aid to Egypt until after the American presidential elections, leaving Morsi high and dry, while ensuring he does not fall into the flames ignited by the film.

Far from the headlines and the public gaze, Morsi also faces another equally urgent issue. Millions of teachers, production workers, bus drivers, doctors, university staff, students and parent committees have brought Egypt to a grinding halt. These are not the incensed masses releasing their frustrations by torching an embassy. These are the productive masses who keep the wheels of the economy turning, and who now demand social justice. The Muslim Brotherhood was quick to associate the Ultras with the striking workers, accusing the latter of receiving foreign aid and acting for foreign interests. However, the workers are making the same demands they made to Mubarak – the demands which led to his ouster.

The Muslim Brotherhood pleads, “This isn’t the right time,” but the workers reply – “If not now, when?” The revolution demanded democracy and social justice. Democracy was achieved, but it has been used by the Muslim Brotherhood to take over the media and the main regime strongholds. Social justice for workers has been denied on the grounds that their demands could not be met, even though many Egyptians are unable to survive on their wages alone. Teachers offer additional private lessons, doctors run private clinics, factory workers do hours of overtime. Meanwhile the workers see how the Muslim Brotherhood sends police to arrest trade union leaders and disperse student demonstrations at the universities, just as the previous regime did.

Parliamentary elections are due early next year, after the new constitution is approved. Neither America nor the Prophet’s honor is high on the agenda. Egyptians’ immediate concerns are bread, education, housing, economic security, and social security, as well as freedom of association, freedom of speech, and the right to strike. During its rise to power, the Muslim Brotherhood lost many points; Morsi won on technicalities but failed to win the knockout. If he continues on the economic path followed by his predecessor— favoring the rich, disregarding the poor, privatizing the economy, passing favors to his party people, and accepting the dictates of the IMF—he will lose his parliamentary majority. The anger of the youth may break out against the Americans, but Morsi well knows that it is really directed against him. Demagoguery brought him to power, but now he needs to act – and this he seems unable to do.

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