Israel Sees a Chance for More Reliable Ties With Egypt and a Weakening of Hamas
By ISABEL KERSHNER Published: July 5, 2013
JERUSALEM — After Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist, was elected president of Egypt a year ago, he refused any contact with Israelis, raising deep anxiety here and concern about the future of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, a cornerstone of regional stability for decades.
But with Mr. Morsi’s ouster and the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt this week, Israelis see the prospect of a return to what they view as a more reliable status quo, as well as a weakening of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that runs Gaza.
And yet, the good news for Israel remains tempered by the danger of chronic instability next door.
“What is important for Israel is a stable Egypt,” said Shaul Shay, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council. “I don’t see the Muslim Brotherhood there swallowing the blow and waiting another 80 years to try to return to power. The story is not over, despite the fireworks in Cairo.”
While Mr. Morsi served as head of state, Israel’s only line of communication with Cairo was through the Egyptian military and security establishment, which is now controlling Egypt’s political process. Perhaps more reassuring to Israel is the role of Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the top commander who led the move to depose Mr. Morsi.
General Sisi is well known in Israel’s defense establishment from his past roles in military intelligence and in northern Sinai. An Israeli expert said that even after Mr. Morsi appointed General Sisi as his defense minister, the general’s office continued to communicate and coordinate directly with Israel.
Israeli officials have maintained a diplomatic silence since Mr. Morsi’s overthrow, refusing to comment publicly on what they say is an internal Egyptian affair.
“We are observing very closely,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “This is a matter of highest importance for us. We really hope the Egyptians manage to put together a functioning democracy, slowly but surely, but there is still a very high level of uncertainty.”
He added, “What’s next is anybody’s guess.”
Still, for some Israelis, the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood was reason enough to celebrate.
“It’s good that the Muslim Brotherhood has gone,” said Zvi Mazel, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt. “If they had stayed in power for another two or three years, they’d have taken control of the military and everything else, and Egypt would have become like Iran.”
Mr. Morsi did not radically shift Egyptian policy toward Israel, upholding Egypt’s commitment to the peace treaty. Under his authority, the Egyptian military acted in the volatile Sinai Peninsula against Islamic militants who had been attacking Egyptian forces in recent years and using the wild desert terrain to stage cross-border attacks against Israel. Israeli experts said Israeli-Egyptian security coordination over Sinai in the last year had been closer and more intense than during the era of Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.
In November, Mr. Morsi played an instrumental role in brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza, ending a fierce eight-day Israeli offensive. Hamas has since worked to rein in rocket fire by Gaza militants against southern Israel.
With Egypt in flux, the Sinai Peninsula remains a potential source of friction. Early Friday, gunmen attacked an airport and Egyptian security forces there. The Egyptian authorities took the immediate step of indefinitely closing the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border, presumably to block any potential access for Hamas to its allies in Egypt.
It was a sign of the times for Hamas, which faces increasing isolation, experts said. When the Brotherhood was in power in Egypt, Hamas had a strong ally.
For a while after Mr. Morsi’s election victory, Hamas felt empowered. Mr. Morsi sent his prime minister to Gaza in November in a show of solidarity amid the Israeli offensive. In October, the emir of Qatar became the first head of state to visit Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007. He pledged $400 million for major housing and infrastructure projects there.
But the high expectations never fully materialized. The Rafah crossing remained limited to passengers and closed to commercial goods. The Egyptian military recently stepped up its campaign against the tunnels beneath the border that are used for smuggling goods, weapons and fugitives. The clampdown is causing shortages of cheap fuel and depriving Hamas of the significant tax revenues it collects from the underground trade. In addition, Qatar indefinitely suspended its projects in Gaza, partly because of the unstable situation in Egypt. Qatari officials were apparently unable to get to Gaza to endorse the second phase of the work.
Hamas had already been suffering from a sharp drop in financing from Iran in recent months because the group did not stand by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, its former patron, in his struggle against rebel forces.
“Hamas is in a very difficult situation because its outside relations are shrinking,” said Akram Atallah, a political analyst in Gaza.
But Israeli experts cautioned that a weakened Hamas was not necessarily good for Israel, either, noting that weakness could also lead to extremism.
Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described Egypt as “the sick man on the Nile,” adding, “A situation in which Egypt, a nation of 85 million people, is in danger of some kind of implosion is a horror scenario for all of us.”
Internal chaos would also be likely to further erode Egypt’s historic role as a leader of the Arab world, but Israeli analysts said its influence had already been in decline for years.
“Egypt is busy with its own domestic problems and is not much of an actor on the regional scene,” said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv.
By ASHRAF SWEILLAM Associated Press EL-ARISH, Egypt July 7, 2013 (AP)
Egyptian security officials say suspected Islamic militants have bombed a natural gas pipeline to Jordan south of the city of el-Arish in the Sinai Peninsula.
The attacks early Sunday on two points on the pipeline started fires that were soon put out, but the flow of gas was disrupted, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
It was the first attack on Egypt's natural gas pipelines in Sinai in over a year.
In January, suspected Islamic militants attacked a police patrol along a Sinai pipeline, wounding seven policemen. The pipeline had come under attack more than a dozen times in the previous two years.
Rebels clash with Qaeda-linked opposition group in Syria
By Erika Solomon BEIRUT | Sat Jul 6, 2013 11:39am EDT
(Reuters) - Rebels clashed with an opposition unit linked to al Qaeda in northern Syria, activists said on Saturday, in a deadly battle that signals growing divisions among rebel groups and rising tensions between locals and more radical Islamist factions.
The rebel infighting comes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have made gains on the battlefield and drawn comfort from the downfall this week of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which under ousted President Mohamed Mursi had thrown its weight behind the Syrian opposition.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the new al Qaeda franchise announced by the head of global network's Iraq leader, has been quickly working to cement power in rebel-held territories of northern Syria in recent months.
ISIS units have begun to impose stricter interpretations of Islamic law and have filmed themselves executing members of rival rebel groups whom they accuse of corruption, and beheading those they say are loyal to Assad.
Syria's two-year revolt against four decades of Assad family rule has degenerated from a peaceful protest movement into a bloody civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.
As fighting drags on and resources grow scarce, infighting has increased both among opposition groups and militias loyal to Assad, leaving civilians trapped in increasingly volatile and fragmented areas.
The latest internecine clashes happened in the town of al-Dana, near the Turkish border, on Friday, local activists said. The opposition group known as the Free Youths of Idlib said dozens of fighters were killed, wounded or imprisoned.
A report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said that the bodies of a commander and his brother, from the local Islam Battalion, were found beheaded. Local activists working for the British-based group said the men's heads were found next to a trash bin in a main square.
The exact reason for the clashes have been hard to pin down, but many rebel groups have been chafing at ISIS's rise in power. It has subsumed the once dominant Nusra Front, a more localized group of al Qaeda-linked fighters that had resisted calls by foreign radicals to expand its scope beyond the Syrian revolt to a more regional Islamist mission.
"PERSONAL GLORY AND WORLDLY AIMS"
Residents of rebel-held territories in the north once welcomed hardline Islamist groups, even those linked to al Qaeda which often included radical foreign militants with experience of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Town leaders would say the hardline groups were better organized, less corrupt and set up administrative councils to keep electricity running and food supplies coming in.
But locals are growing more wary of the groups, particularly ISIS, as they impose their austere interpretations of Islamic law. Some say the groups have beaten or executed residents seen as defying them.
Protests against radical Islamist groups are becoming more common. The Observatory said the al-Dana clashes were set off at an anti-ISIS protest when some Islamist militants fired at the demonstration.
But other activists in Idlib province, where al-Dana is located, argued that the clashes were more about local power struggles than demonstrations.
ISIS units are believed to be buying up land and property in some parts of Idlib and Aleppo province, and they also have tried to control supplies of wheat and oil in other rebel areas.
Islamist groups that support al Qaeda posted statements on Facebook and Twitter saying that they had not started the clashes and had not tried to impose their will on locals.
"The Islamic State has been running many missionary activities in al-Dana, through religious guidance and counseling and posting road signs that exhort the virtues of morality, while also working to keep the city safe and offer conflict resolution," a statement in the name of ISIS read.
The Free Youth Movement of Idlib, an activist group, lambasted both the Qaeda militants and the local rebel group that fought them.
"The two sides are fighting over power, as if the regime had already fallen ... Do not paint one side as better than the other" it said.
"These fighters were part of two groups who are battling on the front line, but they are doing it for personal glory and worldly aims. Martyr after martyr from both groups are falling each day on the front lines... God keep us away from chaos and temptation."
(Reporting by Erika Solomon; Editing by Giles Elgood)
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Erika Solomon ISTANBUL/BEIRUT | Sat Jul 6, 2013 3:39pm EDT
(Reuters) - Syria's fractious opposition elected a new leader on Saturday but rebel groups were reported to be fighting among themselves in a sign of growing divisions on the ground between factions trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian National Coalition chose Ahmad Jarba as its president after a close runoff vote that reinforced the influence of Saudi Arabia over a perpetually divided opposition movement that has struggled to convince its Western and Arab allies that its fighters are ready to be given sophisticated foreign weaponry.
Jarba is a tribal figure from the eastern Syrian province of Hasaka who has Saudi connections. He defeated businessman Mustafa Sabbagh, a point man for Qatar, which has seen its influence over the opposition overshadowed by the Saudis.
"A change was needed," Adib Shishakly, a senior official in the coalition, told Reuters after the vote held at an opposition meeting in Istanbul.
"The old leadership of the coalition had failed to offer the Syrian people anything substantial and was preoccupied with internal politics. Ahmad Jarba is willing to work with everybody."
The Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized faction in the Syrian political opposition, has seen its mother organization in Egypt thrown out of power in Cairo this week along with President Mohamed Mursi.
But the Brotherhood representative, Farouq Tayfour, was elected one of two vice-presidents of the Syrian National Coalition in a sign the group still retains influence in Syrian opposition politics.
REBEL INFIGHTING
In northern Syria, rebels clashed with an opposition unit linked to al Qaeda, activists said, in a battle that signals rising tensions between local people and more radical Islamist factions.
Fighting between rebel groups and government forces was reported in Homs and around Damascus in a war whose casualty toll has now topped 100,000.
The rebel infighting comes as forces loyal to Assad have made gains on the battlefield and drawn comfort from the downfall the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a new al Qaeda franchise, has been working to cement power in rebel-held parts of northern Syria in recent months.
ISIS units have begun imposing stricter interpretations of Islamic law and have filmed themselves executing members of rival rebel groups whom they accuse of corruption, and beheading those they say are loyal to Assad.
As hostilities drag on and resources grow scarce, infighting has increased, both among opposition groups and the militias loyal to Assad, leaving civilians trapped in the middle.
The latest internecine clashes were in the town of al-Dana, near the Turkish border, on Friday, local activists said. An opposition group known as the Free Youths of Idlib said dozens of fighters were killed, wounded or imprisoned.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said that the bodies of a commander and his brother, from the local Islam Battalion, were found beheaded. Local activists working for the British-based group said the men's heads were found next to a trash bin in a main square.
The exact reasons for the clashes have been hard to pin down, but many rebel groups have been chafing at ISIS's rise in power. It has taken over the once dominant Nusra Front, a more localized group of al Qaeda-linked fighters that had resisted calls by foreign radicals to expand its scope beyond the Syrian revolt to a more regional Islamist mission.
ISLAMIC LAW
Residents of rebel-held territories in the north once welcomed hardline Islamist groups as better organized and less corrupt. But locals are now growing more wary of them as they impose their austere version of Islamic law.
Protests against radical Islamist groups are becoming more common. The Observatory said the al-Dana clashes were set off at an anti-ISIS protest when some Islamist militants fired at the demonstration.
But other activists said the clashes were more about local power struggles. ISIS units are believed to be buying up land and property, and they also have tried to control supplies of wheat and oil in rebel areas.
Islamist groups that support al Qaeda posted statements on social media saying that they had not started the clashes and had not tried to impose their will on locals.
In Homs, further south, fierce clashes raged as Assad's forces tried to advance in the city, the epicenter of the armed insurgency.
Activists in Homs described air strikes and artillery attacks as a "blitz" and said it was some of the fiercest fighting they had witnessed.
The United Nations estimates between 2,500 and 4,000 civilians are trapped inside Homs.
Some activists decried the National Coalition meetings as a petty power struggle while the battle in Homs raged and appeared to be swinging in favor of Assad's forces.
"How dare the NC have elections and go about its normal business as Homs gets pummeled? History won't be kind to you," said one activist on Twitter, called Nader.
Fighting also took place in two southern districts of the capital, where activists reported rocket and artillery attacks.
The Observatory said that two rockets hit the military's Airforce Intelligence offices in central Damascus. The Airforce Intelligence has long been one of the most feared branches of Assad's secret services.
Heavy air strikes hammered rebel strongholds in eastern suburbs of Damascus, where rebels say the army is imposing a blockade that is choking off their supply of weapons.
(Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
In this Thursday, June 6, 2013 file photo, soldiers stand guard at the offices of the state-run Nigerian Television Authority in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Boko Haram, the radical group that once attacked only government institutions and security forces, is increasingly targeting civilians. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell, File)
By ADAMU ADAMU and MICHELLE FAUL 07/06/13 04:24 PM ET EDT
POTISKUM, Nigeria — Islamic militants attacked a boarding school before dawn Saturday, dousing a dormitory in fuel and lighting it ablaze as students slept, survivors said. At least 30 people were killed in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria's embattled northeast.
Authorities blamed the violence on Boko Haram, a radical group whose name means "Western education is sacrilege." The militants have been behind a series of recent attacks on schools in the region, including one in which gunmen opened fire on children taking exams in a classroom.
"We were sleeping when we heard gunshots. When I woke up, someone was pointing a gun at me," Musa Hassan, 15, told The Associated Press of the assault on Government Secondary School in Mamudo village in Yobe state.
He put his arm up in defense, and sustained a gunshot that blew off all four fingers on his right hand, the one he uses to write. His life was spared when the militants moved on after shooting him.
Hassan recalled how the gunmen came armed with jerry cans of fuel that they used to torch the school's administrative block and one of the dormitories.
"They burned the children alive," he said, the horror showing in his wide eyes.
He and teachers at the morgue said dozens of children from the 1,200-student school escaped into the bush, but have not been seen since.
On Saturday, at the morgue of Potiskum General Hospital, a few miles from the scene of the attack, parents screamed in anguish as they attempted to identify the victims, many charred beyond recognition. Some parents don't know if their children survived or died.
Farmer Malam Abdullahi found the bodies of two of his sons, a 10-year-old shot in the back as he apparently tried to run away, and a 12-year-old shot in the chest.
"The gunmen are attacking schools and there is no protection for students despite all the soldiers," he said as he wept over the two corpses. He said he is withdrawing his three remaining sons from another school.
By Saturday afternoon, thousands` of students had fled several boarding schools around Potiskum, leaving deserted campuses in fear of more attacks.
Former colonizer Britain condemned the "senseless atrocity," with Mark Simmonds, Minister for Africa, promising his country "will do what it can to help Nigeria tackle terrorism."
Islamic militants from Boko Haram and breakaway groups have killed more than 1,600 civilians in suicide bombings and other attacks since 2010, according to an Associated Press count.
President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency May 14 and deployed thousands of troops to halt the insurgency, acknowledging that militants had taken control of some towns and villages.
Saturday's attack killed 29 students and English teacher Mohammed Musa, who was shot in the chest, according to another teacher, Ibrahim Abdu. Police officers who arrived after the gunmen left and transported the bodies to the hospital confirmed at least 30 people were killed.
Boko Haram, whose stronghold is 230 kilometers (about 145 miles) away in Maiduguri city, capital of neighboring Borno state, has been behind scores of attacks on schools in the past year.
On Thursday, gunmen went to the home of a primary school headmaster and gunned down his entire family. Witnesses said they attacked at 7 a.m. as the owner of the private Godiya Nursery and Primary School was preparing to leave his home in the town of Biu, about 180 kilometers (110 miles) from Maiduguri.
Resident Anjikwi Bala told the AP that Hassan Godiya, his wife and four children all were killed. He said the assassins, suspected Boko Haram fighters, got away.
People from Yobe state this week appealed for the military to restore cell phone service in the area under a state of emergency, saying it could have helped avert a June 16 attack on a school that the military said killed seven students, two teachers, two soldiers and two extremists in Damaturu, capital of Yobe state.
Residents told the AP that they had noticed suspicious movements of strangers and could have alerted soldiers and police, if their cell phones were working. Instead, the military said they were involved in a five-hour shootout before the militants fled.
A day later, June 17, extremists fired on students sitting at their desks as they were writing exams in Maiduguri, killing at least nine pupils.
Borno state officials say more than 20,000 people have fled to Cameroon in recent weeks amid the violence.
The military has claimed success in regaining control of the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. However, the area covers around 155,000 square kilometers (60,000 square miles) or one-sixth of the sprawling country. The rebellion poses the biggest threat in years to security in Africa's biggest oil producer.
Soldiers say they have killed and arrested hundreds of fighters. But the crackdown, including attacks with fighter jets and helicopter gunships on militant camps, appears to have driven the extremists into rocky mountains with caves, from which they emerge to attack schools and markets.
The militants have increasingly targeted civilians, including health workers on vaccination campaigns, traders, teachers and government workers.
Farmers have been driven from their land by the extremists and by military roadblocks, raising the specter of a food shortage to add to the woes of a people already hampered by a dusk-to-dawn curfew and the military's shutdown of cell phone service and ban on using satellite telephones.
Michelle Faul reported from Lagos. Associated Press writer Haruna Umar, in Maiduguri, contributed to this report.
Sarah Lynch, Special to USA TODAY 6:01 p.m. EDT July 6, 2013
CAIRO — Egypt's new president has backed away from an announcement that pro-reform leader Mohamed Elbaradei would be the interim prime minister.
A spokesman for interim President Adly Mansour, Ahmed el-Musilamani, told reporters on Saturday that consultations were continuing, denying that the appointment of the Nobel Peace laureate was ever certain.
However, reporters gathered at the presidential palace were ushered into a room where they were told by an official to wait for the president who would arrive shortly to announce ElBaradei's appointment.
A senior opposition official, Munir Fakhry Abdelnur, tells the Associated Press that the reversal occurred because the ultraconservative Salafi el-Nour party objected to ElBardei's appointment and mediation was underway.
The announcement takes place amid a widening crisis in Egypt as clashes killed at least 36 people across the country.
Meanwhile, Egypt increased security forces near supporters of deposed leader Mohammed Morsi who were gathered on the streets as worries grew about prospects for renewed violence after clashes left at least 36 people dead.
Morsi's supporters were massed in a sit-in demonstration outside a mosque in a section of the city where the Muslim Brotherhood has maintained a stronghold.
There were no reports of major clashes following a night of street battles, but in the northern Sinai peninsula, gunmen shot and killed a Christian priest while he shopped for food in an outdoor market.
It was not immediately clear if the shooting was linked to the political crisis, but there has been a backlash against Christians just before and after Morsi's ouster. Attacks have occurred on members of the minority by Islamists in at least three provinces south of Egypt. Christians account for about 10% of Egypt's 90 million people. Morsi's Brotherhood and hard-line allies claim Christians played a big part in inciting protests against the ousted leader.
In the capital, a fraction of the city's normally heavy traffic was on the streets Saturday amid worries that violence could flare again after claiming at least 75 lives in the past week.
The nation's interim president, Adly Mansour, met Saturday with army chief and Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, as well as Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who is in charge of the police, at the Ittihadiya Presidential Palace, to consider authorities' next moves.
It was the first time Mansour, who formally dissolved the parliament Friday, has worked out of the president's main offices since he was sworn in Thursday as the country's interim leader. Mansour, who was appointed by the military, took over a day after the military overthrew Morsi, who was the country's first democratically elected president.
At least 12 deaths were reported in clashes in Alexandria, the country's second-largest city, after Islamists opened fire on a rally of Morsi opponents, a medical services official told the Associated Press. Police sided with Morsi protesters in the Mediterranean coastal city.
More than 400 were reported injured nationwide, the Health Ministry said.
In Cairo, the bloodiest confrontation came as troops opened fire on protesters outside the Republican Guards military barracks where the ousted president is being held. A Health Ministry official told the Associated Press that four people were killed.
Hundreds of demonstrators had marched to the site following afternoon prayers, chanting, "After sunset, President Morsi will be back in the palace."
At nightfall, a crowd of Islamists surged across the October 6 Bridge over the Nile River and clashed with Morsi opponents near Tahrir Square and outside the state TV building. One witness reported gunfire and stone-throwing, and one person was killed, said Khaled el-Khatib, of the Health Ministry.
Late Friday, military armored vehicles arrived on the bridge and outside the TV station to stop the fighting, and Morsi supporters retreated.
Contributing: William M. Welch, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
Mohamed ElBaradei not confirmed as Egypt PM: Presidential media adviser
Mohamed ElBaradei Reuters
Mislimani said discussions were still going on about the nomination for interim prime minister, noting that the transitional government has to be "a crisis-management government" at the current critical stage.
Sunday, Jul 7, 2013, 9:40 IST | Agency: IANS
Egypt's new presidential media adviser on late Saturday denied the media reports stating opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei had been appointed the country's interim prime minister, reported state-run MENA news agency.
"Until now, President Adli Mansour has not officially assigned ElBaradei or anyone else to form the new government," reported Xinhua citing Ahmed al-Mislimani, who has just taken up the post of presidential media adviser.
Mislimani said discussions were still going on about the nomination for interim prime minister, noting that the transitional government has to be "a crisis-management government" at the current critical stage.
He also said there was no specific date for announcing the government formation and its leader, while denying "the media leaks" about ElBaradei's appointment.
The latest statement came after reports saying that ElBaradei, leader of the opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front, had been officially chosen as the country's interim prime minister.
After those reports, Salafist Al-Nour Party also rejected the appointment of ElBaradei, stating it would deepen the state's "polarisation".
ElBaradei has served as the head of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
The prime minister's post has fallen vacant after Mohamed Morsi, the country's president and first freely-elected leader, was ousted by army Wednesday along with his government being led by prime minister Hesham Qandil.
On Friday, at least 35 were killed and over 1,400 injured in clashes between Morsi's opponents and Islamist proponents in Cairo and other governorates across the country.
Supporters of ousted Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi carry a man shot near the Republican Guard building in Cairo, Friday, July 5, 2013. Egyptian troops opened fire on mostly Islamist protesters marching on a Republican Guard headquarters Friday to demand the restoration of Morsi's presidency, killing at least one. (Khalil Hamra/AP)
Protesters opposed to ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi celebrate in Tahrir Square on July 6, 2013 in Cairo, Egypt. Over 17 people were killed in clashes around the country yesterday with dozens injured as the Egyptian military tries to restore order. (Spencer Platt/Getty)
The death toll is mounting. If violence continues between pro- and anti-Morsi demonstrators the army may see no choice but to impose martial law.
by Christopher Dickey, Mike Giglio Jul 6, 2013 1:46 PM EDT
There is, as yet, no curfew in Egypt. There are, as yet, no tanks in the streets. (The armored personnel carriers that move Egyptian troops around are to a main battle tank what a Mini is to a Mack truck.)
There are few if any checkpoints with soldiers stopping civilians, demanding their papers, interrogating them about who they are, where they are coming from and where they are going. In short, there is not yet the draconian imposition of order that goes by the name “martial law.” But if the kind of violence we saw in Egypt Friday night continues and grows worse, the Egyptian military’s high command may say it sees no alternative.
It will act with a great show of reluctance. As with Wednesday’s coup [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/01/live-blog-48-hours-in-cairo.html ] to remove the country’s first legitimately elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the military will let events lay the groundwork for its action. It will say it is just responding to forces that it actually helped set in motion. And soon, in fact, it may have little choice: Morsi’s core supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood say they are determined to engage in a struggle they keep calling a matter of life and death—or, as they like to put it, “martyrdom”—even though they claim they want their demonstrations to remain peaceful.
“There are two options,” says Gehad al-Haddad, a senior official and spokesman for the Brotherhood tells The Daily Beast. “We reverse the coup, we reinstate the president, and then he leads the dialogue and discussion of the roadmaps ahead. Or we die trying.”
The activists who worked so hard to oust Morsi—and to enlist the help of the military high command to do it – are now growing wary of the army’s intentions. The bloody street battles last night around Tahrir Square, the epicenter of their revolt, killed at least 17 people, and the army’s performance as peacekeeper was strangely uneven.
There are two bridges that lead across the Nile to Tahrir. One, called the Qasr El-Nil bridge, runs past the high-rise Semiramis Hotel directly into the square. The army sealed that off with a solid wall of troops and personnel carriers.
But it left the 6 October Bridge, a little further to the north, open for thousands of Morsi supporters to march across. The bloodshed began at the end of the bridge amid a tangle of flyovers near the Egyptian Museum. For hours, no troops were to be seen until, finally, late at night, they moved in to separate the combatants.
Arguably, the military hesitated because 6 October carries a much heavier load of traffic through the city than the other bridges. But few of the people who were on the scene, or who followed the action, are convinced that was the high command’s main priority.
“The people pushed the [pro-Morsi forces] back, not the military,” an impassioned Egyptian in a downtown café told The Daily Beast on Saturday afternoon. The SCAF, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, “is concerned with the global opinion of what’s going on. They want things to get ugly for a bit, so when they take control, it looks better. The clashes will continue.”
The French call this sort of strategy the “politique du pire,” a policy intended to make a bad situation worse until the public begs you to fix it. And it’s possible that the high command, led by Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, really is so cynical. But that presumes that the military really wants to take control for its own ends – that, at the end of the day, it really does want to govern – and that is far from certain.
The officers of the Egyptian Army live in a world apart from the rest of their countrymen. They make their homes in their own special communities behind high-walled compounds scattered around Cairo and the rest of Egypt. They have their own schools, they go to their own clubs, and they run their own very profitable industries.
In Egypt, a country where family ties almost always trump civic responsibilities and nepotism is rampant, the military was for decades just about the only government organization that could be called a meritocracy. American academics and officials talked of it in the 1950s, even under the Soviet-allied military dictatorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser, as the country’s great “modernizing institution.” If the military could just get on the right track toward a positive Western-oriented vision of Egyptian society, conventional wisdom held that the rest of the country would follow. Democracy would be a swell idea sometime later.
The humbling foolishness of Nasser’s disastrous war with Israel in 1967, the imperiousness of Anwar Sadat and the three decades of torpor under Hosni Mubarak, all of them military men, did much to discredit that narrative about a “modernizing” vision. The previous, geriatric SCAF that ousted Mubarak after huge protests in February 2011 made a mess of things, too.
But many serving officers still believe that they and their institution, more than any politician or for that matter any constitution, are the bedrock of the state and the guardian of its wellbeing. If they can play that role in the background, they can keep their hands and their image clean. If they have to appoint one from their own ranks to rule, they can only compromise their prestige.
So the senior commanders may hope sincerely that with their backing the new civilian president, Adly Mansour, can organize a credible government and a more elastic and inclusive constitution than the one hammered together by Morsi and the Brotherhood. If Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei is appointed prime minister, so much the better.
Retired Gen. Sami Seif Elyazal, whose analysis of the army’s actions in the unfolding situation has generally been accurate, tells The Daily Beast that it’s unlikely the high command will invoke martial law unless the situation gets completely out of hand. He says the generals consider the violence we have seen so far to be manageable. “They want to just go ahead by the normal laws,” he says, “unless things on the ground are really getting ugly and there is no other solution.”
Perhaps, but it is hard not to be reminded of the politique du pire in other societies that underwent prolonged upheaval. Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte took power when, after several years of revolution, successive civilian regimes proved powerless to organize the country. His coup, in the words of one British scholar, was “a shabby compound of brute force and imposture,” but “was nevertheless condoned, nay applauded, by the French nation. Weary of revolution, men sought no more than to be wisely and firmly governed.”
Today, many Egyptians are seeking much the same thing.
Press Statement John Kerry Secretary of State Washington, DC
July 6, 2013
The United States is deeply troubled by the violence across Egypt. We strongly condemn any and all incitement to violence or attempts to divide and provoke, rather than unite, all Egyptians. The United States strongly condemns the violence by all parties and urges calm. At the same time, we firmly reject the unfounded and false claims by some in Egypt that the United States supports the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood or any specific Egyptian political party or movement. The United States has always been and remains committed to the democratic process, not to any party or personality. We want Egyptians to make their democracy work for the good of all Egyptians. At this sensitive moment, we call on all Egyptian leaders to condemn the use of force and prevent further violence among their supporters and we urge all those demonstrating to do so peacefully.
The United States wants to see Egypt’s ongoing transition succeed for the benefit of the Egyptian people. The Egyptians themselves must come together and make the tough decisions necessary for that to happen. As I said in March when I was in Cairo, the United States supports the people of Egypt in their continued transition to a stable, sovereign Egyptian democracy. The only solution to the current impasse is for all parties to work together peacefully to address the many legitimate concerns and needs of the people and to ensure Egypt has a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the millions of Egyptians who have taken to the streets to demand a better future. Lasting stability in Egypt will only be achieved through a transparent and inclusive democratic process with participation from all sides and all political parties. This process must also ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected, including the right to peaceful assembly, due process, and free and fair trials in civilian courts.
The Egyptian people seek and deserve an honest, capable and representative democratic government. As President Obama has said, “no transition to democracy comes without difficulty, but in the end it must stay true to the will of the people.” The longstanding partnership and friendship between the United States and Egypt is of great importance to the United States, and we will continue to support the Egyptian people to ensure that Egypt’s transition to democracy succeeds.
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