Newspaper & online reporters and analysts explore the cultural and news stories of the week, with photos frequently added by Esco20, and reveal their significance (with a slant towards Esco 20's opinions)
A cease-fire proposal by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt met most of Israel’s demands; Hamas immediately rejected it.Credit Fady Fars/Middle East News Agency, via Associated Press
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.
“I have never seen a situation like it, where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummeling of Hamas,” he said. “The silence is deafening.”
Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.
But as commentators sympathetic to the Palestinians slammed the proposal as a ruse to embarrass Hamas, Egypt’s Arab allies praised it. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to “the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible.”
Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult, now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an ally in their common fight against political Islam.
Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting. At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting. Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finding themselves allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran, a rival regional power that has a history of funding and arming Hamas.
Egyptian officials disputed that characterization, arguing that the new government was maintaining its support for the Palestinian people despite its deteriorating relations with Hamas, and that it had grown no closer to Israel than it was under Mr. Morsi or Mr. Mubarak.
“The pendulum of the Arab Spring has swung in Israel’s favor, just like it had earlier swung in the opposite direction,” said Mr.Khaled Elgindy, a former Palestinian adviser.
“But I am not sure the story is finished at this point.”
Outsiders sometimes see Hamas as something like an American big-city machine that trades jobs and welfare benefits in return for political loyalty and votes — though a machine with an armed wing.
Hamas does have an armed wing, and other parts of the organization attempt to provide some social services, but the number of Palestinians who benefit from those services is small. And it’s dwarfed by those who get assistance from the Palestinian government, international aid bodies and nongovernmental organizations. This fact is missed by outsiders who often mistake anything Islamic for Hamas.
Hamas’s support from Palestinian civilians, when it comes, stems from other things. For example, the movement poses as uncompromising on Palestinian rights and uncorrupted by money and power. The political and diplomatic solutions, such as the Oslo peace process, offered by other factions such as Fatah seem meaningless to most Palestinians, who have grown cynical about their leaders’ ability to deliver.
The image of Hamas as an uncorrupt movement unconcerned with the trappings of power grew outdated once the group stepped into power after its 2006 election victory. Israel and Hamas both realized back in 2007 that holing the movement up in Gaza was a bit of a trap, forcing Hamas to take on responsibility for sewage, schooling and zoning.
But earlier this year, Hamas resigned all its cabinet positions and agreed to surrender political leadership of the Gaza Strip. Hamas has many headaches to deal with now but also a bit more freedom to maneuver. With the decision to stop being a government as well as a movement, Hamas’s reputation may begin to recover. And some of its leaders may be saying now: What better way to start the effort than to return to the movement’s roots in armed resistance?
In all kinds of ways, recent opinion polling shows that the majority of Palestinians back positions that Hamas rejects regarding diplomacy and resistance. Hamas remains more hard-line than the public it seeks to lead, and surveys also show that the group would have tremendous trouble repeating its 2006 election win. But, elections are unlikely any time soon. And the despair among Palestinians is so deep, the numbers do not look much better for any leader or faction; at this point Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is seen as isolated, aloof and having spent all his political capital on a failed peace process.
Yes, Hamas surrendered its cabinet positions to people appointed by Abbas. And yes, Hamas is taking a beating and its activists are being driven underground. But its credentials as the movement that does not bend and dares to take on Israel are being burnished among much of the audience it cares about.
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As a movement, Hamas offers resistance — attacking civilians, launching rockets and ransoming captives — but it cannot field a military force that could face Israel on the battlefield. Indeed, all the ground combat is happening in Gaza.
However, more than Israel’s existence is being threatened. The abduction and murder of three Israeli teens last month may or may not have been a Hamas operation — but the event captured the attention of the Israeli public, and the Israeli government reacted as if Hamas were responsible. While the effectiveness of Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system is debated — officials boast that it intercepts 90 percent of Hamas’s missiles — large parts of the Israeli population now feel within Hamas’s reach as the range of its rockets creeps higher.
Hamas may never come close to vanquishing Israel on the battlefield, but changes in its capabilities — tunnels, abductions, missiles and even a drone — continue to make Israelis nervous and force them to react.
Smoke trails rockets launched from Gaza towards Israel on Tuesday.Credit Andrew Burton/Getty Images
When war between Israel and Hamas broke out two weeks ago, the Palestinian militant group was so hamstrung, politically, economically and diplomatically, that its leaders appeared to feel they had nothing to lose.
Hamas took what some here call “option zero,” gambling that it could shift the balance with its trump cards: its arms and militants.
“There were low expectations in terms of its performance against the recent round of Israeli incursions. It’s been exceeding all expectations,” said Abdullah Al-Arian, a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar who is currently in Washington. “And it’s likely to come out in a far better position than in the last three years, and maybe the last decade.”
Hamas had been struggling. The turmoil in the region meant it lost one of its main sponsors, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whom it broke with over his brutal fight against a Sunni Muslim-led insurgency, and weakened its alliance with Iran. It lost support in Egypt when the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted and replaced with a military-backed government hostile to Hamas.
An underground look at Hamas’s tunnels into Israel.
Video Credit By Carrie Halperin and Sofia Perpetua on Publish Date July 22, 2014. Image CreditJim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency
[ Daily Beast:In 2006, when the Israelis attacked Gaza in the south, Hezbollah started launching rockets attacking Israel from the north and kidnapped Israeli soldiers there, leading to a brief but brutal war in which Hezbollah guerrillas fought the vaunted Israel Defense Forces to a standstill.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah [believes]weighing in on the side of Hamas would invite massive Israeli retaliation and force a replay of the 2006 war that, this time around, Hezbollah would be likely to lose because Nasrallah’s forces are stretched so thin on so many fronts defending its allies—and Tehran’s—in Damascus and now in Baghdad.
The Hamas leadership had worried this day might come. It warned Hezbollah of what it saw as the distraction of intervening full-tilt in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. ]
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political wing and a former health minister in Gaza, acknowledged that relations have soured with Iran and the Arab world, but said that it could survive.
Unemployment in Gaza is around 50 percent, having risen steeply since Israel pulled out its troops and settlers in 2005 and severely tightened border restrictions.
Hamas appeared powerless to end the near-blockade of its border by Israel and more recently Egypt. It could not even pay its 40,000 government workers their salaries.
Naim said, “Gaza is a big problem for everybody, for Hamas, for Fatah, for Israel, shortages of water, housing and medicine, a population explosion, growing extremism."
The group was so handicapped that it agreed to enter into a pact with its rival party, Fatah, to form a new government. But that seemed only to make matters worse, sowing division within its own ranks, with some in the military wing angry at the concession, while providing none of the economic relief Hamas had hoped for.
When Hamas sent a barrage of rockets into Israel, simmering hostilities, and back and forth strikes, erupted into war.
At first, when Hamas rockets were being intercepted mainly by Israel’s Iron Dome system as Israel hit Gaza with devastating force, the group strove to persuade its supporters that it was having enough impact on Israel to wrest concessions: Its radio stations blared fictional reports about Israeli casualties.
But as it wore on, the conflict revealed that Hamas’s secret tunnel network leading into Israel was far more extensive, and sophisticated, than previously known. It also was able to inflict some pain on Israel, allowing Hamas to declare success even as it drew a devastating and crushing response. Its fighters were able to infiltrate Israel multiple times during an intensive Israeli ground invasion. Its militants have killed at least 27 Israeli soldiers and claim to have captured an Israeli soldier who was reported missing in battle, a potentially key bargaining chip.
And on Tuesday its rockets struck a blow to Israel — psychological and economic — by forcing a halt in international flights. Hamas once again looks strong in the eyes of its supporters, and has shown an increasingly hostile region that it remains a force to be reckoned with.
A home that was destroyed by a Hamas missile near Ben Gurion International Airport in Yahud, near Tel Aviv.Credit Gideon Markowicz/ European Pressphoto Agency
But Hamas’s gains could be short-lived if it does not deliver Gazans a better life. Israel says its severe restrictions on what can be brought into Gaza, such as construction materials, are needed because Hamas poses a serious security threat, and the discovery of the tunnels has served only to validate that concern.
So far, at least 620 Palestinians have died, around 75 percent of them civilians, according to the United Nations, including more than 100 children. Gazans did not get a vote when Hamas chose to escalate conflict, nor did they when Hamas selected areas near their homes, schools and mosques to fire rockets from the densely populated strip. At the family house of four boys killed last week by an Israeli strike while playing on a beach, some wailing women cursed Hamas along with Israel.
It is also unclear whether, when the fighting ends, Hamas will have the same kind of foreign support it has had in the past to rebuild its arsenal or its infrastructure; Egypt, under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has destroyed hundreds of the tunnels that were used to bring in arms, money and supplies, and has kept the proper border crossing mostly closed.
In exchange for a cease-fire, Hamas is demanding Israel and Egypt open their borders to end the restrictions on the movement of people and goods — the most immediate issue for ordinary Gazans. It is also asking for the release of prisoners — but avoiding the deeper political issues of the conflict.
Mr. Shaban said that Hamas, confronted in recent years with the often conflicting requirements of its roles as an armed resistance group and a governing party, for once was “being clever enough to demand conditions that are in touch with the people. The people are realistic.”
Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006, but an international boycott prevented it from governing. It returned to power in Gaza in 2007 after ousting the Fatah-led government by force.
Hamas overreached, Mr. Shaban said, more than doubling Gaza’s administrative budget to more than $800 million — not including the financing of the militant Izzedine al-Qassam brigades.
But as the recent fight with Israel has revealed, Hamas was importing tons of cement — desperately needed for Gazan schools and houses and construction jobs — to reinforce the tunnels it built to infiltrate Israel and hide its weapons.
“They have different priorities,” Mr. Shaban said of the military wing. “Don’t send rockets while we don’t have milk for our children.”
But, he added, “do we stop struggling with Israel? I believe in peace, a two-state solution, I never liked conflict. But Israel did not leave us anything. What Hamas is doing is partially supported by the people.”
A young man next to the bodies of protesters killed on Wednesday. Many of the dead were shot in the head or chest; some appeared to be in their early teens.
Egyptian security officers stormed two encampments packed with supporters of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, on Wednesday in a scorched-earth assault that killed hundreds, set off a violent backlash across Egypt and underscored the new government’s determination to crush the Islamists who dominated two years of free elections.
The attack, the third mass killing of Islamist demonstrators since the military ousted Mr. Morsi six weeks ago, followed a series of government threats. But the scale — lasting more than 12 hours, with armored vehicles, bulldozers, tear gas, birdshot, live ammunition and snipers — and the ferocity far exceeded the Interior Ministry’s promises of a gradual and measured dispersal.
At least one protester was incinerated in his tent. Many others were shot in the head or chest, including some who appeared to be in their early teens, including the 17-year-old daughter of a prominent Islamist leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy.
...Adli Mansour, the figurehead president appointed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, declared a state of emergency, removing any limits on police action and returning Egypt to the state of virtual martial law that prevailed for three decades under President Hosni Mubarak.
Narciso Contreras for The New York Times
The death toll from the day of violence was expected to climb.
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The crackdown followed six weeks of attempts by Western diplomats to broker a political resolution that might persuade the Islamists to abandon their protests and rejoin a renewed democratic process despite the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president. But the brutality of the attack seemed to extinguish any such hopes....The assault prompted the resignation of the interim vice president, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Prize-winning former diplomat who had lent his reputation to selling the West on the democratic goals of the military takeover....Analysts said the attack was the clearest sign yet that the Egyptian police state was re-emerging in full force, overriding liberal cabinet officials like Mr. ElBaradei and ignoring Western diplomatic pressure and talk of cutting financial aid.
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Emad Shahin, a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, predicted,
“In the end the West will back the winning side.”
Supporters of Mohamed Morsi clashed with security forces in Cairo.
Egyptian security forces killed more than 200 protesters.
Two sit-ins by Islamist supporters of Mr. Morsi were targeted.
The interim government declared a state of emergency nationwide.
The attack came after a six-week standoff with the demonstrators.
Pro-Morsi protesters carried a wounded comrade.
A member of the security forces after his vehicle was attacked.
Thousands of Morsi supporters had moved into the protest camps.
Armed supporters of Mr. Morsi during clashes with security forces.
A man grieved over bodies at a makeshift morgue.
The destroyed encampment near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.
In Libya, armed militias have filled a void left by a revolution that felled a dictator. In Syria, a popular uprising has morphed into a civil war that has left more than 100,000 dead and provided a haven for Islamic extremists. In Tunisia, increasingly bitter political divisions have delayed the drafting of a new constitution. And now in Egypt, often considered the trendsetter of the Arab world, the army and security forces, after having toppled the elected Islamist president, have killed hundreds of his supporters.
...It is clear that the region’s old status quo, dominated by imperious rulers who fixed elections, ruled by fiat and quashed dissent, has been fundamentally damaged, if not overthrown, in the three years since the outbreak of the uprisings optimistically known as the Arab Spring....What is unclear, however, is the replacement model. Most of the uprisings have devolved into bitter struggles, as a mix of political powers battle over the rules of participation, the relationship between the military and the government, the role of religion in public life and what it means to be a citizen, not a subject.
The Rabaa al-Adawiya camp, once full of protesters, after the violence.
The death toll from the day of violence was expected to climb.
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[Below is a report from Cairo, published in the July 18, 2013 issue of London Review of Books, written by Hazim Kandil. His thoughts have a certain prescient quality at this time of crisis in Egypt:]
...the fact that 22 million Egyptians signed ‘rebellion petitions’ in the last three months, and this week 17 million of them, according to official figures (33 million according to the opposition), have marched against the chief representatives of Islamism.... For a president who paraded his democratic credentials at every opportunity, the viciousness of the religious rhetoric he deployed against his opponents was unnerving: demonstrators were collectively excommunicated.... Islamist clerics openly declared jihad against protesters in front of television cameras, and presented themselves as ‘projects for martyrdom’ – so much for the Brotherhood’s advocacy of freedom and citizenship.
Certainly, the Brothers’ dismal performance in power brought about their downfall, rather than some elaborate debate on the legitimacy of Islamism. There was nothing Islamic about the movement’s policies. On the contrary, the moral image they projected was quickly comprised by the shabby deals they tried (and failed) to strike with old regime institutions, and foreign powers they had previously condemned. Once in power, Morsi praised the Interior Ministry so highly that he even claimed this most patriotic of institutions had been an essential partner in the 2011 revolt; and his aides spared no effort in imploring America to save his presidency. Egyptians became rapidly disillusioned with Islamist incompetence, paranoia, double-dealing and, above all, profound arrogance towards people they regarded as less religious than them.
It turns out that Morsi’s tenure was a blessing in disguise. If he had lost the presidency, Islamism would have remained the path not taken. But today, millions of Muslims have voted with their feet against Islamist rule. Those who grieve over this affront to ballot box democracy forget that Egypt, like any new democracy, has every right to seek popular consensus on the basic tenets of its future political system. Revolutionary France went through five republics before settling into the present order, and America needed a civil war to adjust its democratic path. It is not uncommon in the history of revolutions for coups to pave the way or seal the fate of popular uprisings.
Protesters pushed a police vehicle off the 6th of October bridge in Cairo.
A member of the security forces was stripped of his vest and dragged by protesters.
Egyptian security forces detained supporters of Mr. Morsi as they cleared a smaller sit-in near Cairo University.
Two protesters held weapons as others took cover during clashes with security forces.
The Rabaa al-Adawiya camp, once full of protesters, after the violence.
The death toll from the day of violence was expected to climb.
Aly Hazzaa/El Shorouk Newspaper, via Associated Press
Fireworks burst over opponents of Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, July 2, 2013. Photograph: Amr Nabil/AP
Crowds in Tahrir Square cheered and launched fireworks after the military announced Mohamed Morsi has been ousted as president and replaced by the chief justice of the constitutional court. In a televised statement, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the constitution will be suspended. He also called for presidential and parliamentary elections, and said the post-Morsi roadmap had been agreed on in consultation with various political groups. "All necessary measures will be taken to empower youth in civic dialogue and national reconciliation," al-Sisi said. The plan calls for the temporary institution of a technocrat government. The chief justice of the constitutional court will lead the country in the interim. On Facebook, Morsi denounced the move as a "military coup." Muslim Brotherhood leadership has confirmed to CNN that President Mohamed Morsi has been placed under “house arrest,” along with his presidential team.
The gradual nature of Sisi's actions seemed to confirm the army's desire to be seen to be answering the will of the people, rather than enacting a unilateral coup.
Events indicated a rehabilitation of not just the army – whose chequered 15-month tenure in office between February 2011 and June 2012 prompted unprecedented criticism of the military – but the police, whose reputation took a battering in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising. The police piggybacked on the popularity of the protests, releasing two statements backing the protests against the president.
Islamists saw Morsi's removal as a betrayal of democracy. But for many in Tahrir it was a victory for people power.
For Mr. Morsi, it was a bitter and ignominious end to
a tumultuous year of bruising political battles that ultimately alienated
millions of Egyptians. Having won a narrow victory, his critics say, he broke
his promises of an inclusive government and repeatedly demonized his opposition
as traitors. With the economy crumbling, and with shortages of electricity and
fuel, anger at the government mounted.
...in a sign of how little Mr. Morsi ever managed to control the Mubarak
bureaucracy he took over, the officers of the Presidential Guard who had been
assigned to protect him also burst into celebration, waving flags from the roof
of the palace.
The general stood on a broad stage, flanked by Egypt’s
top Muslim and Christian clerics as well as a spectrum of political leaders
including Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat and liberal icon,
and Galal Morra, a prominent Islamist ultraconservative, or Salafi, all of whom
endorsed the takeover.
Although the tacit control of the generals over
Egyptian politics is now unmistakable, General Sisi laid out a more detailed and
faster plan for a return to civilian governance than the now-retired generals
who deposed Mr. Mubarak did two years ago. The chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, would
become acting president. General Sisi made no mention of any
period of military rule and granted the acting president, Mr. Mansour, the power
to issue “constitutional decrees” during the transition.
Mr. Mansour was named to the bench by Mr. Mubarak two
decades ago, before Mr. Mubarak sought to pack the court with more overtly
political loyalists or anti-Islamists.
The general’s plan bore a close resemblance to one
proposed in recent days by the ultraconservative Islamist Nour Party, and
suggested that he was seeking to bring in at least some Islamists as well as
liberals and leftists to support the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood. The
Nour Party, which quickly endorsed the plan, had joined other political groups
in accusing Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood of monopolizing power at the price of
a dangerous political polarization.
But unlike liberals, the ultraconservative Islamists
were keen to avoid the installation of a liberal like Mr. ElBaradei as a
transitional prime minister, or to see the current Constitution — with its
prominent recognition of Islamic law — scrapped instead of revised. It was
unclear if the generals planned to allow the Brotherhood to compete in
parliamentary elections and potentially retake its dominant role in the
legislature, which could give it the ability to name a new prime minister.
