الدول العربية ودكتاتوريات شرق اوروبا صحافة عالمية

صحف عالمية: واشنطن تستعد لمصر دون مباركالاثنين، 31 كانون الثاني/يناير 2011، آخر تحديث 11:46 (GMT+0400)
تعاملت واشنطن بحذر تجاه الأزمة المصرية تحسبا من إثارة مخاوف الحلفاء الآخريندبي، الإمارات العربية المتحدة (CNN) -- ركزت الصحف العالمية، الاثنين، الانتفاضة الشعبية في مصر التي وضعت قادة الغرب، تحديدا الولايات المتحدة، في مأزق تجاه الحليف الأبرز في المنطقة، وأشار بعضها إن إدارة واشنطن المتحدة تستعد بحذر لحقبة مصر دون مبارك تحسباً من إثارة مخاوف الحلفاء الآخرين في المنطقة.

بالإضافة إلى تساؤلات حول هل تنهار الدول العربية كديكتاتوريات شرق أوروبا عام 1989، وترسانة باكستان توشك على تجاوز الغريم المجاور الهند في سباق تسلح نووي يقلق أمريكا.

التلغرافأزمة مصر : هل يثق أوباما بـ80 مليون مصري؟

أيام (الرئيس المصري) مبارك معدودة والولايات المتحدة في مأزق: هل يمكن لها الثقة في نظام جديد للسياسة الخارجية، فتأثير ذلك هائل على الغرب وإسرائيل.


فالأمر بدأ بصورة مفبركة، أظهرت قادة الشرق الأوسط، كل اللاعبين الكبار يخطون فوق سجاة البيت الأبيض الحمراء صوب الكاميرات المنتظرة في سبتمبر/أيلول الماضي، وفي الوسط بدا الرئيس أوباما، وإلى يمينه رئيس الوزراء الإسرائيلي بنيامين نتنياهو، وإلى يساره، رئيس السلطة الوطنية الفلسطينية، محمود عباس، والعاهل الأردني، الملك عبدالله.

وهناك على بعد خطوتين للأمام، بدا بوضوح رئيس المجموعة، وكان الرئيس المصري حسني مبارك، تاريخياً كانت مصر رائدة العالم العربي، فربما وضعه في المقدمة كان له ما يبرره، إلا أن الصورة التي نشرتها صحيفة "الأهرام" الرسمية المصرية أثارت صخباً، فالجميع كان يدرك أن مبارك لم في المقدمة لأنهم شاهدوا تلك التلفزيونات، كان يقف وراء السيد نتنياهو، إن لم يمكن متخلفاً للوراء عن بقية نظرائه، فمحاولة منحه أهمية، ومن با المجاملة من " فوتوشوب، كانت مثيرة للضحك.

وهذا هو واقع الحال الآن مع تبين عزم مبارك البقاء في السلطة بعد 30 عاما في منصبه بعد سلسلة تزوير للانتخابات الرئاسية والبرلمانية.

شيكاغو تريبيون

الولايات المتحدة تستعد بحذر لحقبة مصر دون مبارك

واضعة الحلفاء الآخرين في المنطقة قيد الاعتبار، يحرص المسؤولون الأمريكيون على عدم نبذ الزعيم المصري، حسني مبارك، بحثه على تطبيق نقل السلطة إلى الديمقراطية، إلا أنهم يستعدون في ذات الوقت لاحتمالات الإطاحة به.

ويبدو أن الإدارة الأمريكية تستعد حالياً لحقبة مصر ما بعد الرئيس حسني مبارك، بالضغط على الزعيم المتشدد البالغ من العمر 82 عاماً، لتلبية سريعةا لصرخة القادمة من الشوارع المطالبة بمساحة اوسع من الحريات السياسية رغم تزايد شكوكهم في قدرة الحليف القديم النجاة من الاضطرابات.

الإدارة الأمريكية ليست مستعدة بعد للتخلي عن مبارك، ليس علانية على الأقل، المسؤولون يواصلون الالتزام بنبرة حذرة في تصريحاتهم، خوفاً من إطلاق دعوات مفتوحة للإطاحة بمبارك ما قد يثير حذر حلفاء واشنطن الآخرين في المنطقة.

ويجمع مسؤولو الإدارة الأمريكية الحالية والسابقة بأن أيام الحكومة الاستبدادية في مصر قد ولت، بمبارك أو بدونه.

ذا غلوب أند ميل

هل تنهار الدول العربية كديكتاتوريات شرق أوروبا عام 1989؟

الحشود المرهقة التي تتضاعف فجأة من عدة مئات إلى الآلاف تتحدى الحظر انتابها إحساس مفاجئي بأن النظام الحديدي هش كورقة المحارم، والجنود على متن الدبابات ممزقون بين دعم الحكومة والمتظاهرين، وهذه هي ذات المشاعر التي سادت عام 1989.

فالدول العربية في الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا على وشك خوض ذات التجربة التي خبرتها دول وسط وشرقي أوروبا في 1989، بمظاهرات تصاعدت سريعاً أدت لسقوط أنظمة وقادة وجدوا أنفسهم جردوا من كل شرعية في مواجهة حشود مواطنيهم الساخطة.


واشنطن بوست

Doesn't the West Bank have Facebook? : Akiva Eldar

Don't the Al Jazeera on-the-scene reports about the riots in Egypt spark thoughts of uprising among unemployed Palestinians in the West Bank (especially since the unemployment rate in the West Bank is 16.5 percent, compared to 9.7 percent in Egypt )? And don't the lucky ones, who have permits to stand in a packed line at the roadblock in the wee hours of the morning to get a day of work at a Jewish construction site, understand that even Arabs can revolt against infringement of their basic rights?: R.K

A. Eldar
The riots began in Silwan, spread to Sheikh Jarrah, moved on to Shuhada Street in Hebron and reached their peak in Ramallah. College students and the jobless, along with former Hamas prisoners and embittered Fatah activists, took over the Muqata. Masses of people bearing placards condemning the occupation marched toward the settlement of Psagot. A small group of soldiers who were stationed along the way took fright and fired live bullets at the protesters. News about the death of 10 youths inflamed the Arab towns in the Galilee and the Triangle region, and the outrage spread to Jaffa and Ramle. The Israel Defense Forces seized control of the territories and restored military rule. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced his resignation and dismantled the PA.
A hallucination? The product of a wild imagination? If only. Just last week, who among us anticipated the earthquake that has since rocked Egypt? Are the residents of Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah and Shuhada Street, who are living under foreign occupation, in a better situation than the Egyptians suffering under a cruel regime? Don't the students at Birzeit University have Facebook accounts?
Don't the Al Jazeera on-the-scene reports about the riots in Egypt spark thoughts of uprising among unemployed Palestinians in the West Bank (especially since the unemployment rate in the West Bank is 16.5 percent, compared to 9.7 percent in Egypt )? And don't the lucky ones, who have permits to stand in a packed line at the roadblock in the wee hours of the morning to get a day of work at a Jewish construction site, understand that even Arabs can revolt against infringement of their basic rights?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that he was making an effort to maintain stability and security in the region. How will he do that? For example, is he going to help strengthen the moderate secular coalition in the region by announcing that he accepts the Arab League peace initiative - the same initiative that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been begging us to respond to for eight years - as a basis for negotiations?
Come on, really, how could he? After all, it doesn't say there that they'll recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people and a united Jerusalem as our eternal capital.
So maybe, as a gesture to Mubarak, Netanyahu will invite Abbas to his home and present him with a fair proposal for permanent borders?
What does that have to do with it? The Palestinians should be thankful that the prime minister is considering approving an access road to the future Palestinian city of Rawabi.
And what about this idea: Netanyahu convinces members of Congress to increase financial aid to Egypt. He could tell them it's not fair that Israel gets $3 billion a year from the United States while Egypt, whose population is 11 time bigger and whose per capita gross national product is about one-fifth that of Israel's ($6,200 vs. $30,000 ), gets less than $2 billion.
What kind of nonsense is that? Where will we get the money to buy more combat planes? What, are we going to take it from the new roads we're paving for the settlers?
It's not really reasonable, or even fair, to expect that Netanyahu will really make an effort to maintain regional stability and security; the human rights situation in the territories interests him as much as last year's heat wave. The option of withdrawal from most of the territories as part of a regional peace, accompanied by security arrangements and the promotion of financial projects, does not sit well with his political agenda. The "Big Brother" contestant who was kicked off the show yesterday interests Israeli voters more than the risk that Abbas will be ousted tomorrow. The turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt serve as further proof for the voters that in our violent part of the world, we have to build up our muscles - and that there isn't any room for terror collaborators or people who are overly fastidious.
The responsibility for not geting dragged away in the wave of fanaticism and anarchy falls on U.S. President Barack Obama. In June 2009, he pledged that "America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." At the same time, he called for a total halt to settlement construction, which he said undermines peace efforts. Twenty months later, in his State of the Union address last week, Obama didn't mention the Palestinians or even imply anything about them, while his representatives in the United Nations are working on holding off a proposal to condemn Israel over continued unrestrained construction in the settlements.
The only thing left is to hope that Obama learned something from what's going on in Egypt and will not wait until the territories are aflame before muttering something about the need for confidence-building steps.

The Syrians are watching : Al Jazeera

In the tea shops and internet cafes of Damascus, Syrians are asking what events in Egypt may mean for them.
Hugh Macleod Last Modified: 30 Jan 2011 12:47 GMT
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Syrians are closely following the events unfolding in Egypt [Credit: Hugh Macleod]

In one of Old Damascus' new cafes, text messages buzzed between mobiles in quick succession, drawing woops of joy and thumbs up from astonished Syrians.

Suzan Mubarak, the wife of the Egyptian president, had flown into exile with her son - so the rumours went - driven out of the country by days of unprecedented protest against the 30-year rule of her husband.

The news from Cairo brought a flutter of excitement to this country, founded on principles so similar to Egypt that the two nations were once joined as one.

Like Egypt, Syria has been ruled for decades by a single party, with a security service that maintains an iron grip on its citizens. Both countries have been struggling to reform economies stifled for generations by central control in an effort to curb unemployment among a ballooning youth demographic.

Could the domino effect that spread from the streets of Tunis to Cairo soon hit Damascus?

"Perhaps the Saudis will have to build a whole village for Arab presidents once they run out of villas," joked a taxi driver, wondering if Hosni Mubarak would go the same way as Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president who flew into exile in Saudi Arabia after street protests brought down his regime.

Through the haze

In a smoky tea shop in central Damascus, the usual babble of conversation was subdued as customers sat quietly but intently watching the TV broadcasting images of flames pouring from Egypt's ruling party's head office, a Soviet-era building much like many of those that house the state institutions in their own capital.

The young waiter, though, was sceptical that real change would come to Egypt. "Mubarak won't go. Why did the Egyptian people wait until now? It's only because of Tunisia. I'd like him to go, but he won't."

Others, though, said the genie was already out of the bottle.

"The most important message is that people can make the change. Before it was always army officers that lead a coup," said Mazen Darwich, whose Syrian Centre for Media, which campaigns for press freedoms in Syria, was closed by authorities soon after opening.

"It may not be tomorrow or a few months but I'm sure it is like dominoes. Before there was always an ideology - pan-Arabism or being an enemy of Israel. But now people are simply looking for their personal freedom, for food, education, a good life. The days of ideology are over."

On Friday evening, as protests in Cairo reached a crescendo, the streets of Damascus were unusually quiet, with many people staying at home to watch the news. Syria's state-run media quoted some news reports from Cairo, but offered no comment or analysis on the situation.

By Saturday morning life had returned to normal with few signs, on the surface at least, that the authorities were concerned about potential unrest.

Socialising by proxy

Online, however, it was a different story. Internet users reported a significant slowdown in the web, with searches for news on Egypt often crashing browsers.

Heavy user traffic could be an explanation but in Syria, where thousands of websites deemed opposed to state interests are blocked and where Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media are banned, authorities denied accusations they had restricted the service to prevent citizens hearing about events in Cairo.

Earlier this week, though, authorities banned programmes that allow access to Facebook Chat from mobile phones, a cheap and easy means of staying in touch that had exploded in popularity among young Syrians.

"People here are suffering much more than Egypt or Tunisia but you don't see it. They keep their mouths shut because they don't want to be locked up for 10 years," said a graduate medical student, surfing the web at an internet cafe.

Sitting next to him, a young lady finished updating her Facebook page and chatting with friends online - one of thousands of young Syrians adept at using proxy servers to get around the official ban on Facebook.

Although internet users must register their names with the cafe on a list that can be collected by the police, when asked if she had any concerns over breaking the ban on Facebook the young woman said all her friends do the same thing.

Indeed, President Bashar al-Assad, who opened Syria up to the internet when he succeeded his late father in 2000, has his own Facebook page.

As much as possible, as much as necessary

Al-Assad has weathered five years of intense US-led pressure against his regime, was driven out of Lebanon over accusations of having killed Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, and, as the memoirs of George W Bush, the former US president, revealed, was considered next on America's list for regime change, after the toppling of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Today, however, the Iraq war will be remembered as a strategic disaster for the US, it is Syria's ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, rather than Damascus itself which is set to be accused of involvement in al-Hariri's killing and Syria's allies are back in power in Lebanon.

"What happened in Tunisia and Egypt was not just about hunger, it was about national pride," said Mazen Bilal, the editor of Suria al-Ghad, a political news website familiar with government thinking.

"Syria is another story. Through all the problems it maintained its national stances and its sovereignty and so people are proud of their nation."

Crucially, as well, the government's reform of the economy is maintaining a system of support to alleviate the worst effects of poverty.

"Egypt and Tunisia applied the free market principles, but Syria has not. The government still controls the strategic keys to the economy," said Bilal. "It's even opening up new jobs in the public sector to absorb more workers."

Abdullah Dardari, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said five years of reforms had increased incomes above the increase in inflation, with the relative spending power of the poor growing faster than the rich.

One in 10 Syrians live in poverty - but this figure is far below Egypt's rate of some 40 per cent. Official figures in Syria show unemployment fell from over 12 per cent in 2005 to 8.1 per cent in 2009, one per cent lower than the official rate in Egypt, although some analysts put it as high as 25 per cent. Average salaries in Syria have risen to $200 over the past few years, more than double the rate in Egypt.

The government has promised increased spending on social security and training for the out-of-work and aims to curb rapid population growth of 2.45 per cent by raising the minimum age of marriage.

Economist Bassel Kaghadou, writing in the English-language monthly Syria Today, spelled out Syria's cautious approach to reforms: "As much market economy as possible with as much state intervention as necessary."

In recent months, Al-Assad has been criss-crossing eastern Europe, meeting leaders there to outline his vision for a 'Six Seas' Trade bloc, linking the Gulf to the Mediterranean and the Caspian, Black, Adriatic and Red seas, putting Syria at the centre of the regional energy and transportation network.

All across Damascus, symbols of a burgeoning middle class are spreading, from a sleek sandstone shopping mall, home to Costa Coffee and a bright new art gallery, to the Lebanese banks opening sparkling new branches for the first time.

But as the young doctor put it, looking up at the cameras inside the internet cafe: "Everything here is under control, even if it looks open."

No ‘Berlin Moment’ in Egypt : Virginia Tilley

It’s been thrilling to watch Egyptian mass demonstrations roll back the ossified Mubarak regime, especially as events in Tunisia suggest a knock-on effect that has rattled the Arab world. But this drama can’t be read as the Arab world’s “Berlin moment,” as some have enthused. Yes, serious reforms are in the offing, especially regarding more genuine elections. But limited prospects for reforms are just as clearly indicated.

Reading anodyne language from the US and Europe warning the power elite in Egypt not to use too much force against demonstrators while not mentioning Mubarak at all, we must assume that ousting Mubarak is “viewed with favour” by the West. This should be signal. The US, UK and the rest of Europe are not so much steering events as surfing a wave of popular mobilisation, which they have encouraged for some time, as the only way finally to dislodge Mubarak and his crony core. The happy (naive) interpretation is a confluence of Western and Egyptian interests and values regarding democracy and good governance, coupled with disgust in old dictators clinging to kleptocratic power. But since when has US foreign policy encouraged democracy for the benefit of ordinary people? In fact, this Western imprimatur signals some hard realist western interests—and some ominous undercurrents.

Western motives in ousting Mubarak are obvious. The old man has outworn his usefulness to the US in being unable to contain burning social dissatisfaction in Egypt, raising risks that Egypt might escape the grip of US foreign policy through the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood. The US and Israel don’t want Egypt—in older days the leader of the Arab world and now a vital Israeli ally—going the way of Lebanon, where genuine democracy has allowed Hizbullah to control a parliamentary majority. It would be a disaster for Israeli if two of its borders fell into political hands less sanguine about starving the population of Gaza, ensuring the continuing division of Palestinian politics, training the security forces of the Palestinian Authority to repress Hamas, confining the ‘peace process’ to empty formulas, and demonising Iran.

Hard if fragmented evidence of Western involvement is obvious, too. Many close observers are recalling a Wikileaks record that the US Embassy has been in contact with Egyptian activists for some years about getting rid of Mubarak, granting one key activist top-level access with US government authorities, technical advice regarding mass communication and other encouragement, and helping protect his anonymity. We can also recall Hillary Clinton’s recent tour of the Arab world, in which she made a series of speeches bizarrely endorsing the dramatic reform of US-allied Arab governments. Clinton sees the entire Middle East through an Israeli lens: if she calls for change, her concern is that Egypt and other Arab states be enabled to do their bit to sustain Israel’s ‘security’ more effectively. So US diplomatic graffiti is clear: the US wants to secure its withering power base in the Middle East against rising political dissent and therefore wants rotten old stick Mubarak out of the way to restore Egypt’s old leadership role. The same US graffiti is designed to be read by other wobbling Arab allies, like Yemen: toe the line or face the same.

It takes little imagination to fill in the rest. In coming years, we’ll likely get a Wikileaks glimpse into the backroom conversation, held in the second or third day of the Egyptian insurrection, in which European, US and Israeli allies read Mubarak a literal riot act (pointing out the window) instructing him against all his druthers to appoint securocrat Omar Suleiman as deputy president. Suleiman is the ideal successor for US interests and has clearly been hand-picked now to take the reins. He’s immaculately polite (recall the Western appeal of Karzai) and ‘comfortable in the halls of power’, as al-Jazeera has noted. He’s a core high operator in Israeli/US foreign policy, including the ‘war on terror’ (supervising US-requested renditions, etc.), and a good personal buddy of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, with whom he once male-bonded in surviving a shared assassination attempt. He’s a proven ally in the deceitful manipulation of the Palestinian Authority: e.g., leading the phoney “unity” talks while supervising Egyptian assistance to the US in training PA armed forces to repress Hamas in the West Bank and ensuring the brutal sealing of Gaza.

Best of all, Suleiman is an intelligence chief, welded firmly within the US-Israeli intelligence nexus that props up the Fatah-led PA, assists with the mess in Afghanistan, tortures or assassinates the more dangerous opponents to US and Israeli interests, and orchestrates the subversion of Syria and Iran. Such a figure, Washington must hope, can recreate an effective US-Israeli-Egyptian power bloc in a Middle East now drifting away from US moorings as Turkey, Lebanon and even Iraq progressively defect from Western-preferred policies.

So, yes, the old fossil Mubarak has been cut loose and a ‘new Egypt’ (as presidential candidate Mohamed el-Baradei calls it) will soon be announced. The orange or purple or green or lavender or puce revolution will be applauded, the people will rejoice and more meaningful elections will be held. But Suleiman and his technocratic allies are already pre-positioned to ensure that the new Egypt precludes any access to real political influence by factions that, in the US view, are ominously closer to Hizbullah in their regional outlook. The whole point of the current drama is indeed to defuse the legitimate mass popular discontent that feeds the appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood—just as Hamas appealed to the disenchanted Palestinian electorate and Hizbullah has appealed to the disenchanted Lebanese electorate, the majority of whom otherwise don’t favour Islamic parties but were driven to support them through terminal political frustration.

This new Egypt will definitely improve some conditions for some Egyptians over coming years: especially by creating jobs for the masses of educated unemployed men, who are now driving the street demonstrations. But reforms in Egypt will focus on technocratic economic solutions: emphasizing standard liberal capitalist measures regarding government and financial transparency, reduced corruption to encourage business growth, an end to routine police torture practices, etc., etc. The security state will otherwise stay in place—and the conditions for a highly unequal society will not fundamentally change. Egypt will stay firmly in the fold of US/Israeli security interests and global economic norms. It will just play that role more adeptly than before.

Alas, the truly mass democratic character of this revolution actually favours this outcome. The demonstrators are calling, in principled fashion, not for any specific leadership but for genuine elections. It’s not impossible that more robust democracy will ultimately escape US control, as they did in Lebanon. But the hundreds of thousands now demonstrating in Egyptian cities lack the top-level access to prevent Suleiman’s security/technocrat network, with its foreign imprimatur, from ensuring that the ‘democratic’ transition generates simply a more efficient and stable version of the client-state role that Egypt has been playing for decades. Such a state cannot really alter the conditions that now impoverish and marginalise whole segments of Egyptian society. Some of the street activists recognise this, of course. Whether they can meaningfully alter the grand Western design for which their principled passion is now being co-opted is entirely unclear.

Death throes of a dictatorship : Robert Fisk

In the pantomime world of Mubarak himself – and of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington – the man who still claims to be president of Egypt swore in the most preposterous choice of vice-president in an attempt to soften the fury of the protesters – Omar Suleiman, Egypt's chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit. How this elderly apparatchik might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman's appointment, they burst into laughter.

Their crews, in battledress and smiling and in some cases clapping their hands, made no attempt to wipe off the graffiti that the crowds had spray-painted on their tanks. "Mubarak Out – Get Out", and "Your regime is over, Mubarak" have now been plastered on almost every Egyptian tank on the streets of Cairo. On one of the tanks circling Freedom Square was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Beltagi. Earlier, I had walked beside a convoy of tanks near the suburb of Garden City as crowds scrambled on to the machines to hand oranges to the crews, applauding them as Egyptian patriots. However crazed Mubarak's choice of vice-president and his gradual appointment of a powerless new government of cronies, the streets of Cairo proved what the United States and EU leaders have simply failed to grasp. It is over.


Mubarak's feeble attempts to claim that he must end violence on behalf of the Egyptian people – when his own security police have been responsible for most of the cruelty of the past five days – has elicited even further fury from those who have spent 30 years under his sometimes vicious dictatorship. For there are growing suspicions that much of the looting and arson was carried out by plainclothes cops – including the murder of 11 men in a rural village in the past 24 hours – in an attempt to destroy the integrity of the protesters campaigning to throw Mubarak out of power. The destruction of a number of communications centres by masked men – which must have been co-ordinated by some form of institution – has also raised suspicions that the plainclothes thugs who beat many of the demonstrators were to blame.

But the torching of police stations across Cairo and in Alexandria and Suez and other cities was obviously not carried out by plainclothes cops. Late on Friday, driving to Cairo 40 miles down the Alexandria highway, crowds of young men had lit fires across the highway and, when cars slowed down, demanded hundreds of dollars in cash. Yesterday morning, armed men were stealing cars from their owners in the centre of Cairo.

Infinitely more terrible was the vandalism at the Egyptian National Museum. After police abandoned this greatest of ancient treasuries, looters broke into the red-painted building and smashed 4,000-year-old pharaonic statues, Egyptian mummies and magnificent wooden boats, originally carved – complete with their miniature crews – to accompany kings to their graves. Glass cases containing priceless figurines were bashed in, the black-painted soldiers inside pushed over. Again, it must be added that there were rumours before the discovery that police caused this vandalism before they fled the museum on Friday night. Ghastly shades of the Baghdad museum in 2003. It wasn't as bad as that looting, but it was a most awful archeological disaster.

In my night journey from 6th October City to the capital, I had to slow down when darkened vehicles loomed out of the darkness. They were smashed, glass scattered across the road, slovenly policemen pointing rifles at my headlights. One jeep was half burned out. They were the wreckage of the anti-riot police force which the protesters forced out of Cairo on Friday. Those same demonstrators last night formed a massive circle around Freedom Square to pray, "Allah Alakbar" thundering into the night air over the city.

And there are also calls for revenge. An al-Jazeera television crew found 23 bodies in the Alexandria mortuary, apparently shot by the police. Several had horrifically mutilated faces. Eleven more bodies were discovered in a Cairo mortuary, relatives gathering around their bloody remains and screaming for retaliation against the police.


Cairo now changes from joy to sullen anger within minutes. Yesterday morning, I walked across the Nile river bridge to watch the ruins of Mubarak's 15-storey party headquarters burn. In front stood a vast poster advertising the benefits of the party – pictures of successful graduates, doctors and full employment, the promises which Mubarak's party had failed to deliver in 30 years – outlined by the golden fires curling from the blackened windows of the party headquarters. Thousands of Egyptians stood on the river bridge and on the motorway flyovers to take pictures of the fiercely burning building – and of the middle-aged looters still stealing chairs and desks from inside.


Yet the moment a Danish television team arrived to film exactly the same scenes, they were berated by scores of people who said that they had no right to film the fires, insisting that Egyptians were proud people who would never steal or commit arson. This was to become a theme during the day: that reporters had no right to report anything about this "liberation" that might reflect badly upon it. Yet they were still remarkably friendly and – despite Obama's pusillanimous statements on Friday night – there was not the slightest manifestation of hostility against the United States. "All we want – all – is Mubarak's departure and new elections and our freedom and honour," a 30-year-old psychiatrist told me. Behind her, crowds of young men were clearing up broken crash barriers and road intersection fences from the street – an ironic reflection on the well-known Cairo adage that Egyptians will never, ever clean their roads.


Mubarak's allegation that these demonstrations and arson – this combination was a theme of his speech refusing to leave Egypt – were part of a "sinister plan" is clearly at the centre of his claim to continued world recognition. Indeed, Obama's own response – about the need for reforms and an end to such violence – was an exact copy of all the lies Mubarak has been using to defend his regime for three decades. It was deeply amusing to Egyptians that Obama – in Cairo itself, after his election – had urged Arabs to grasp freedom and democracy. These aspirations disappeared entirely when he gave his tacit if uncomfortable support to the Egyptian president on Friday. The problem is the usual one: the lines of power and the lines of morality in Washington fail to intersect when US presidents have to deal with the Middle East. Moral leadership in America ceases to exist when the Arab and Israeli worlds have to be confronted.


And the Egyptian army is, needless to say, part of this equation. It receives much of the $1.3bn of annual aid from Washington. The commander of that army, General Tantawi – who just happened to be in Washington when the police tried to crush the demonstrators – has always been a very close personal friend of Mubarak. Not a good omen, perhaps, for the immediate future.


So the "liberation" of Cairo – where, grimly, there came news last night of the looting of the Qasr al-Aini hospital – has yet to run its full course. The end may be clear. The tragedy is not over.

Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast : Haarets

rced to court new potential allies.
By AlThe fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse.

From now on, it will be hard for Israel to trust an Egyptian government torn apart by internal strife. Israel's increasing isolation in the region, coupled with a weakening United States, will force the government to court new potential allies.

Israel's foreign policy has depended on regional alliances which have provided the country with strategic depth since the 1950s. The country's first partner was France, which at the time ruled over northern Africa and provided Israel with advanced weaponry and nuclear capabilities.

After Israel's war against Egypt in 1956, David Ben-Gurion attempted to establish alliances with non-Arab countries in the region, including Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia. The Shah of Iran became a significant ally of Israel, supplying the country with oil and money from weapons purchases. The countries' militaries and intelligence agencies worked on joint operations against Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's rule, which was seen as the main threat against Israel and pro-Western Arab governments.

Israel's next alliances were forged with Jordan's King Hussein and Morocco's King Hassan. These ties were operated in secret, as well as ties with leaders in Lebanon's Christian community. The late 1970s saw the fall of the Shah of Iran, with an anti-Israel Islamic republic created in his stead.

Around the same time, Egypt and Israel broke their cycle of conflict by signing a peace agreement. Egypt positioned itself on the side of Saudi Arabia, as head of the pro-American camp.

Mubarak inherited the peace agreement after President Anwar Sadat's assassination. Mubarak was cold in his public relations with Israel, refusing to visit the country except for Yitzhak Rabin's funeral, which decelerated normalization between the countries.

Relations between the Israel Defense Forces and the Egyptian army were conducted on a low level, with no joint exercises. Egyptian public opinion was openly hostile towards Israel and anti-Semitic terminology was common. Civil relations between the countries were carried out by a handful of government workers and businessmen.

Despite all of this, the "cold peace" with Egypt was the most important strategic alliance Israel had in the Middle East. The security provided by the alliance gave Israel the chance to concentrate its forces on the northern front and around the settlements. Starting in 1985, peace with Egypt allowed for Israel to cut its defense budget, which greatly benefited the economy.

Mubarak became president while Israel was governed by Menachim Begin, and has worked with eight different Israeli leaders since then. He had close relations with Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu. In the last two years, despite a stagnation in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and worsening relations between Netanyahu and the Arab world, Mubarak has hosted the prime minister both in Cairo and in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The friendship between Mubarak and Netanyahu is based on a mutual fear over Iran's strengthening and the rising power of Islamists, as well as over the weakening and distancing of the U.S. government with Barack Obama at its head.

Now, with Mubarak struggling over the survival of his government, Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. These two allies promise to strengthen Israel's Eastern battlefront and are also working to stop terror attacks and slow down Hamas.

But Israel's relationship with these two allies is complicated. Joint security exercises are modest and the relationship between the leaders is poor. Jordan's King Abdullah refuses to meet Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is waging a diplomatic struggle against Israel's right-wing government. It's hard to tell how Jordan and the PA could fill the role that Egypt has played for Israel.

In this situation, Israel will be forced to seek out new allies. The natural candidates include Syria, which is striving to exploit Egypt's weakness to claim a place among the key nations in the region.

The images from Cairo and Tunisia surely send chills down the backs of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his cronies, despite the achievement they achieved with the new Hezbollah-backed Lebanon government. As long as the Arab world is flooded with waves of angry anti-government protests, Assad and Netanyahu will be left to safeguard the old order of the Middle East.