Saturday, 3 January 2009
By Jihad el-Khazen
Stop attacking Egypt!
All Arabs support Palestine and the Palestinian cause. Many in the Arab world have sacrificed for this cause but none as much as Egypt and the Egyptians.
This is not just another Torah myth, but modern history to which we bear witness.
Yet, ignorant people still demonstrate in front of Egyptian embassies shouting indecent cries, amidst calls for resistance and fighting.
This is no struggle, but instigation to murder ... the murder of Palestinians.
Israel is a Nazi occupation nation. The Bush Administration is a full accessory in crime. Arab governments are afraid, powerless and helpless.
We already know this, whether Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said it or not. However, Nasrallah says many things these days.
Similarly to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah is a national liberation movement against Israel. I have and will always support the resistance as long as the occupation persists.
However, Nasrallah, famous for his resistance as well as his intelligence, was wrong about Egypt. He was also wrong in "interpreting" what he had said: he called Egyptians to demonstrate though they were the first to take to the streets in defense of Palestine without any such invitation. He also called the Egyptian army to stage a coup. He apparently does not know that Egypt's opposition to Hamas' politics or practices is not a diplomatic whim nor a personal position for President Mubarak, but rather a policy with clear underlying reasons. The largest Arab country will not be pushed by a faction to revoke its agreements and accords and change its foreign relations and alliances as suits that faction. Moreover, the Egyptian government sees Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a cat's paw for Iran. Iran's aim, in the eyes of Egypt, is to improve its negotiating position with the US to the detriment of Egypt and the Palestinian national interest. As such, Washington and Tehran could eventually share power in the Middle East at the expense of every Arab interest.
Thus, accusing Hamas of selling its people for the interests of some regional countries, naming "Syria in particular," as Nasrallah said, is in fact an accusation for Iran and not Syria. The complaint against Syria is that it is Iran's ally, while the latter promotes ambitions, interests or goals that Egypt believes to be against Arab interests. Mubarak explicitly expressed this stance in his speech two days ago.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is the hero of the resistance and one of the finest people around. But a friend is the one who believes you and it is the Egyptians who held Nasrallah's pictures after the Summer of 2006. However, he is now talking about ending the Gaza war in the field - another mistake, because he is apparently matching between Hezbollah's force, weapons and performance in 2006 and Hamas' power.
I wish this would happen; I pray for it. But the comparison is out of the question. Hamas' men are willing to die, but they lack Hezbollah's rockets and heavy - or even light - weapons. In addition, their unbalanced battle with Israel is restricted to a small land strip.
Am I the only Arab interested in life? If a quarter of the victims in Gaza are civilians, this means the death of about one hundred women and children, among them five sisters... At this point, it is no longer resistance or survival, but rather suicide rejected by every religion, mind and people.
On December 17, 2008, an ominous Saturday, I quoted in this column security and diplomatic Egyptian sources that ruled out an invasion or a heavy military strike against Hamas leaders and Gaza's remaining infrastructure. While I wrote before the first shot in the barbaric attack, I had heard this talk three days earlier and left Cairo one day before Tzipi Livni's arrival. Hamas' leaders in Gaza also heard this then opted for the path of impossible confrontation that claimed innocent lives; lives that the leadership should have protected.
I write in defense of life. The difference between people like me and advocates of suicidal politics is that I want to live for Palestine, while they want to die for it.
