Egypt demands CBS should not air interview with President Sisi | News | Al Jazeera
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/egypt-demands-cbs-air-interview-president-sisi-190104074434041.html
In an interview with CBS show ’60 Minutes’, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi denies holding any political prisoners in Egypt.
Palestinian ’geeks’ code their way to a better future in Gaza | Israeli–Palestinian conflict | Al Jazeera
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/palestinian-geeks-code-future-gaza-181110115605269.html
Gaza is home to roughly 2 million people and experiences one of the highest unemployment rates in the world - more than 50 percent are without work.
The unemployment is a product of its isolation. Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade, assisted by Egypt under the governments of former President Hosni Mubarak and current leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, since 2007.
But Gazans are finding opportunities beyond the besieged strip. There is a rise in entrepreneurial start-ups and tech accelerators, providing residents of the strip with outside opportunities previously unavailable.
GSG’s coding school was established in 2017 with funding from the likes of Google and London-based coding boot camp Founders & Coders. It aims to empower students to be full-stack developers, which means they will be able to handle software building for mobile, computer and web.
A superb new book on the 2011 Egyptian uprising shows how Israel helped thwart democracy there – Mondoweiss
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/egyptian-uprising-democracy
Kirkpatrick quotes Leon Panetta, at the time the head of the CIA, who says the new Egyptian strongman, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, recognized that the American threats were bluffs partly because Sisi was confident the Israel lobby would protect the Egyptian military.
The [U.S.] Congress knew that in a part of the world where Israel does not have a lot of friends, it does not make a heck of a lot of sense to kick Egypt in the ass, because they are one of the few players in that area that are a friend to Israel.
Israel was not the only reason the U.S. betrayed democracy in Egypt. America’s other allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil kingdoms, also preferred military rule there. Senior U.S. commanders, like Generals James Mattis and Michael Flynn, had personal ties to Sisi and other Egyptian top brass. Kirkpatrick also notes that Hillary Clinton “saw the generals as a source of stability.” But remove Israel from the equation and it is more likely that the minority of moderates in the Obama administration, which included Obama himself, might have prevailed.
As Elections Near, Egypt Finds a New Target: Foreign News Media - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/middleeast/egypt-elections-news-media.html
CAIRO — Egypt’s chief prosecutor delivered a withering broadside against the news media on Wednesday, blaming the “forces of evil” for negative coverage and instructing his staff to take legal action against outlets deemed to be undermining Egypt’s security.
The remarks by the prosecutor, Nabil Sadek, were the latest escalation of a draconian crackdown on civil liberties before a presidential election in March that has become fraught with tension even though President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi faces no real opposition.
In comments that appeared aimed at the foreign news media, Mr. Sadek accused outlets of spreading false news “to disturb the public order and terrorize society.” A day earlier, Egypt had called for a boycott of the BBC over a documentary that aired last week detailing torture and illegal abductions by Egyptian security forces.
Local news coverage has been dominated in recent days by a wave of government-driven outrage over the documentary. Although the documentary contained abuse accusations already widely documented by human rights groups, it was denounced as propaganda spread by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
The State Information Service, which oversees the foreign media, said the BBC film was inaccurate because a young woman featured in the documentary later told a local television station that she had not been harmed.
Her mother said on Tuesday that the woman had been coerced into giving a false statement to the local station. A day later, the mother was reported to have been arrested.
The BBC said in a statement: “We stand by the integrity of our reporting teams.”
While Mr. Sisi has long treated Egyptian news outlets harshly, jailing dozens of reporters and blocking about 500 websites, he has generally spared foreign reporters the worst measures. That appears to have changed with the presidential election campaign.
A long list of rules announced by the national election commission in February seeks to dictate the questions journalists can ask voters, prohibits them from using photographs or headlines “not related to the topic” and forbids them from making “any observations about the voting process.”
“These rules made me laugh, and scared the hell out of me at the same time,” said Gamal Eid, a leading lawyer and human rights activist. “The rules are purposefully vague so they can decide to let their friends go, and punish their critics. It seems tailor-made for the foreign media.”
Egypt’s SCAF and the Curious Case Against Konsowa - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
▻http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/75353?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkRNMk5tRmxNMlkxWVdJNSIsInQiOiI0TXVEdzY5ekl
The Egyptian military is exploiting legal loopholes and bureaucratic mechanisms to control which military personnel can exercise their constitutional right to political participation.
January 25, 2018
عربيComments (+)
On December 3, a few days after Colonel Ahmed Konsowa announced in a YouTube video that he intended to run against Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the upcoming Egyptian presidential election, he was detained and put on a military trial for announcing his bid while still serving in the military. In an uncharacteristically prompt trial on December 19, he was sentenced to six years in prison and is now awaiting an appeal before a military court.
Konsowa, who had previously tried to resign from the military to run in the 2015 parliamentary elections, is not the only presidential hopeful to face dire consequences for his intentions. After declaring his decision to run, Ahmed Shafik—Egypt’s former prime minister and air force pilot who ran in the 2012 presidential election—was deported from the UAE and held incommunicado for 24 hours upon his return to Egypt. Following this episode, he indicated he no longer wishes to participate. Sami Anan, the former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, was detained on January 23 after announcing his intention to run for president, and is now accused of incitement against the military and of violating military code. Khaled Ali, a prominent lawyer, withdrew on January 24, citing the absence of a democratic process or any possibilities for competition. Sisi currently stands unchallenged.
Military officers, though not banned from political participation, have to resign from the military before running for any office. In May 2013, the Supreme Constitutional Court upheld the constitutional right of Egyptian military and police personnel to political participation—thereby rejecting a draft law by the then Islamist-dominated Shura Council that would have denied military and police personnel their right to vote. The court’s decision made clear the difference between denying the right to vote based on “temporary and objective” conditions (such as age or mental disability) and depriving an entire group of people (such as military personnel) of a right. The law was thus rejected on basis of preventing discrimination. In addition, the court explained that exempting citizens based on the nature of their employment further impinges on the right to work, which is also protected by the Egyptian constitution.
Tapes Reveal Egyptian Leaders’ Tacit Acceptance of Jerusalem Move - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/world/middleeast/egypt-jerusalem-talk-shows.html?smid=tw-share
As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer quietly placed phone calls to the hosts of several influential talk shows in Egypt.
“Like all our Arab brothers,” Egypt would denounce the decision in public, the officer, Capt. Ashraf al-Kholi, told the hosts.
But strife with Israel was not in Egypt’s national interest, Captain Kholi said. He told the hosts that instead of condemning the decision, they should persuade their viewers to accept it. Palestinians, he suggested, should content themselves with the dreary West Bank town that currently houses the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah.
“How is Jerusalem different from Ramallah, really?” Captain Kholi asked repeatedly in four audio recordings of his telephone calls obtained by The New York Times.
“Exactly that,” agreed one host, Azmi Megahed, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording.
For decades, powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have publicly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while privately acquiescing to Israel’s continued occupation of territory the Palestinians claim as their homeland.
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But now a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel — producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.
Mr. Trump’s decision broke with a central premise of 50 years of American-sponsored peace talks, defied decades of Arab demands that East Jerusalem be the capital of a Palestinian state, and stoked fears of a violent backlash across the Middle East.
Arab governments, mindful of the popular sympathy for the Palestinian cause, rushed to publicly condemn it.
Egyptian state media reported that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had personally protested to Mr. Trump. Egyptian religious leaders close to the government refused to meet with Vice President Mike Pence, and Egypt submitted a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a reversal of Mr. Trump’s decision. (The United States vetoed the resolution, although the General Assembly adopted a similar one, over American objections, days later.)
King Salman of Saudi Arabia, arguably the most influential Arab state, also publicly denounced Mr. Trump’s decision.
At the same time, though, the kingdom had already quietly signaled its acquiescence or even tacit approval of the Israeli claim to Jerusalem. Days before Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, privately urged the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept a radically curtailed vision of statehood without a capital in East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian, Arab and European officials who have heard Mr. Abbas’s version of events.
Egyptian Chronicles: Al-Rawda Mosque Carnage : Two weeks later
▻https://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2017/12/al-rawda-mosque-carnage-two-weeks-later.html#more
Al-Rawda Mosque Carnage : Two weeks later
Last Friday, head of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohamed El-Tayeb led Friday prayers at North Sinai’s El-Rawda Mosque just one week after the horrifying massacre it witnessed where not less than 311 people were killed according to official statements in Egypt’s worst terrorist attack.
The week before President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi renewed his orders to the Egyptian armed forces and police force during the official celebration of Prophet Mohamed “PBUH” to use “brute force” or “utmost force” to restore order within three months in the Egyptian Northern East governorate.
The Egyptian Mainstream Media passed over that horrifying massacre as you know life goes on and we should not ask too many questions as terrorism is having its last days in North Sinai.
I had too many questions and I could not find them in the mainstream media as usual.
I can not travel to North Sinai except if I have security permits and unfortunately I could not travel to Ismailia to meet with the injured either as I have been battling flu. Yet, thank God for telephones despite it is not perfect.
In the past week, I managed to speak with locals from both Bir Al-Abd city as well Al-Rawda village through telephone calls.
Their answers and information did not only reveal something I did not know then about the worst massacre in the history of Egypt but also about the situation in general in North Sinai governorate after nearly four years of war against terrorism.
The Black Friday
On Friday 24 November, the People of Bir Al-Abd began to feel that there was something wrong with that 35 km away small village as news came that militants cut the International highway between their city and Al-Rawda.
The news came that afternoon about how there was a bombing inside the village’s mosque during Friday prayers and the injured were transferred to the Bir Al-Abd hospital as there is no medical facility in there.
Why Was an Italian Graduate Student Tortured and Murdered in Egypt? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/magazine/giulio-regeni-italian-graduate-student-tortured-murdered-egypt.html?_r=0
The target of the Egyptian police, that day in November 2015, was the street vendors selling socks, $2 sunglasses and fake jewelry, who clustered under the arcades of the elegant century-old buildings of Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb. Such raids were routine, but these vendors occupied an especially sensitive location. Just 100 yards away is the ornate palace where Egypt’s president, the military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, welcomes foreign dignitaries. As the men hurriedly gathered their goods from mats and doorways, preparing to flee, they had an unlikely assistant: an Italian graduate student named Giulio Regeni.
He arrived in Cairo a few months earlier to conduct research for his doctorate at Cambridge. Raised in a small village near Trieste by a sales manager father and a schoolteacher mother, Regeni, a 28-year-old leftist, was enthralled by the revolutionary spirit of the Arab Spring. In 2011, when demonstrations erupted in Tahrir Square, leading to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, he was finishing a degree in Arabic and politics at Leeds University. He was in Cairo in 2013, working as an intern at a United Nations agency, when a second wave of protests led the military to oust Egypt’s newly elected president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, and put Sisi in charge. Like many Egyptians who had grown hostile to Morsi’s overreaching government, Regeni approved of this development. ‘‘It’s part of the revolutionary process,’’ he wrote an English friend, Bernard Goyder, in early August. Then, less than two weeks later, Sisi’s security forces killed 800 Morsi supporters in a single day, the worst state-sponsored massacre in Egypt’s history. It was the beginning of a long spiral of repression. Regeni soon left for England, where he started work for Oxford Analytica, a business-research firm.
From afar, Regeni followed Sisi’s government closely. He wrote reports on North Africa, analyzing political and economic trends, and after a year had saved enough money to start on his doctorate in development studies at Cambridge. He decided to focus on Egypt’s independent unions, whose series of unprecedented strikes, starting in 2006, had primed the public for the revolt against Mubarak; now, with the Arab Spring in tatters, Regeni saw the unions as a fragile hope for Egypt’s battered democracy. After 2011 their numbers exploded, multiplying from four to thousands. There were unions for everything: butchers and theater attendants, well diggers and miners, gas-bill collectors and extras in the trashy TV soap operas that played during the holy month of Ramadan. There was even an Independent Trade Union for Dwarfs. Guided by his supervisor, a noted Egyptian academic at Cambridge who had written critically of Sisi, Regeni chose to study the street vendors — young men from distant villages who scratched out a living on the sidewalks of Cairo. Regeni plunged into their world, hoping to assess their union’s potential to drive political and social change.
But by 2015 that kind of cultural immersion, long favored by budding Arabists, was no longer easy. A pall of suspicion had fallen over Cairo. The press had been muzzled, lawyers and journalists were regularly harassed and informants filled Cairo’s downtown cafes. The police raided the office where Regeni conducted interviews; wild tales of foreign conspiracies regularly aired on government TV channels.
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RECENT COMMENTS
Manon 31 minutes ago
Thank you for shedding light on the horrible death of my compatriot and the responsibilities of the Egyptian authorities.
Emanuele Cerizza 31 minutes ago
Great reporting. Thank you Mr. Declan Walsh for this solid view on Giulio Regeni’s ill fated death. More and more we Italians have to...
oxerio 32 minutes ago
If a foreign person come in NY or Palermo or Shanghai or Mexico City and became to investigate about local gang, or local mafia’s...
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Regeni was undeterred. Proficient in five languages, he was insatiably curious and exuded a low-intensity charm that attracted a wide circle of friends. From 12 to 14, he served as youth mayor of his hometown, Fiumicello. He prided himself on his ability to navigate different cultures, and he relished Cairo’s unruly street life: the smoky cafes, the endless hustle, the candy-colored party boats that plied the Nile at night. He registered as a visiting scholar at American University in Cairo and found a room in Dokki, a traffic-choked neighborhood between the Pyramids and the Nile, where he shared an apartment with two young professionals: Juliane Schoki, who taught German, and Mohamed El Sayad, a lawyer at one of Cairo’s oldest law firms. Dokki was an unfashionable address, but it was just two subway stops from downtown Cairo with its maze of cheap hotels, dive bars and crumbling apartment blocks encircling Tahrir Square. Regeni soon befriended writers and artists and practiced his Arabic at Abou Tarek, a four-story neon-lit emporium that is Cairo’s most famous spot for koshary, the traditional Egyptian dish of rice, lentils and pasta.
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Israeli-Arab Relations : Muddling Through by the Sword
▻http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/israeli-arab-relations-muddling-through-by-the-sword-17521
Israel could have had full and normal relations with its Arab neighbors long ago. Many years have passed since most Arab government in effect accepted Zionism.[...]
More recently, as an editorial in the New York Times observes, there has been de facto development of ties, in the absence of full diplomatic relations, between Israel and some Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. There also has been a warming of relations with Egypt, a relationship that had mostly been a cold peace since Sadat’s time. As the editorial correctly notes, such developments reflect how the political status of the Palestinians is not a top priority for most Arab governments, and indeed it has long had to compete with more parochial concerns of those governments. But the plight of their Palestinian brethren still is a salient issue for most Arabs, [...]
The kind of de facto and semi-secret relationships that have been developing are the wrong kind of Israeli-Arab relations. They are not in the best interests of the United States or of anyone else. Far from being a basis for peace and prosperity, they are themselves based on conflict, regional divisions, authoritarianism, and the threat or use of force. With regard to Egypt, the warming of ties with the regime of strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has to do with el-Sisi’s harsh internal crackdown and especially his bashing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is related to his willingness to cooperate with Israel in bashing the Brotherhood’s Hamas cousins in the Gaza Strip. With regard to the Gulf Arab monarchies, the dealings with Israel have to do with the determination of those regimes to expand their regional influence and to pursue their rivalry with Iran. That determination has become so strong in the Saudi case that it has led to the reckless aerial assault and consequent humanitarian disaster in Yemen—a situation that has gotten so bad that a bipartisan group of U.S. congressmen is urging the Obama administration to delay a major sale of arms to the Saudis.
In short, the recently developing Israeli ties with these authoritarian Sunni Arab regimes are a matter of more regional conflict and instability, not more peace and prosperity.
Ce que ne dit pas l’auteur, c’est que pour #Israel, ces régimes sont au contraire « #modérés » et sont les garants de la « #stabilité »
The Algerian Exception -
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/opinion
By KAMEL DAOUD
ORAN, Algeria — Algeria is indeed a country of the Arab world: a de facto dictatorship with Islamists, oil, a vast desert, a few camels and soldiers, and women who suffer. But it also stands apart : It is the only Arab republic untouched by the Arab Spring of 2010-2011. Amid the disasters routinely visited upon the region, Algeria is an exception. Immobile and invisible, it doesn’t change and keeps a low profile.
This is largely because Algeria already had its Arab Spring in 1988, and it has yet to recover. The experience left Algerians with a deep fear of instability, which the regime of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in power since 1999, has exploited, along with the country’s oil wealth, to control its people — all the while deploying impressive ruses to hide Algeria from the world’s view.
October 1988: Thousands of young Algerians hit the streets to protest the National Liberation Front (F.L.N.), the dominant party born of the war for independence; the absence of presidential term limits; a mismanaged socialist economy; and a tyrannical secret service. The uprising is suppressed with bloodshed and torture. The single-party system nonetheless has to take a step back: Pluralism is introduced; reforms are announced.
The Islamists came out ahead in the first free elections in 1990, and again in the 1991 legislative elections — only to be foiled by the military in January 1992. Long before Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt, Algeria had invented the concept of therapeutic coup d’état, of coup as cure for Islamism. At the time, the military’s intervention did not go over well, at least not with the West: This was before 9/11, and the world did not yet understand the Islamist threat. In Algeria, however, Islamism was already perceived as an unprecedented danger. After the coup followed a decade of civil war, which left as many as 200,000 people dead and a million displaced, not to mention all those who disappeared.
When in 2010-2011 the Arab Spring came to Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, Algerians hoped for change, too. But their fear that war or the Islamists would return was greater still. “We have already paid,” the vox populi said, and the government joined in, intent on checking any revolutionary urge.
At the time I wrote: “Yes, we have already paid, but the goods have not been delivered.” The regime had slowly been gnawing away at the democratic gains made in October 1988: freedom of speech, a true multiparty system, free elections. Dictatorship had returned in the form of controlled democracy. And the government, though in the hands of a sickly and invisible president, was brilliant at playing on people’s fears. “Vote against change” was the gist of the prime minister’s campaign for the 2012 legislative elections.
The government also exploited the trauma left by France’s 132-year presence, casting the Arab Spring as a form of neocolonialism. To this day, the specter of colonialism remains the regime’s ideological foundation and the basis of its propaganda, and it allows the country’s so-called liberators — now well into their 70s — to still present themselves as its only possible leaders. France’s direct intervention to oust Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya only played into their hands; it looked like the sinister workings of their phantasmagorical triptych of enemies: France, the C.I.A. and Israel. Enough to quiet any populist ardor and charge the opposition’s leaders with being traitors and collaborators.
And so it was that as soon as January 2011 the early stirrings of protest were promptly quashed. The massive police apparatus played a part, as did state television, with stations taking turns reminding the people of a few chilling equations: democracy = chaos and stability = immobility.
Money also helped. Oil dollars may make the world go round, but they have kept Algeria still. In the contemporary mythology of the Arab Spring, Bouazizi the Tunisian is the unemployed man who topples a dictator by setting himself on fire in public. This hero could not have been Algerian: In this country, Mohamed Bouazizi would have been bought off, corrupted.
The Algerian regime is rich in oil and natural gas. And at the outset of the Arab revolts, it reached into its pockets, and gave out free housing, low-interest loans and huge bribes. Oil money was distributed not to revive the economy or create real jobs, but to quell anger and turn citizens into clients. Wilier than others, the government of Algeria did not kill people; it killed time.
While distributing handouts thwarted a revolution, it did trigger thousands of small local riots — 10,000 to 12,000 a year, by some estimates. But these protesters were not demanding democracy, just housing and roads, water and electricity. In 2011 a man set himself on fire in a town west of Algiers. Reporters flocked to him, thinking they had found a revolutionary. “I am no Bouazizi,” said the Algerian, from the hospital bed in which he would not die. “I just want decent housing.”
Meanwhile Mr. Bouteflika, ailing and absent, managed to get himself re-elected in 2014 without ever appearing in public, campaigning mostly by way of a Photoshopped portrait plastered across the country. The best dictatorship knows to stay invisible. Local journalists are under strict surveillance; the foreign media’s access is restricted; tourism is limited; few images of Algeria are broadcast internationally.
The only spectacle to come out of Algeria these last few years was of some Islamists taking hostages in the Tiguentourine gas field in January 2013. But the government, by responding firmly, was able to project the image of a regime that, though no ideological ally of the West, could nonetheless be counted on as a dependable partner in the global war against terrorism. To a Morsi, an Assad or a Sisi, Western governments prefer a Bouteflika, even aging and ailing and barely able to speak. Between antiterrorism and immobility, Algeria has succeeded in selling itself as a model even without being a democracy. No small feat.
But the situation is untenable. Politically, the Algerian regime has become the Pakistan of North Africa, with both money and power in the hands of a caste that the West thinks of as a difficult partner. Algeria is too vast a country to be run by a centralist government, and no new leaders have emerged who could ensure a guided transition. The Islamists are on the rise. Oil prices are dropping. The Algerian exception cannot last much longer.
Kamel Daoud, a journalist and columnist for Quotidien d’Oran, is the author of “The Meursault Investigation.” This essay was translated by Edward Gauvin from the French.
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Recordings Suggest Emirates and Egyptian Military Pushed Ousting of Morsi - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/world/middleeast/recordings-suggest-emirates-and-egyptian-military-pushed-ousting-of-morsi.h
Audio recordings of senior Egyptian officials that were leaked Sunday suggest that when Mohamed Morsi was president, the United Arab Emirates gave the Egyptian Defense Ministry money for a protest campaign against him.
The recordings, which could not be authenticated, appear to indicate that both the Egyptian military and its backers in the Emirates played a much more active role in fomenting the protests against Mr. Morsi in June 2013 than either party has acknowledged.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was then the defense minister, said when he led the ouster of Mr. Morsi that he was acting in response to the protests.
The audio recordings are the latest in a long series that appear to capture the private meetings and phone calls of senior defense officials. All have been released through Islamist news outlets that oppose President Sisi.
Egyptian officials have said that the recordings are fabrications, but many Egyptian commentators treat them as credible, giving them weight in public opinion.
“Everything, absolutely everything is under surveillance,” Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, a historian and journalist who is close to senior defense officials, said in a television interview when asked about previous leaked recordings. Mr. Heikal said that amid all the turmoil in Egypt, it would not be surprising that such recordings would have been made.
“Who records during the time of chaos?” he said. “Everyone records during the time of chaos.”
Recordings Suggest Emirates and Egyptian Military Pushed Ousting of Morsi
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/world/middleeast/recordings-suggest-emirates-and-egyptian-military-pushed-ousting-of-morsi.h
Audio recordings of senior Egyptian officials that were leaked Sunday suggest that when Mohamed Morsi was president, the United Arab Emirates gave the Egyptian Defense Ministry money for a protest campaign against him.
The recordings, which could not be authenticated, appear to indicate that both the Egyptian military and its backers in the Emirates played a much more active role in fomenting the protests against Mr. Morsi in June 2013 than either party has acknowledged.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was then the defense minister, said when he led the ouster of Mr. Morsi that he was acting in response to the protests.
The audio recordings are the latest in a long series that appear to capture the private meetings and phone calls of senior defense officials. All have been released through Islamist news outlets that oppose President Sisi.
Egyptian officials have said that the recordings are fabrications, but many Egyptian commentators treat them as credible, giving them weight in public opinion.
« Sissi, le peuple d’Israël vous soutient » lettre ouverte d’une diplomate israélienne proche de Peres. Bon résumé de la relation Egypte/Israël - Your Middle East
“For the first time since Sadat, the leader of the Egyptian Republic addressed the people of Israel”
Mr. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi,
As the leader of the Egyptian nation, leading it in spite of all difficulties, I salute your courage. You have “inherited” a complex situation: a challenging economy, illiteracy of over 40% and record-breaking tensions between the Coptic minority and Muslim extremists.
Taking all of this into consideration, an analysis of your actions over the past few months has shown you to be a wise leader: one who possesses discretion, one who leads Egypt in a way only rare leaders do — bravely.
You have restored Egypt to its natural place as the leader of the Arab world. You have strengthened Egypt’s ties with the Saudi kingdom, simultaneously maintaining the financial backing this connection provides to Egypt. During the last military campaign in Israel you handled Hamas firmly while leaving a window open for the Palestinian leadership Egypt considers to be legitimate (under Mahmoud Abbas) to take his place.
YOU HAVE MADE it your mission to bring Copts and Muslims together. A welcome step in this direction was the investment of millions in preserving and reopening Egypt’s most important church, Saint Virgin Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church, also known as the “Hanging church” — an action, that unbelievably, went almost unreported in the international media.
You have waved the flag of eradication of the violence against women that has been plaguing Egypt lately and lead by example, visiting women hurt by sexual harassment.
“You have restored Egypt to its natural place as the leader of the Arab world”
You have not shied away from the intolerable economic situation: Instead, you have been studying, planning, building and executing visionary plans to improve the situation, all the while wisely explaining to your people; trying to adjust their expectations to the complex reality in which you are not a magician and your government does not perform miracles.
I have listened very carefully to your last speech, Mr. President, presented in the international summit that was held in Cairo and focused on rebuilding Gaza. I heard three main things:
Firstly, there cannot be a regional agreement without a parallel bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreement. With this assertion, you have squashed any attempt to bypass the Israeli-Palestinian peace process while leaving room for regional collaboration that includes Israel.
Secondly, for the first time since the late president Anwar Sadat, the leader of the Egyptian Republic addressed the people of Israel; you have looked the Israeli public in the eye and spoke of the importance of ending the conflict and of establishing a two-state solution.
This was actually noted by the newspapers in Egypt, not with scorn or criticism, but with a fair amount of admiration. Between the lines, you have argued that in spite of the threats — familiar to you from a life-long military service to your country — the only way to achieve true security for our children is to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its resolution in a manner that would include the rest of the countries in the Middle East who aspire to stability. This would help us to centrally engage, align and deal with dangers such as ISIS, the extremists’ surge in Turkey, the breakdown of Libya and its fall into the hands of radical elements, the deterioration in Syria and other issues challenging regional stability.
Your opinion matters to the Israeli public, Mr. President — we saw how you stood by Israel’s side during the “Tzuk Eitan” campaign. Even if your words were spoken not out of love for Israel, but rather out of the necessity to protect vital Egyptian interests — you have won the support of the Israeli people.
Like the people of Egypt, who do not forget those who killed their soldiers in cold blood while planning to overthrow the central government of Egypt using terror cells deep in the Sinai Peninsula, we do not forget those who stood by us in our time of need.
The third thing I heard, were the words not spoken by you. You refused to give Hamas center stage; you reaffirmed the importance of the Palestinian authority and its appointed leader, as the only leader for the Palestinian people and stressed the role such a leader has to take in the aftermath of the Gaza campaign.
AND FINALLY, at the same time, Mr. President, you continue to consistently promote large economic collaborations in the international arena, including with Israel. These collaborations are not kept secret and spoken about in private, like your predecessors did. Instead, they are open to the public and supported by members of your government.
I am under no illusions that all of this is said and done owing to a particular affection for my people. I fully understand that your actions — all of them — are the actions of a person who loves his country deeply. Coming up in the ranks of the Egyptian army, you know that the continued stability and prosperity of your homeland, Egypt, is closely linked to Israel’s security and that a regional stability is the only platform that will ensure our children’s safety.
This is why, as a former member of the Israeli foreign ministry service, and having lived in Egypt for a few years in the past, but mostly, as an Israeli citizen, I wish to show my support and to pray to preserve and strengthen the relations between our countries and our people.
In Egypt, Business as Usual : l’édito du NYT critique la conférence US organisée en Égypte pour les investisseurs américains en dépit des violations des droits humains
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/opinion/in-egypt-business-as-usual.html?smid=tw-share
The Obama administration’s Egypt policy — to the extent that one can be discerned — has been characterized by a combination of mixed messages, wishful thinking and a willful disregard of inconvenient truths.
It is nonetheless stunning that the State Department saw fit to help organize a large investment conference for American businesses in Cairo next week, coinciding with a deadline the Egyptian government imposed in a blatant effort to shut down independent groups that promote civil society and human rights.
A State Department official called the timing “inadvertent,” and said the gathering of more than 65 American executives, which is being billed as the largest of its kind, in no way diminishes Washington’s concerns about Egypt’s efforts to throttle pro-democracy organizations. Inadvertent or not, the conference will be seen by Egyptians as an unequivocal endorsement of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose ruthless authoritarianism is making Egypt’s past dictators look almost benign.
Under Egypt’s draconian 2002 Law on Associations, nongovernmental groups must be licensed by the state. Because the government has not accredited those that have brought to light government abuses and promoted democratic reforms, most such groups have operated in a gray legal area. By announcing a Nov. 10 deadline for all organizations to be accredited, authorities in Cairo are signaling that a new crackdown on such groups could be imminent.
The message has been reinforced in recent months as some of Egypt’s smartest and bravest activists have been encouraged by officials in the government to leave the country or face arrest. Some have slipped out, feeling fearful and resigned.
Adding to the angst, the Egyptian government recently promoted the architect of the last crackdown on civil society organizations, Fayza Abul Naga, to the post of national security adviser. This appointment of an official who in 2012 sparked a diplomatic crisis with Washington by prompting a criminal inquiry that ensnared American pro-democracy workers is an ominous move.
Ms. Abul Naga’s crusade, which sought to vilify foreign-financed nongovernmental organizations, prompted the United States in February 2012 to pay $4.6 million in forfeited bail money that was essentially a judicial bribe. As it has threatened watchdogs and critics, Mr. Sisi’s government has had a freer hand in cracking down on Islamists, a diverse segment of Egypt’s population that the government has branded as terrorists.
That campaign took an alarming turn in recent days when Egyptian officials started leveling houses along the country’s border with Israel in an effort to shut down smuggling tunnels. The government gave thousands of residents 48 hours to leave homes along the border, an arbitrary measure that is certain to be used by extremist groups to foment hatred of the state.
American executives taking part in the Cairo business conference next week should think long and hard about whether investing in Egypt now is worthwhile if it means strengthening a despotic system.
Il semblerait que Ahmad Jarba a envoyé les félicitations de la CNS à Sissi pour son élection :
SMDK Başkanı Carba, Sisi’yi tebrik etti
▻http://www.dunyabulteni.net/ortadogu/300593/smdk-baskani-carba-sisiyi-tebrik-etti
Suriye Muhalif ve Devrimci Güçler Ulusal Koalisyonu (SMDK) Başkanı Ahmed el-Cerba, Mısır’da darbe sonrası yapılan seçimlerde cumhurbaşkanı seçilen Abdulfettah es-Sisi’ye tebrik mesajı gönderdi.
Cerba, tebrik mesajında, Sisi’nin önderliğinde Mısır ile işbirliğinin güçlenmesi ve Suriye halkının özgürlük, adalet ve eşitlik hedeflerine ulaşmasında Mısır’ın yapıcı rol oynamasını temenni etti. Cerba, «SMDK, cumhurbaşkanı seçilmeniz dolayısıyla sizi ve kardeş Mısır halkını kutlayarak, bu adımı Mısır’ın istikrarı ve gelişmesinde önemli bir yol katetmek ve Mısır halkına daha iyi bir gelecek için atılmış önemli bir adım olarak görmektedir» değerlendirmesinde bulundu.
Je n’ai pas trouvé de mention dans d’autres médias pour l’instant.
La seule autre mention que j’ai vue pour l’instant serait la démission de l’ancien leader des Frères musulmans syriens Ali Sadreddine Al-Bayanouni de la CNS :
▻https://www.facebook.com/IkhwansyriaEn/photos/a.377656375646028.87508.344999298911736/652621098149553/?type=1
The former leader of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Ali Sadreddine Al-Bayanouni, has resigned from the Syrian National Coalition. The resignation was due to the congratulation letter sent from the coalition president, Ahmad Jarba, to the Egypt’s coup leader, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for his presidency of Egypt
▻http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=102628
المرشد العام السابق لـ”إخوان سوريا” يعلن استقالته من الائتلاف المعارض بسبب تهننئة الجربا للسيسي قائد “الثورة المضادة” ومباركته لـ”الانقلابيين”
Le précédent Guide des FM en Syrie annonce sa démission de la Coalition à cause des félicitations adressées par Jarba à Sissi
Brotherhood figure quits Coalition after Jarba congratulates Sisi
▻http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Jun-11/259658-brotherhood-figure-quits-coalition-after-jarba-congratulates-si
A senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood resigned from the Syrian National Coalition Tuesday to protest a letter of congratulations sent by its head to Egypt’s newly elected Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi.
Ali Sadreddine Bayanouni, formerly the Supreme Guide of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, said the letter sent by Coalition President Ahmad Jarba – and a general climate of foreign political pressure – were responsible for his decision.
“I was surprised – like many others were – that the Coalition, represented by its president, sent a letter of congratulations to the counter-revolution in the fraternal Arab state of Egypt, giving its blessings to the putschists for their success in doing away with the revolution of the Egyptian people, which was an inspiration to the revolution of the Syrian people,” Bayanouni said in his resignation letter, which was widely circulated on pro-opposition and Islamist media outlets.
(Pour l’instant, je n’ai donc trouvé que ce seul article en anglais mentionnant les félicitations de Jarba à Sissi, et pas un seul en français. Ça n’intéresse pas les gens ?)
Faustian pact with Egypt’s security state, by Nizar Manek
English edition blogs, 28 February 2014
▻http://mondediplo.com/blogs/faustian-pact-with-egypt-s-security-state
As the area around the fenced-up Meidan Tahrir pulsed with what felt like a gigantic fascist carnival for the cult of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the shadow of Gamal Abdel Nasser seemed to rise from the pages of history. It was 25 January 2014, the third anniversary of the beginning of the end of Mohamed Hosni Mubarak’s rule - and the start of the protests that sought to end six decades of military rule, which had begun with Nasser and the military junta that deposed King Farouk. The Free Officers’ putsch of 1952 not only dispensed with constitutional monarchy and removed Egypt from the orbit of British colonialism; it also set loose Egypt’s army as autonomous agents answerable to no one.
Baheyya: Egypt Analysis and Whimsy بهيّة: Fetishizing the State
▻http://baheyya.blogspot.ae/2013/08/fetishizing-state.html
An old and pernicious idea is back in circulation since the July 3 coup. It was a running theme in the military ruler’s speech on July 24 where he demanded a popular mandate to “confront terrorism.” Right on cue, government officials parroted it repeatedly in their stern warnings to dissenters. Pro-military activists, politicians, and intellectuals happily invoked it in their jihad against the Ikhwan. The idea is haybat al-dawla, or the state’s standing and prestige, a central plank of the Arab authoritarian order that’s making a big comeback.
It’s unsurprising that in his July 24 speech, General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi would portray himself as a wise and honest mentor to the errant Mohamed Morsi. The twist is that he says Morsi didn’t understand the concept of the state because he’s an Islamist, not a nationalist (a claim Sisi repeats in his Washington Post interview). Sisi says he gave up on instructing Morsi and decided to “emphasize the idea of the state” to the judiciary, al-Azhar, the Coptic Church, the media, and public opinion, that is, all the institutions that supported the coup.
Robert Fisk on Egypt: As impoverished crowds gather in support of Mohamed Morsi, the well-heeled march behind their images of the
The Independent, 27th of July
▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/robert-fisk-on-egypt-as-impoverished-crowds-gather-in-support-of-moha
Hundreds of thousands of people turned out outside Cairo’s Rabaa mosque yesterday to protest against the coup d’état in Egypt, while hundreds of thousands poured into Tahrir Square to support their favourite general, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who staged the coup-that-we-mustn’t-call-a-coup.
Grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre. Call it what you like. But the helicopters swooping happily over Tahrir, and the line of visor-wearing riot police and troops standing opposite the Muslim Brotherhood’s barricades, told their own story. Journalists should not be merchants of gloom, but things did not look too good in Cairo last night.