Today’s Miami Herald published two articles that are very
much related in their contextual message that being the rise
of the Muslim Brotherhood and peace with Israel.
It has been my contention since the Arab spring started
that the outcome of these revolutions would inevitably lead
to war with Israel and the prophetic fulfillment of the book
of Revelation and other prophetic writings of the old
testament.
In her excellent article Frida Ghitis presents an
analysis of what lurks beneath the surface of a piece of
paper for peace between Egypt and Israel and Jordan and
Israel.
Nando
MIDEAST
Israel’s ‘peace of paper’ with its neighbors
BY FRIDA GHITIS
We have always known that the rare examples of peace
between Arabs and Israelis were built on a fragile
foundation. Now cracks in that foundation have started
becoming more visible, and they are making ominous sounds
as they grow.
It’s a reminder that the future of peace will require a
different kind of engineering.
I am referring to the first peace treaty signed by
Israel and an Arab state, Egypt, and the only other one,
establishing peace between Israel and Jordan.
Each of these treaties, and the ensuing relationship
between Israel and the only two Arab states with which it
was at peace, depended on relationships with one man, the
man in charge. Peace never included the population at
large. There has never existed peace between the Israeli
and the Egyptian people, but between Israel and the
Egyptian dictator — just one man, whose rule always looked
like it would end in disaster.
By necessity, the treaties were signed on the Arab side
by unelected rulers. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat blazed the trail
of peace in the 1970s, and Jordan’s King Hussein followed
in 1994. The treaties held up well in the sense that no
fighting war erupted. But animosity against Israel never
let up.
There was peace above ground. But bubbling under the
surface, in the streets, the people of Jordan and Egypt —
particularly Egypt — held nothing but bitter contempt for
Israeli Jews.
The Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy explained it best
when she said Israel had become “the opium of the Arabs,”
a way for failed Arab leaders to intoxicate their own
people, making them blame Israel for all their problems.
The opium has stopped working, and throughout the
region Arabs blame their unelected dictators for the
mismanagement, poverty and corruption that plagues their
countries. But the hatred of Israel remains.
That simmering anger, that distorted image forged in
the intoxicating cloud could eventually destroy the
superficial peace that has survived until now.
The presidential campaign in Egypt brought repeated
instances of candidates seeking to connect with voters by
showing them how deeply they share their hatred of Israel.
The two finalists who will face off on June 16 and 17
have given vague pledges to stand by the peace treaty. But
the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Mursi,
has talked about putting the treaty to a referendum. And a
referendum, polls show, does not bode well for the treaty.
Polls show profound animosity towards Israel more than
three decades after the two neighbors made “peace.”
Anti-Israel sentiment extends across all political and age
groups.
Mursi is on record calling the Israelis “vampires.” As
the top vote-getter in the first round, he has been
careful not to antagonize Washington and its generous aid
package by engaging in new anti-Israel rants. But his
surrogates have had no such compunction.
During a campaign rally, Mursi watched and assented
while the Islamist preacher Safwat Higazi told the crowd
in a soccer stadium that Egypt under Mursi will usher in a
new Islamic caliphate whose capital will be in Jerusalem,
where Israel’s capital now stands. As Higazi cried out,
“Our capital shall not be in Cairo, Mecca or Medina,”
thousands chanted in unison, “Millions of martyrs march
toward Jerusalem.” Over the loudspeaker Mursi supporters
heard the call to “Banish the sleep from the eyes of the
Jews.” The runner-up, who will face against Mursi in the
runoff, is Gen. Ahmed Shafiq, former President Hosni
Mubarak’s last prime minister. Shafiq has warned that the
Muslim Brotherhood and Mursi would start a new war with
Israel. But when voters have doubted Shafiq’s worthiness,
his favorite achievement to cite is that he shot down two
Israeli fighter jets. There could hardly be anything more
heroic in the eyes of Egyptians.
In Jordan, King Abdullah remains in power and peace
with Israel is not up for discussion at the moment. But
just a few days ago, a small group of Israeli tourists
came under attack in Jordan because, well, because they
were Israeli. A local newspaper, al-Arab al-Yawm quoted a
Jordanian explaining, “Those who talk about peace between
Israelis and Jordanians are delusional. The signed
agreements are . . . meaningless.”
The message is clear. Peace requires bringing people,
not just rulers, together. Real, lasting peace requires a
willingness of two peoples to live side by side. It’s not
enough to have a dictator sign a “peace of paper,” or even
put his fighter jets under lock and key. Without popular
support, in the long run peace cannot survive.
Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/07/2838077/israels-peace-of-paper-with-its.html#storylink=cpy
Nando
Thursday, Jun 7, 2012 04:45 PM EDT
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s newly elected parliament could be
dissolved, the presidential election may have to be
abandoned and the country’s new constitution has yet to be
drafted.
Sixteen months after Hosni Mubarak was swept out of
office by a popular uprising, Egypt’s political future is
tangled in a thick web of court cases and bitter public
squabbles. How everything is straightened out will be the
difference between an end to military rule by July 1 as
scheduled or a return to square one of a turbulent
transition, a prospect that is certain to unleash a fresh
wave of turmoil and bloodshed.
“Court decisions will raise a million questions. What
we are seeing now is political messiness,” said Sobhi
Saleh, a lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood, the
fundamentalist group that stands to lose the most if
parliament is dissolved and a Mubarak-era prime minister
is confirmed as the one going head-to-head against its
uninspiring candidate in a presidential runoff vote.
The vexing mix of politics and law comes less than two
weeks ahead of the presidential vote between Mubarak’s
last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, and the Brotherhood’s
Mohammed Morsi on June 16-17. A winner will be declared
June 21. Morsi and Shafiq were the top vote-getters in a
field of 13 candidates from the first round of voting last
month. Already, Egyptians living abroad have started
voting in the runoff.
However a growing number of activists are embracing
calls for cancelling the entire election, despairing of
the prospect of either the Brotherhood or a diehard of the
old regime ruling the country. Mohamed ElBaradei, the
nation’s top reform leader, is one of them.
“Egyptians are not ready for elections when they are
divided,” the Nobel Peace Laureate and former head of the
U.N. nuclear watchdog told reporters on Tuesday.
“Elections should be the final stage of democracy, which
we don’t yet have.”
Only two days before the election, the Supreme
Constitutional Court will consider two cases that could
potentially throw everything topsy-turvy once again.
In one, it is reviewing a lower court’s ruling that the
law organizing parliamentary elections late last year was
unconstitutional. If the court agrees, the current
legislature — where the Brotherhood is the biggest party
with nearly half the seats — would be disbanded and
Egyptians would have to go back to the polls to choose a
new one.
The other case is whether Shafiq can stay in the race
or not. The court is to rule on the validity of a
“political exclusion” law passed by parliament banning
many former regime figures from running for office. If it
backs the law, Shafiq would have to drop out and the
presidential election might have to start all over again
from scratch. Thousands of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square every day this week demand the law be enacted to
exclude Shafiq.
Egypt’s transition to democratic rule has been
tempestuous since army generals, led by Mubarak’s defense
minister for 20 years, took over from the ousted leader in
February last year. The country has taken one bad hit
after another: deadly protests, a sliding economy, crime
surge and alleged rights abuses by the military.
Adding another layer to the uncertainties is the
84-year-old Mubarak’s sharply deteriorating health after
his sentencing last week to life in prison along with his
ex-security chief.
Security officials at Torah Prison, where Mubarak is
held, said the former president was suffering from high
blood pressure, breathing problems and depression. He had
to be given oxygen throughout the night and until Thursday
morning, said the officials, speaking on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the
media.
Mubarak had been held in military hospitals from the
time of his arrest in April last year up until his
sentencing.
The security officials said doctors treating Mubarak
were debating whether to transfer him to a better equipped
hospital outside the penal system, a move that would be
seen by critics as another example of the generals showing
favoritism to their former mentor.
One sign of political progress came Thursday when the
generals and 22 political parties, including the
Brotherhood’s, agreed on how to select the 100-member
panel to draw up a new constitution, resolving a
three-month deadlock on the issue.
On Tuesday, the military had threatened to issue its
own blueprint for the panel unless an agreement was
reached within 48-hours — a step that would have further
inflamed accusations the generals are trying to dominate
the process.
Earlier in the year, the parliament selected a panel
that was overwhelmingly made up of Brotherhood members and
other Islamists, who together make up 70 percent of the
legislature. That prompted a walk-out by the few liberals
and secular figures on the body, and a court ruling
disbanded the panel.
Under Thursday’s agreement, Islamists will only take
half of the panel’s seats, according to Mohammed Aboul
Ghar, head of the liberal Egyptian Social Democratic
Party. Just over a third of its members would come from
parliament, while the rest would be legal experts and
representatives of unions, ministries and religious
institutions, including the Coptic Church.
Constitutional articles would only be accepted by a 67
percent supermajority vote, preventing Islamists from
pushing though anything unilaterally.
Court rulings have since the ouster of Mubarak in
February last year made significant contributions to the
nation’s reshaping after 29 years of authoritarian rule.
Along with the disbanding of the constitutional panel,
courts dissolved Mubarak’s ruling party, reversed the
privatization of several state-owned enterprises and
convicted and sent to jail members of the coteries of
businessmen linked to the regime and who supported
Mubarak’s succession by his son Gamal.
The cases to be heard on June 14 by the Supreme
Constitutional Court could even more heavily shake the
transition.
According to leaks in the Egyptian media Thursday, a
body of legal experts recommended to the court that it
rule the law governing parliamentary elections was illegal
— meaning a new election would have to be held. The issue
lies in the argument that it was unfair for the law to
allow parties to run candidates in the third of the seats
set aside for independent candidates. The other two-thirds
of the seats were earmarked for party lists.
The same expert body recommended to the court that it
rule the “political exclusion” law unconstitutional,
meaning Shafiq can still run for president.
The court is not required to follow the experts’
recommendations.
After parliament passed the law, the election
commission referred it to the constitutional court,
allowing Shafiq to stay in the race while the tribunal
looked into it.
Legal expert Mohammed Hassanein Abdel-Al said another
option for the court is to rule that the election
commission acted improperly when it referred the law for a
ruling, in which case Shafiq could be thrown out of the
race.
“It is very hard to predict what the judge would do,”
said Abdel-Al, who lectures on constitutional law at Cairo
University. “There are no precedents related to the
exclusion law.”
Nando