Last Monday, which was a national holiday since it coincided with the Hijri New Year Day, I decided to go to Downtown Cairo. As I passed close to the adjacent buildings of the Bar Association and the Journalists’ Syndicate on Abdel-Khaleq Tharwat Street, I found myself entrapped in the midst of a huge crowd of demonstrators shouting fiery slogans against the Israeli attack on Gaza. It was a pleasant surprise to see the security forces stand by, imposing discipline and guarding the demonstrators without hindering their activity, an attitude absolutely uncommon with demonstrations in Egypt.
Shame!
“Our souls and our blood we offer for the sake of Palestine”, “Shame! Shame! Gaza has been sold”, were among the slogans blared through the microphones, supporting Hamas and accusing Egypt of treachery. In addition to the usual crowd of lawyers, journalists, and passers-by who would normally join in, the demonstration included a group of veiled women. And the common aim was to ‘defend Gaza’.
Even though it made me happy that, finally, a demonstration was being decently conducted in Egypt, I could not help wondering in anger: Well, and who defends Egypt? It appalled me that, as far back as 1948, Egyptians have been valiant in defending the Palestinian cause, sparing nothing precious, not even their lives in the process—Egypt went through two wars in 1948 and 1967 to fight for Palestine. Today, on the threshold of 2009, some of our—supposedly—most enlightened people, our lawyers and journalists, are obviously still on the same track. Were they so engrossed with the Palestinian cause that they have put their own homeland on the back burner? Did the interests of Egypt matter nothing to them? Who is to defend Egypt’s political, military, economic, social, and even cultural interests? Is it in the interest of Egyptians today to engage in war with Israel, for absolutely no Egyptian cause, only for the sake of Palestine? The question is too ridiculous to even contemplate.
Impotent battle
It does not at all help that Hamas has been adamant in rejecting any resolution of the Palestinian problem. In fact, the Palestinians have lost countless opportunities to have their problem solved. Instead, their leaders appear to prefer the approach of firing impotent rockets at Israel, achieving nothing but to provoke Israeli retaliation while the Palestinian people remain entrenched in a life of agony.
Any solution to the Palestinian problem involves the formation of a Palestinian State, which would imply that Palestinian leaders behave as responsible statesmen in charge of building their tattered country. But, obviously, this is not what Hamas has in mind.
I am seriously contemplating placing an advertisement in the international press calling for volunteers to defend Egypt, since Egyptians are apparently too preoccupied defending Palestine.
What with the Islamist tides in Egypt and all over the Middle East trying to paint a treacherous picture of Egypt as having abandoned its support of the Muslim Palestinians against the Zionist Jews, and the heated approval they are generating among a large sector of Egyptians, Egypt does look as though it needs someone to rush to its defence. The Editor
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Sumaya Ureisha is a liberal activist and screenplay writer