Egypt Could Divorce Palestinian Arabs in Wake of Second Revolution

After evicting the Muslim Brotherhood from power, the second Egyptian revolution is rallying for what could be an historic act — divorce from all things Palestinian.A number of influential voices are now calling for an expulsion of Palestinians from Egypt’s military and police academies and its universities, a suspension of visas to all Palestinians, and an end of mediation between bickering Palestinian factions and in the Israeli-Palestinian ‘’peace process’’.The focus is on the Gaza strip, which is next door to Egypt and is ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement. Hamas has been named a terrorist organization by both America and the European Union and is now alleged by a vast part of Egyptians to conspire against their second revolution.By far the most serious contention in the official and independent press is the assassination by Hamas of 20 army soldiers and officers in the Sinai desert a year ago. The killings took place during the holy month of Ramadan. Since the demonstrations on June 30, Hamas has again been named culpable in a killing, this time a top counterterrorism senior commander and four army soldiers in Sinai.It has been alleged by spokesmen of the Tamaroud, or Rebel Movement, in Cairo and Alexandria that Hamas fighters joined President Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in attacking and killing secular demonstrators in several places. These include Tahrir square, around Mr. Morsi’s erstwhile presidential palace in the suburb of Heliopolis and elsewhere in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez. Regardless of evidence, these allegations have become facts to a majority of Egyptians.This all has consequences for Palestinians:On Thursday Ahmad Al Zend, president of the Egyptian Judges’ Club (Nadi al Quda), founded in 1939 as the main association of jurists, denounced Palestinians as ‘’sleeping agents’’ bent on undermining Egypt’s secular ethos. Mr. Zend spoke from Kuwait, to which he’d gone in December and where he was engaged as a senior legal consultant to the Emir of Kuwait. He escaped an assassination attempt in December by Islamist forces in Cairo. Adly Mansour, the chief judge of the Constitutional Court named as transitional president of the Republic, is also a senior member of the Judges Club.Egypt’s army has shut down the Rafah border-crossing, the only entry and exit point not controlled by Israel for the 1.7 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza strip, blocking their access to the world. There is no word on when it might reopen. Simultaneously, the army aggressively moved to arrest scores of Palestinians trying to slip into the country via underground tunnels. The army’s official spokesman, Colonel Ahmed Mohammad Ali, stated in his daily press conference they all were caught ‘’carrying weapons and explosives’’ and, more importantly, false Egyptian identity cards produced, he stressed, by Hamas. Egyptian armed forces moved bulldozers and other equipment in an unprecedented effort to destroy the underground tunnels to Gaza use for smuggling people, weapons, food, and fuel and construction materials. The destruction is ongoing.The most ominous move for the Palestinians has been a declaration by Egypt’s government-owned newspaper as well the independent press that 16 Egyptian border guards and officers who were assassinated in cold blood a year ago in the Sinai were killed by Hamas operatives. The official press alleged the Morsi government averted its eyes for a whole year to protect its Muslim Brotherhood Hamas partners, failing to name or find the perpetrators. It was that incident that triggered a buildup of anger against Morsi, culminating in 22 million taking to the streets on June 30 in a country where military service is mandatory.Also fraying nationalistic feelings is the assertion by the army that one of the charges against Mr. Morsi and his camarilla will be “major treason” over an plot to give part of the Sinai to the Palestinians. Some 65,000 Egyptians perished in the Sinai in four Middle East wars over more than 60 years.What this adds up to is, in effect, a walkout by Egypt from the so-called peace process conducted by United States and its globetrotting state secretary, Senator Kerry. What continues to happen in Sinai and with Palestinians from Gaza has removed any enthusiasm to help all Palestinians and has stirred instead talk of revenge. Without Egypt as intermediary, prospects fade for an independent Palestinian country.It is no coincidence these developments paralleled a growing backlash against President Obama and the American ambassador in Cairo, Anne Patterson. Both were denounced by a sea of demonstrators on June 30 as supporters of, or collaborators with, the Muslim Brotherhood.Rarely have Judicial, Legislative and Military branches of the Egyptian state aligned themselves so squarely. To be sure, Palestinians, especially those of Hamas, still talk of a another Intifadah against Israel, but the heart is not in it given the letdown of the first and second uprisings, which produced a destruction of Palestinian livelihood and no gains. With Syria immersed in a civil war, Egypt totally focused on its revolution II, Gulf Arabs still sore over the Palestinians’ siding with Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and everyone else paying only lip service, Palestinians are very lonesome out there.

Egypt Could Divorce Palestinian Arabs in Wake of Second Revolution

Egypt Could Divorce Palestinian Arabs in Wake of Second Revolution

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