Egypt Permanently Reopens Its Gaza Border Crossing

Egypt Permanently Reopens Its Gaza Border Crossing

The Atlantic Wire
May 25, 2011

In a break from the policies of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's military rulers have decided to permanently open the country's Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Saturday in an effort "to end the status of the Palestinian division and achieve national reconciliation," according to Egypt's official news agency, the Middle East News Agency, via the AP.

Mubarak had previously restricted the movement of people and goods along the border as part of a blockade Israel and Egypt imposed on Gaza after Hamas took control of the territory in 2007.

The AP notes that while most cargo passes through Israel's border with Gaza, the move is still significant because it gives Gaza's Palestinians "a way to freely enter and exit their territory" for the first time since 2007. What's more, the decision might increase tensions with Israel, and must be considered in the context of Egyptian-Israeli relations following Egypt's January 25 uprising.

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald today, Hossam Zaki, a senior adviser to the Egyptian Foreign Minister, said that Egypt's 1979 treaty with Israel remained a pillar of Egyptian foreign policy but that presidential and parliamentary elections later this year could imperil the relationship.

"My sense is that if Israel continues to ignore international calls for achieving peace on a just basis, and allowing the Palestinians to establish their state, there will be more and more bitter and negative feelings towards Israel, and the difference now, after January 25 is that no government in Egypt will be able to ignore those feelings," he said.

Sources

• Egypt to Open Rafah Borders Permanently, Staff, The Associated Press
• Bitter Feelings About Israel, Dan Oakes, The Sydney Morning Herald

After 4 Years, Egypt Reopens Its Border with Gaza

The Associated Press

May 28, 2011

Egypt lifted a 4-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, greatly easing travel restrictions on the 1.5 million residents of the Palestinian territory in a move that bolstered the Hamas government while dealing a setback to Israel's attempts to isolate the militant group.

The sense of relief was palpable as buses piled high with luggage crossed the Rafah border terminal and hundreds of people traveled abroad for overdue medical appointments, business dealings and family affairs. In Israel, fears were heightened that militants and weapons will soon pour into the territory.

"I was so happy to hear that the Egyptian border is opening so I can finally travel for treatment," said Mohammad Zoarob, a 66-year-old suffering from chronic kidney disease.

He said he had been waiting for a medical permit from the Palestinian health ministry for five years so he could go to Egypt for treatment. When Palestinian officials coincidentally approved the permit on Saturday, he kissed his family goodbye, rushed to the border and was quickly whisked across.

"They put me in an ambulance and in five minutes I reached the Egyptian side of the crossing," he said.

Saturday's expansion of the Rafah crossing was a tangible benefit of the popular unrest sweeping through the Arab world. The blockade, which has fueled an economic crisis in Gaza, is deeply unpopular among Arabs, and Egypt's caretaker leaders had promised to end it since the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak in February.

Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade after the Islamic militant Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. The closure aimed to weaken Hamas. But the Iranian-backed group remains firmly in power, operating the border crossing even at a time when it is supposed to be reconciling with the rival Fatah movement.

Until Saturday, the Rafah border terminal had functioned at a limited capacity. Only certain classes of people, such as students, businessmen or medical patients, were eligible to travel and the crossing was often subject to closures, leading to huge backlogs that forced people to wait for months.

Under the new system, virtually anyone can travel, and a much larger number of Palestinians are expected to be able to cross each day.

Hundreds of Gazans gathered early Saturday as the first bus load of passengers crossed the border at 9 a.m. Two Egyptian officers stood guard next to a large Egyptian flag atop the border gate as the vehicle rumbled through. One after another buses crossed Rafah, pulling blue carts behind them with luggage piled high.

"All we need is to travel like humans, be treated with dignity and feel like any other citizens of the world who can travel in and out freely," said Rami Arafat, 52, who hoped to catch a flight out of Cairo on Sunday to attend his daughter's wedding in Algeria.

Nearby, 28-year-old Khaled Halaweh said he was headed to Egypt to study for a master's degree in engineering at Alexandria University.

"The closure did not affect only the travel of passengers or the flowing of goods. Our brains and our thoughts were under blockade," said Halaweh, who said he hadn't been out of Gaza for seven years.

Inside the border terminal Saturday, the atmosphere was orderly, as Hamas police called passengers one by one to register their travel documents.

By the close of operation at 5 p.m., 410 people had crossed into Egypt, said Salama Baraka, head of police at the Rafah terminal, well above the daily average of about 300 in recent months.

Thirty-nine were turned back because they did not have the proper visas or travel documents, Baraka said. Israeli media quoted Egyptian officials as saying some were also on Egyptian "terror lists." In the past, Egypt had rejected passengers found to be on "blacklists." An additional 150 people crossed from Egypt into Gaza.

With the crossing now operating six days a week, officials hope to raise the daily number of travelers to 1,000. Baraka said ten thousand people are registered to travel between June and August 25.

"Today is a cornerstone for a new era that we hope will pave the road to ending the siege and blockade on Gaza," said Hatem Awideh, director general of the Hamas border authority in Gaza. "We hope this facilitation by our Egyptian brothers will improve travel and will allow everyone to leave Gaza."

About 100 Hamas supporters marched with Palestinian and Egyptian flags outside the border terminal in a gesture of gratitude to Egypt.

"This courageous step by Egypt reflects the deep historic relations between the Palestinian and Egyptian nations," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zahri.

The new system will not resolve Gazans' travel woes completely, though.

Men between the ages of 18 and 40 still will have to obtain Egyptian visas, a process that can take months. Women, children and older men must get travel permits, which can be obtained in several days.

Israel, which controls Gaza's cargo crossings, allows most consumer goods into Gaza, but still restricts exports as well as the entry of much-needed construction materials, saying they could be used by militants. Israel also enforces a naval blockade aimed at weapons smuggling.

Israeli and American officials have expressed concerns that Hamas will exploit the opening to bring weapons and fighters into Gaza. In January 2008, masked militants blew open the Rafah border wall, allowing thousands of people to pour in and out of Egypt.

Egyptian officials say they have security measures in place to keep weapons from crossing through Rafah.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said the Rafah opening puts "additional responsibility on the Egyptians about what happens in Gaza."

"Both Israel and Egypt have mutual interests against global Jihad terror and against Hamas terror and I expect that cooperation will continue for the benefit of both sides," Ayalon said on Channel 10 TV.

Opposition lawmaker Nachman Shai blamed the Israeli government for failing to prevent the opening of Rafah. Israeli officials had lobbied Egypt to leave the restrictions in place.

"Mubarak is gone, there is a new government and we already see how Israel-Egypt relations are substantially deteriorating," he said. "A significant security breach was created today under our noses.

Hamas has long used tunnels to get arms into Gaza. Gaza militants now have military-grade rockets that have hit cities in southern Israel. Israeli military officials believe that Iranian experts are already in Gaza training Hamas. The fear is that it will now become even easier for them to get into the territory.

"One trainer who tells them how to set up the rockets and how to use them is equal to a large quantity of weapons," Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official who works closely with Egypt, told Channel 2 TV.

The border opening comes on the heels of an Egyptian-mediated unity deal between the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah. Hamas has governed Gaza since routing Fatah forces in 2007, leaving the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in control only of the West Bank. Earlier this month, the sides signed a reconciliation deal in Cairo. But details are still being worked out, and Hamas will be in charge of the Palestinian side of Rafah.

Both Egypt and Fatah officials played down any significance, describing the expanded operations of Rafah a victory for all Palestinians. Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said he considered the border opening a fruit of the unity deal.

Is There a Coup Brewing in Egypt’s Army? ‎

The Egyptian Army's passivity in the bloody protests suggests an internal conflict of agendas, one which could inspire a coup by lower-level officers, a former Army Commander tells Channel 4 News.

Channel 4 News, London, England
February 3, 2011

The army rolled tanks into Cairo’s Tahrir Square last Friday – the epicentre of the country’s round-the-clock anti-Mubarak protests – which for over a week had largely been peaceful in nature until groups of people loyal to the President descended on the plaza.

Egypt’s military, which (including the air force) has 468,500 active members and 479,000 in the reserves, immediately announced it would not fire upon the citizenry, and gave widespread anti-Mubarak sentiment credence by branding the protests ‘legitimate.’

But when clashes between Mubarak antagonists and protagonists broke out on Wednesday, with at least five people dying in the process, the army were deliberate bystanders.

And despite some efforts on Thursday morning to keep the two sides apart, analysts have raised questions about the army’s agenda in what has now become a fully-fledged revolution.

‘Disagreement within the ranks’

Colonel Richard Kemp, former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan and member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told Channel 4 News that the army’s inaction likely points to disagreement within the ranks.

“I suspect that the lower-level members of the Egyptian Army, probably at the colonel level, support (Egypt’s main opposition movement) the Muslim Brotherhood, and the higher echelons will be backing the current regime.” he said.

“So the fact that the army has taken no decisive physical action is probably down to the heads backing (Vice President) Omar Suleiman, with the lesser-ranking officers eyeing a alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The theory is given weight by the apparent incongruity of the army’s inertia during the process coming despite Mubarak, a former air force commander, naming Suleiman as Vice President, former air force commander Ahmed Shafik as Prime Minister and Defence Minister Tantawi, an army field marshal, to Deputy Prime Minister on 31 January.

The obvious question arises: why no intervention if the heads of the army and air force are now in Mubarak’s Cabinet?

Comparisons to the rise of Nasser

Col. Kemp said the suggested schism within the ranks was reminiscent of the conditions which allowed one of Mubarak’s presidential predecessors, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to stage a military coup and overthrow the government in the 1952 revolution.

Nasser, himself a lower-level officer (Lieutenant-Colonel) in the Egyptian Army and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, overthrew King Farouk amid mass anti-British protests in Cairo.

Col. Kemp said the symmetry of circumstances between the internecine clashes in Tahrir Square currently and the popular uprising then point to a “strong possibility” of a pro-Muslim Brotherhood seizure of power by lower-ranking members of the army.

An eventuality, he added, which would have dire consequences.

“Such a move, which looks increasingly possible, could see the Muslim Brotherhood come to power, which would raise the prospect of Egypt fostering international terrorism. It would also have a knock-on effect for Gaza; without the support of the Egyptian Army there, the Israelis would feel compelled to re-enter Gaza.”

US scrutiny

There is also the not-so-small matter of the $1.3 billion the military receives from the United States every year -- roughly a third of its annual budget -- which it will be intent on retaining.

However, plans could already be underfoot within the army to look at alternative sources of sponsorship if the Americans become unhappy with how the military is reacting to the uprising, especially now that Washington has publically called an immediate end to the violence.

“The American money is very important to them; they’re very conscious about how their actions will determine if that money stream continues” Col. Kemp said.

“But it shouldn’t be forgotten that there will be other offers of funding floating about: China, Iran, the usual suspects.”

So who is pulling the strings of the world’s 11th largest army: Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sami Hafez Enan or Suleiman?

“Well, that’s the point. I suspect within the military there are different agendas: it will be very interesting to see what happens now, but a coup d’état is a very real possibility.”

U.S. Alliance with Egypt and Israel

Egypt OKs Iran Warships Through Suez Canal

MSNBC
February 18, 2011

Israel called it a provocation; canal official said only war could have blocked request

Egypt has agreed to let two Iranian naval vessels transit the Suez Canal, a move that comes despite expressions of concern by Israeli officials, the Egyptian-government's MENA news agency reported Friday.

An Iranian diplomat has said the vessels were heading to Syria for training and that the request to move through the canal is in line with international regulations.

Iranian diplomats have offered assurances that the two ships wouldn't have weapons or nuclear or chemical material, MENA stated.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, briefing reporters on an Air Force One flight from California to Oregon, said,

"We're monitoring that, obviously."

"But we also would say that Iran does not have a great track record of responsible behavior in the region," he said.

The move had been widely expected and Iranian officials have insisted the request is in line with international regulations.

It would be the first time since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution that Iranian warships pass through the Suez Canal, which links the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

Egypt has been run by an army-led transition government since last week's ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising.

A Suez Canal official said Egypt can only deny transit through the waterway in case of war.

Earlier this week, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Iran's attempt to send warships through the canal was a provocation.

Israel's state-funded Channel One television said Lieberman, a stridently far-right partner in the conservative coalition, had spoken out of turn and that Israels defense ministry "had preferred to ignore" the ships' approach.

Israel considers Iran an existential threat because of its disputed nuclear program, ballistic missile development, support for militants in the region and its threats to destroy Israel.

Syria is one of Israel's neighboring adversaries. It has an alliance with Iran which has deepened along with Tehran's isolation from the West over its disputed nuclear programme, which the Jewish state sees as an existential threat. Iran is a sponsor of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.

U.S. Alliance with Egypt and Israel

The Nature of American-Egyptian Military Relations

By Ali Younes, Palestine Chronicle
February 14, 2011

It should come as no surprise that the ruling Egyptian Supreme Military Council announced its intent to honor all of Egypt’s regional and international treaties after it took over the reins of power from president Hosni Mubarak last week. This announcement was made to primarily assure the United States and Israel that the new post Mubarak political order in Cairo will remain formally committed to its peace treaty with Israel.

More than any other government branch; the Egyptian military owes its modern weapons, training, logistics, and equipment to U.S, military aid which came as a direct dividend of the peace treaty it signed with Israel in 1979.

In other words, the U.S is paying both Israel and Egypt for peace it sponsored between the two countries in 1979. The U.S payment to Egypt comes in the form of $ 1.3 billion military aid package and only about $250 billion in economic aid.

The Israeli Payment is worth over $3 billion dollar.

A state department cable in 2009 leaked by Wikileaks last year about the U.S-Egyptian relationship documented a meeting between a U.S. general and Egyptian military leaders. The cable sumarized relationship:

"President [Hosni] Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the $1.3 billion in annual Foreign Military Financing as ‘untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel."

In another state department memo labeled “secret” the Egyptian military viewed "the tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear," it says:

"Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace."

The U.S. mil-mil relations with Egypt are not just about paying for new military weapons for the Egyptian army. The U.S military aid to Egypt, moreover, pays mostly for upgrades of existing weapons, training Egyptian military and regular maintenance and spare parts.

This military relationship, in exchange, gives the U.S. government leverage over Egypt that the new Egyptian leaders realize as an indispensible fact of life. Without the American military aid the Egyptian military, given the size of American-made weapons it has, will degrade and fall behind its potential enemies in the region.

During the last days of the Mubarak regime, some U.S congressional leaders spoke about cutting U.S. military aid to Egypt if its new leaders moved away from the U.S. national interests. This was the first and clear initial warning that the U.S. might trim its logistical or training support to the Egyptian military which will, in that case, degrade the Egyptian military in the long run and thus weaken Egypt’s strategic value in the region.

U.S. strategic planners calculate that the Egyptian military is unlikely to move away from its alliance with the U.S. due to its total dependence on the U.S. funding to maintain and sustain its American-made weapons. The reasoning behind this thinking is the situation both Iran and the U.S. found themselves in after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.

The Shah of Iran had acquired huge quantities of advanced U.S. weapons that were maintained by U.S .made spare parts and training programs. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, U.S advanced weapons were in position of an enemy state, but the U.S. ended its military aid programs to Iran, a decision that ultimately caused the U.S. weapons there to rust out of service.

A clear example of that is the U.S. made F-14 Tomcat fighter jets that were in service in Iran before the 1979 revolution. To this day, the Iranian air force has yet to recover from the impact of its dependence on U.S. contracts to service and maintain weapons purchased during the Shah era.

A similar situation could occur for the American-made Egyptian F-16s or its Navy frigates or tanks and armor vehicles. If the future leaders of Egypt decided to end their strategic alliance with the U.S, or end their treaty with Israel, the U.S then, can retaliate by ending its military assistance programs and deprive Egypt’s military crucial upgrades and service contracts.

A situation like that will severely damage the front line of the Egyptian air force, the F-16s, which without U.S spare parts and regular maintenance, will end up crumbling and become obsolete and will meet the same fate as the Iranian F14. In this unlikely scenario, Egypt will fall further behind Israel in its military capabilities; even if it compensated its losses with less advanced Russian and Chinese weapons systems.

For the future leaders of Egypt, the U.S. military aid to Egypt is a double-edged sword. On one hand the modern Egyptian military is almost a U.S. creation in terms of training, weapons, equipment and maintenance, and needs the U.S. support to maintain those advanced weapons systems especially that Soviet era weapons systems are on the way out. On the other hand, American military aid package will keep Egypt an American dependency and within the U.S. sphere of influence to advance the U.S. strategic interests in the region. Egypt in this case cannot chart an independent course in the Arab world much less lead it, nor can it match the much stronger Israeli army.

- Ali Younes is a writer and Middle East analyst based in Washington D.C. He can be reached at ali.younes@charter.net.

Dangerous Victims: Egyptian Revolution in Israeli Eyes

By Seraj Assi, Palestine Chronicle
February 14, 2011

The Arab World is suffering and in its suffering it threatens Israel.

'Israeli citizens are frightened,' said Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni in a moment of deep confession.

In fact, what Livni was saying, to paraphrase Franz Fanon, is this: "Mama America, see the Arab! I'm frightened! Frightened! Frightened!"

This is a typical colonial scene where the “frightening victims” are captured in a game that involves dehumanization and empowering and rendered silent and dangerous subjects at the same time. Never can they escape this colonial capacity to invite and contain contradictions and opposites.

Yet in the Israeli case the irony is far more acute. For not only does Israel see its victim as dangerous and potentially evil, but has itself become the victim. It is within this irony that the ritual of victimization came to dominate the master narrative of Israel’s colonial discourse and foreign policy. Not only has Israel become a country whose entire existence is dependent on the suppression of all Arab and Muslim peoples, but has relentlessly contributed to their suppression.

According to Israel’s imperial logic, it is only reasonable to suppress the lives of three hundred million people for the “security” of a few million Israeli Jews, no matter how fictitious this security claim is. The irony is while Israel continues to bill Egyptian revolution as a threat to its national security, its Palestinian citizens- for decades Israel’s internal “dangerous victims”- are taking to the streets to celebrate the victory of their Egyptian brothers. Motivated by human and national solidarity, they have never felt as secure as they do now.

Israel’s security is fundamentally the security of vision. And since the vision of Arab and Muslim despotism is the only guarantee for Israel’s cultural narcissism and ethnic superiority in the region, it must be preserved by any means, and precisely by brutal force for “Arabs only understand force”, as Zionists believe.

Yet Israel’s fear has a performative colonial function. Its obsessive insistence to remain “the only democracy in the Middle East” is not merely a representational fantasy, but an effective colonial strategy. It is precisely this vision that gives Israel’s colonial policies in the region its moral justification and authentic validity. Its “civilizing mission” in the region is completely dependent on its vision of Arab and Muslim undemocratic spirit.

It is Israel’s cultivated vision on Arab despotism that permits its former Prime Minister Ehud Barak to boast that “Israel is a villa in a jungle” and its President Shimon Perez to contrast democracy with peace:

“Mubarak is a great man committed to peace, but Egyptian youth want democracy.”

And when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his paternalistic warning to Egypt from “becoming another Iran” he was operating into the same imperial logic.

Here Israel’s ambition to reorder the world by the brutal force of Zionist propaganda reaches its extreme absurdity. Indeed, it is in Israel where suppression is equivalent to stability. It is there where Egypt, its people, history and culture are all reduced to one word: Camp David. And it is in Israel where international sympathy for Egyptian struggle for freedom and dignity is violently placed under what an Israeli journalist has recently called “the betrayal of the West.”

Even when the moment has arrived to contradict these proclamations, Israel continues to see itself as the civilization custodian surrounded by uncivilized enemies and unruly protestors. There is no doubt then that Israel’s fear of any prospective democracy in the Arab world is steeped in racism. For Arab democracy simply threatens Israel’s undisputed vision of Arabs that maintained itself regardless of any historical evidence disputing it. And since the evidence this time is too visible to be denied, it becomes too intimidating for the Israeli observer. As the vision is now defeated by the narrative, as it is yielding to the pressure of history, Israel’s fear turns into collective phobia and racist hysteria. The scene of an Arab getting out of the iron cage fashioned by the Israeli observer to violate the serenity of history is precisely what frightens Israel.

On February 02, 2011, an article published in Haaretz opened with the following:

“Edward Said was right. We are all infected with Orientalism, not to mention racism. For the site of an entire people shaking off the yoke of tyranny and bravely demanding free elections - instead of uplifting our spirits, fills us with fear, just because they are Arabs.”

This clearly illustrates how, by a strange change of fortune, Israel came to inherit Western Orientalist racism and produce its own “Orientals”. Indeed, it is in Israel where, to steal a line from Naomi Klein, “Jews made the shift from victims to victimizers with terrifying ease.” This ironic legacy of Western Orientalism now produced by the Zionist racist machinery is precisely what enables Binyamin Fuad Ben-Eliezer, himself an Arab Jew born in Basra in Iraq, to lament Mubarak’s departure by claiming that "Arabs are not ready for democracy.”

Yet Israeli Jews are not alone to inherit the ironic legacy of Western Orientalism in the region. Just a week after the Egyptian revolution broke up Mubarak too introduced his version of Orientalism. Not so different from Livni’s was his message to President Obama on ABC that

"You don't understand Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now”.

One might wonder what was left of Egyptian culture under Mubarak regime but a bunch of corrupt muftis and semi-intellectuals. In fact, one does not need a revolution to discover that Mubarak is the last one in Egypt to understand what Egyptian culture is.

Perhaps the most hilarious scene of Mubarak’s Orientalist doctrine was his “camelization” of the demonstrations in Egypt. By unleashing his thugs riding in on camels and horses to crush and terrorize peaceful civilian protestors on the streets Mubarak was sending a clear message to his friends in the West. That is Egyptians, when left to their devices, are nothing but a bunch of unruly savages unsuited to democracy and civilization. His barbaric response to one of the most civilized revolution in the region shows how deeply he believes in what he says and does.

Mubarak’s response is an extraordinary example of how local dictators act as colonial agents towards their people and how they too feed on the irony of “dangerous victims.” Victimization in its Mubarak’s version depends on the same logic of radical inversion. That is by presenting Egyptian protestors as collaborators and foreign agents Mubarak is following the Arab proverb: “He hit me and cried, he raced me to complain.” Yet Mubarak certainly knows, as well as his Israeli and Western interlocutors, that one of the motivations behind the revolution was precisely his scandalous collaborative role in the region.

It is in this context that the revolution against Mubarak regime becomes an anti-colonial struggle. His dehumanization of his people tied with his brutal violence against peaceful civilians is an unmistakably colonial symptom. Here the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt should not make us forget how Western violence was exported to the Arab world from the dawn of colonialism up to the present day, how it was brought home by ruling elites whose links to neocolonial and postcolonial metropolises are maintained through multiple forms of agency, and how authoritarian Arab regimes continue to feed on Western hypocrisy in regard to democracy and liberty, the same slogans that have provided the foothold for Western expansion in the region.

Nor should we forget that Western political stability in comparison to the Arab world should be interpreted against the background of its exploitation of the region which provided it with the wealth to support its relatively decorous life. To make no mistake about it, the obsessive emphasis in Arab and Western media on formal U.S. announcements and responses to events in Egypt and Tunisia can only show how deeply neocolonialism is steeped in the region.

Isn’t then a bitter irony to expect the United State to liberate Egyptians from the very conditions that make it function in the region? Wasn’t this very same discourse on the liberation of Arabs what allowed its imperial venture to take place in the region? Don’t all kinds of critique of Israel’s support for Mubarak’s regime seem absurd given the fact that by supporting Mubarak Israel behaves in accordance with its colonial interests in the region and any critique of it must begin with its colonial foundations instead of its contemporary political hypocrisy?

- Seraj Assi is a PhD student in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.