The attack on the Israeli embassy is a wake-up call for the 25
January protesters to focus on the ballot box, not the streets
By Steve Negus
Protesters demolish a concrete wall around a building housing the Israeli embassy in Egypt's capital, Cairo, on 9 September. Photograph: Khalil Hamra/AP
The
only surprising thing about the breach of the Israeli embassy in Cairo at the
weekend is that it never happened any time before in the past 30 years. In a
city that abounds in isolated walled desert compounds, someone decided to put
the most often marched-upon facility in Egypt in a quite ordinary apartment
building in the heart of the city, whose defences basically consist of however
much force the security services/army choose to deploy on the street that
particular day.
Throughout
the 1990s, at least once a year, students from nearby Cairo University staged a
half-hearted attempt to storm the place. The hardcore "Ultra"
football club fans who seemed to be a major contingent of the crowd may simply
have been more persistent than your usual Cairo demonstrators – partly because
the self-styled "commandos of the revolution" are used to fighting
with police, and partly because they claimed to have one of their own dead to
avenge, supposedly killed last week in a post-match battle between Ahly club fans
and police on Saleh Salem Road.
I
was at the Tahrir demo earlier in the day, and although the Ultras were a heavy
presence, and although small groups approached the nearby interior ministry
from time to time, most of them responded pretty quickly to the
"Peacefully! Peacefully!" chants from the crowd. In fact, part of the
reason that the Ultras were there seemed to be that they wanted to be taken
seriously as an aggrieved constituency – a huge banner reading "Ultras are
not criminals!" hung in the square.
Ultras
in the crowd said that while they were used to demonstrating, on Friday they
came specifically on account of their own grievances: police brutality, and the
referral of civilians to military trials.
Ultra
claims of victimhood wear a bit thin when it's pretty clear that a good number
of them come to matches revved up for confrontation. On the other hand, from
what I have heard, police at matches tend to treat all working-class fans as
though they were riot-minded animals, so the Ultras who do want to fight the
cops have a pretty good pool of resentment and humiliation to draw upon.
The
other issue, obviously, is the widespread belief that the purist expression of
Egyptian nationalism is "go smash something Israeli". I half suspect
that the embassy is where it is because it did divert crowds at Cairo
University – until a few years ago the main locus of demonstrations here – from
other domestic targets and other domestic issues.
Twitterers
have been lamenting that the Israeli embassy violence has overshadowed the
original demands of ending the military trials of civilians and ensuring an
independent judiciary. Pro-embassy-storming Twitterers have been celebrating
this "victory", and in a few cases, lashing back at those who argues
that attacking a diplomatic symbol of Israel is a waste of time.
One
of the more perceptive tweets I've seen comes from Egyptian Thinker:
"reminder: #Jan25 is a [increasingly] decentralized,
grassroots movement which cannot, by definition, be controlled. Stop blaming
each other."
As
a revolution progresses, and accomplishes some of the initial uprising's goals
(ie, removing Mubarak) without accomplishing others (ie, a true overhaul of the
police), it's pretty inevitable that revolutionaries will part ways, fall out
over tactics, objectives, etc. This is particularly going to be the case when
there's been a bit of malaise in the movement, and the number of longtime
demonstrators who show up in Tahrir are not of sufficient mass to steer those
groups (like the Ultras) who may have other agendas.
An
uprising like Tahrir is an emotional state, not an institution – it has no
means of resolving internal disagreements, and when the initial sense of
euphoria and unity wears off, it must eventually yield to a more formal body
with a more formal decision-making process. In Egypt's case, I hope, that body
is going to be an elected parliament.
Some
critics of the path that Egypt's revolution has taken in recent months contrast
the tactics of the original leftish-liberalish revolutionaries – trying to
force change by crowd action, futilely, with those of the Islamists, preparing
for the elections, wisely.
This
is a bit of an oversimplification: so long as the unelected Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces (Scaf) is in power, I think there is a role for crowd action
against bad Scaf decisions. But activists do need to realise that unless they
force Scaf to step down (rather unlikely at this point), at best they are going
to provide a disincentive to take certain unpopular actions. They are not
likely to force Scaf to embark on a wholehearted campaign of institutional
reform. They are even less likely to force an unwilling military regime to
reframe its relationship with a former adversary (Israel) with whom it fought
five destructive wars.
As
for election preparation, some groups with their roots in the 6 April and 25
January activism have been out canvassing for votes. Last month, for example, I
went around with a group from the Adl party, running a clinic and distributing
medicines in a poor district of Alexandria. The Adl party were clearly taking a
leaf out of the Muslim Brothers' book, making sure that their activists are
known and respected by as many people as possible before they start heavily
pushing a political programme.
Also,
protests in their own way are a form of election preparation. They keep the
movements in the news, and thus on talk shows, which is a form of exposure.
Whether or not this counterbalances the negative impact of being associated,
fairly or unfairly, with street violence is open to question.
But
in general, I think the weekend's events ought to be yet another wake-up call
to the revolutionary movement that if they want to have a lasting impact, they
need to start thinking a little less about the streets and a little more about
the ballot box.
Also,
someone needs to find another place to put the Israeli embassy.
-This commentary was published in The Guardian on 12/09/2011- Steve Negus is a journalist and commentator specialising in Egypt
and Iraq. He was Iraq correspondent for the Financial Times between 2004 and
2008, and worked for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in 2003 and 2004.
He lived and worked in Egypt between 1993 and 2003, where he was editor of the
Cairo Times, among other jobs
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