The Man Who Dares To Take On Egypt's Brutal Regime

Despite beatings and corruption, Ayman Nour still hopes for change. Ahead of new polls, The Independent's man meets him

By Robert Fisk
This comment was published in The Independent on 25/11/2010

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Ayman Nour will continue the fight for democracy despite being beaten in jail

Ayman Nour touches his sideburns, just a shade grey beneath his black hair: not bad for a 45-year old, but not up to the standard of the absolutely uncompromisingly jet black hair of 82-year-old Egyptian President Hosni Moubarak, whose job – in theory at least – Dr Nour would like.

Mind you, being Mr Moubarak's rival is not for amateurs. It's cost Dr Nour more than four years in prison and here he is, on the eve of Egyptian parliamentary elections, sitting in Beirut – rather than Cairo – to express his disdain for the 'moderate', 'pro-Western' regime of America's favourite Middle Eastern dictator (alongside King Abdullah of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Bouteflika of Algeria, Ben Ali of Tunis, King Hassan of Morocco and the rest). So long live President Hosni Moubarak.

But how long? Dr Nour's Ghad party – Ghad means 'tomorrow', which may never come – is not taking part in this weekend's parliamentary elections which will, he feels sure, be as rigged as every election in Egypt since the early years of President Anwar Sadat. "I believe that what you are about to witness at the weekend is part tragedy, part comedy, a black comedy," he says. "You want to go to Cairo on Saturday, Robert? You might just go there for fun."

Dr Nour is a lawyer by profession, and as a legal man, he must annoy Moubarak as much as the lawyers of Pakistan infuriated President-General Mousharraf before his fall; indeed, Nour's imprisonment before Egypt's 2005 presidential election – supposedly for forging powers of attorney to create his Ghad party – showed that Moubarak's anger could embrace a lawyer or two.

After winning 7 per cent of the vote – 25 per cent might have been the true figure, according to him – in an election that was unmonitored by foreign observers, Nour was banged up again in the infamous Tora prison, this time with a five-year sentence.

It wasn't a pleasant stay. Dr Nour doesn't like to talk about this part of his life. "I don't want new generations in Egypt to be terrified or frightened to stand up for themselves," he says. "But unfortunately, there were pictures of me that circulated on the internet that showed bruises and parts of my body that were beaten. They stopped me from receiving food and medicine from outside" – Dr Nour is a diabetic – "and they stopped me from praying. The prison guards were following orders – given to them out of spite – to make my life miserable."

But hold on, I say. Is he saying that Hosni Moubarak of Egypt actually knew that inmates like him would be duffed up? "I was beaten up only once," he replies carefully, "on the 17th May, 2007, right after an article which I wrote in Al-Dastour newspaper which had the headline: 'What happens after Moubarak dies?' That day, prison officers escorted me to an area of the jail and I was beaten. I was thrown from a car, beaten on my back, knees, ankles. It was violent. They used their fists. Yes, I remember names. There was a general, not an important person. He was there on that day. As a result, I believe he was awarded a very strong provincial position for what he did to me."

Nour's imprisonment – he was held for 105 days before being jailed from 5th December, 2005, until 18th February, 2009 – annoyed the George W Bush administration which had just been trumpeting the joys of Egyptian democracy; Condoleeza Rice and her State Department spokesman huffed and puffed about how Nour's imprisonment "called into question Egypt's commitment to democracy, freedom and the rule of law." "I pay the price when Rice speaks of me," Nour said. "And I pay the price when she doesn't." Moubarak couldn't have cared less.

Bush himself coupled Nour's name with that of Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma a month after Nour's beating in a 2007 speech. Much good did it do. The attack, Nour said, was a message sent in response to his newspaper article. Exactly who it came from he cannot, or will not, say.

From Moubarak's businessman son Gamal, I ask, the ruling National Democratic Party factotum who would be king, the son who swears he does not wish to be president but whose supporters devoutly wish him to inherit the Pharaoh's throne? No, Nour says. It wasn't Gamal. He leaves me to fish through the rest of the Moubarak family for the culprit.

Ask about Gamal, and Dr Nour shakes his head. "I don't have much to say about a man who has no features, no charisma, a man who has not been in any election in his life, who is nevertheless a leader, the decision-maker in an unconstitutional way. He is a president under construction. He is like plastic. He is not human. You can talk about trees and flowers but not something that is made of plastic, it has no life."

Phew, I say. So what does Nour think of Moubarak the father – who, like Gamal, he has met several times – about the president who at 82 has said that he is thinking of standing for president yet again next year? "He is an inexperienced and uneducated man," he replies. "His mind is set in one way. He doesn't have sufficient knowledge. He is a small dictator who became a big dictator as his age increased. He looks very much down on the Egyptian people. But his barber is a nice guy."

But surely, I say, Moubarak can't be that bad. I saw the way he put his arm round old President Hafez Assad of Syria when his son Basil was killed in a car crash near Damascus airport. He seemed a most compassionate man. But Nour is unforgiving.

"I can tell you that a very important thing about his character is that he is very aggressive," he says. "He has no heart. During the 2005 elections, a very well-known member of the party, Talat Sadat (son of assassinated President Anwar Sadat's brother), came to support my campaign. He said one of the best features abut me was that I had a heart. And when I thought about this in prison, I realized that what Talat said was right. Egypt at this critical time needs a president with a heart.

"You know," he says, "I figured out President Moubarak at my very first meeting with him, when he had just taken power. I was 16 and head of the student union in Egypt. I was trying to talk to the president, to ask him to bring back a 1976 law about organising elections to the student union that was cancelled by a new law in 1979. And the president told me: 'We are moving forward – why should we go back three years?' I said I had the signatures of 40,000 students in my favour and he said: 'Are you sure it's 40,000? I will count them one by one.' I couldn't believe it. What kind of president has the time to count 40,000 signatures?"

Dr Nour believes the Muslim Brotherhood, the illegal but tolerated opposition party which lends a mirage of democracy to Egypt's polls, should not be participating in this weekend's parliamentary elections. "They will regret it," he says. "They have got into a fight which the regime wanted, when there will be an election that will be rigged. By participating, they are giving legitimacy to this. Once, when Moubarak was told he had gained 99 per cent in a presidential election, he told his minister: 'This is far too much – take it down a bit!' That's what Moubarak admitted in a newspaper interview."

In the 2005 presidential elections, Nour turned up an hour early to register his name. "I wanted my name on the first ticket," he recalls. "The head of the election committee offered me tea. I said no, I wanted to give in my papers first. So he put my name at the top and gave me a receipt.

My people were outside and saw all the candidates but they never saw Moubarak. The Middle East News Agency put out a story, number 36 of the day, that I had submitted my papers first. But later on the same day they said President Moubarak had registered first and that I was number two on the ballot. I called the head of the election committee who agreed that he had given me a receipt and that my name should have topped the ballot list. I filed a complaint – there was no response. And I believe President Moubarak never actually applied. Until this day, we believe that Moubarak never filed his papers – and that he is therefore not the real president. We had lots of supporters beaten up outside polling stations. I was told I got 25 per cent of the vote. And they gave me 8 per cent."

Some members of Nour's Ghad party, including a civil engineer called Shadi Taha who is one of his closest advisers, insist that a knock-on-the-door poll in Alexandria indicated Nour had got 80 per cent of the local vote. Well, maybe, I think.

But things look bleak for the man who would be king in next year's presidential election. "There are a lot of obstacles to stop me running," he says. "There's an old 1937 law that [forbids] a civilian to stand for president within six years of serving his term for committing and being convicted of a felony. They don't want any competition in September, 2011. The regime is trying to take away the real opposition. They just want a soft opposition to be a part of that nice play and show the West that everything is normal. I am already forbidden to practice law. I am forbidden to speak in the media. I have no right to sell property or speak in universities or open a bank account. I have had many invitations to talk at American universities but the prosecutor general stopped me from travelling."

Yes, Dr Nour insists, there could be real democracy in Egypt. There was a kind of democracy in 1860, and between 1924 and 1952 there was a liberal constitution. There was a "partial democracy", he says, when the British ruled Egypt. This sounds like a whopper to me. But Dr Nour is unapologetic. "We believe we can see democracy in the future in Egypt because of the past. When we compare it to what we have in Egypt today – when we have no political life at all – we can believe in a real democratic force."

The Battle To Strike Iran

By Osman Mirghani
This comment was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 25/11/2010
 
It is understood that Israel is pressuring the United States for a military strike on Iran and its nuclear facilities. Tel Aviv wants to keep the balance of power, and military superiority in the region, in its own hands. It is not interested in the implications such a strike would have for the reformist movement in Iran, or its wider impact on the region. What it wants is the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program, or to disable it for years to come, in order to keep nuclear power in
Israel’s hands only, so it can use the threat of the ‘Samson Option’.
 
It is no secret that Israel has previously undertaken campaigns, overtly and covertly, to prepare such an atmosphere [i.e. an Israeli monopoly in the Middle East]. In the 1980s, Israel attacked an Iraqi nuclear facility, and then continued its campaign against the Iraqi regime, exploiting Saddam Hussein’s errors in the region, until matters ended with an invasion, which was strongly advocated by Israeli supporters in U.S. decision making circles. Former U.S. President George W. Bush revealed in his memoirs, released this month, how the Israelis asked him to strike Iranian and Syrian [nuclear] facilities, and that the Pentagon actually commissioned the preparation of plans and studies on such strikes. Yet this action was eventually not taken, due to differing views amongst those in the Bush administration, regarding the feasibility and risks of such operations.
 
Although Bush stressed that the military option against Iran was always on the table, he said that it was always considered a last resort, on the grounds that Washington preferred at the time – and still does – the option of sanctions. As for Syria, Bush revealed explicitly that he did not agree to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s request at the time, to carry out an air raid or send Special Forces teams to strike the Deir al-Zour facility, due to the dangers of the operation. Furthermore, Bush confirmed that Israel carried out the operation alone later.
 
In the context of Israel’s constant pressure, and American reports alleging that any military strike on Iran at the present time would have many, serious negative repercussions, it is interesting to examine at a debate last week between U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. The American official expressed the prevalent opinion amongst the Obama administration, namely that a military strike would not provide a long term solution, but would instead result in Tehran’s nuclear program becoming “more entrenched and more secret”, and would also galvanize the Iranian regime, in the face of internal opposition and divisions. What Gates did not say is that the fallout from the operation could harm U.S. interests, especially in light of western military operations in Afghanistan, and the fragile global economic situation. These words did not please the Israelis of course, and the Israeli Chief of Staff reacted with a public response to Gates’ words, saying that sanctions were not effective, and that a military strike was Israel’s desired solution, regardless of the domestic repercussions in Iran, or in the wider region.
 
The reality is that Israel is reaping the maximum gains from the Iran issue, regardless of whether it achieves its desired military strike or not. It receives U.S. security guarantees, which are continually strengthened, including the provision of intelligence information, and sophisticated U.S. weaponry, to ensure it maintains the upper hand. As a result of receiving U.S. support and technology, Israel has been able to develop a missile defense shield, which should be completed by 2015. Despite gaining all this, Israel continues to raise its voice to warn against the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program. In doing so, it resembles a pregnant sheep, afraid of the new wolf in town, even though this ‘sheep’ has at least 100 nuclear warheads, according to estimates by experts, and rejects any discussion of acceding to the NPT, or talk of the Middle East becoming a nuclear weapons free zone.
 
What Israel wants is to maintain its monopoly in the region, with its ‘nuclear sword’ hanging over the necks of others. This allows the state to continue its arrogant policies, such as refusing to relinquish the occupied territories, continual intransigence on the subject of peace, and only agreeing to proposal in accordance with its prohibitive terms. To achieve this goal, Israel has intensified its campaign, hoping that this pressure leads to an attack on Iran, or allows Israel to access more military aid, and political tradeoffs. This is what we saw during Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington, when he merged the subject of confronting Iran, including his tradeoffs with Washington, with the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians. Whilst in America, Netanyahu was keen, in his speeches and statements, to focus on the theme of the Iranian threat, in order to reach a compromise amidst U.S. pressure to resume peace negotiations with Palestine.
If Israel’s intentions are clear, the question remains; how will Israel act?
 
So far it looks like Ahmadinejad is repeating the experience of Saddam Hussein, which resulted in the destruction of Iraq and rocked the stability of the region. In reality, what Iran needs to do is adopt a rational, less aggressive policy. It needs to reduce its policy of external expansion, and reassure its neighbors, thus removing Israel’s bargaining chip in the peace process. Furthermore, it needs to support the mounting call for the Middle East to become a nuclear weapons free zone. Peaceful nuclear energy is a legitimate right for all, but nuclear arms would open the gates of hell in an already volatile region.

Egypt: The Church Clashes

By Zuheir Kseibati

This comment was published in al-Hayat on 25/11/2010

 

There is nothing out of the ordinary in the scenes of violence seen in Egypt at a time when the heat of the parliamentary elections that will be held on Sunday is mounting. There is nothing out of the ordinary because the Levant has in general succeeded in combining “democracy” and violence, and consequently in coming up with the goals to justify the means, even if the tools are fists raised high to allow the rise of the “free voice.”

It might be said that “individual” incidents in a country of forty million voters is not worth mentioning, but the promotion of the scenarios of terrorization – while they do not defeat the purpose of the elections – at least herald the exit of the battle from the ballot boxes to Cairo’s streets and squares.

It is not odd for the ruling National Party to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood group without naming it, of committing provocations and maneuvers against “legitimacy,” or for the left wing to accuse the government of lying and the MB of resorting to violence. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood is bombarding the ruling party with accusations of bullying, saying it attempted to assassinate one of its candidates, while the leftist Tagammu Party is adding to the fierceness of the battle a disobedience scenario “drawn up by the MB to gain control over the authority” on Sunday.

In an exceptional confrontation supposed to constitute the real test a few months prior to the opening of candidacies for the presidential elections that will be held in June, all weapons are valid for the Muslim Brotherhood’s opponents in order to clip the group’s wings in parliament. Although the announced justification is the preemption of turmoil in Egypt next summer – through the obstruction of “the group’s trick” (to nominate “independent figures”) and the containment of its presence underneath the dome of the People’s Assembly - what is worrisome during these difficult months is seeing the exceptional and temporary violence becoming almost “ordinary.”

Can the tensions of the elections and the tensions affecting the Copts’ “file” as some Americans like to call it be separated? Was it just a coincidence that the “church clashes” yesterday and the rise of the heat on the street on the eve of the parliamentary elections concurred, only a few days after the diplomatic “clash” between Cairo and Washington following the American report regarding religious freedoms in Egypt?

It is definitely not ordinary – if the stories are true – for Coptic demonstrators to throw Molotov bottles on the security forces instead of stones, in protest against the discontinuation of the building of a center annexed to a church. Regardless of the core of their demands, the fact that they chose violence which led to the killing of one person and the wounding of dozens of others, cannot be justified except by the fact that they fell in the trap of reactions. Moreover, the recent raising of banners against the Christians in Egypt was a mere primitive act worthy of condemnation. This is due to the fact that its horrendous outcome gave those fishing in murky waters and claiming to protect the rights of the Copts in the United States, live ammunition to launch a new chapter of slander against Egypt and besiege any attempt it might undertake to change its weak role in the region.

It is not a secret that the Copts’ “file” and status has become a weapon in the electoral battle and that it has introduced another weapon through warning against the intentions or “plans” of the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, the questions now revolve around the authority’s initiatives and whether or not they are enough to uproot the seeds of sectarianism that are being watered domestically and abroad.

Seeing how the answer is negative, we should also inquire about the role of all the Egyptian political forces in containing these seeds, and not just settle for responding to slogans with unproductive debates or electoral gains. This is due to the fact that the voices and fists that rose during the church clashes are enough to complete the image revealing that no one will come out a winner. And while the other facet of this picture is seen in the banners attacking the Copts, the job of the ear should be replaced with that of the tongue: All the screaming is overshadowing the alarm bells and what happened in Al-Haram neighborhood in front of the church can no longer be handled with statements talking about national unity.

Among the most basic duties of the authority and the opposition in Egypt – following the end of the electoral duel – is to launch a dialogue that would relinquish the addiction to cheap disputes and define the priorities to mend unity, before sectarianism expands and turns into a plague in a region where sectarianism and denominationalism have become the greatest enemies. The authority and the opposition - which always accused the governments of allocating the shares to the opportunists and the supporters “as though Egypt belongs to them” - must look into the reasons behind the erosion of the Egyptian role at the level of the regional and African crises, to the point where Ethiopia would be encouraged to defy Cairo by proclaiming war over the Nile water.

The alarm bell is resonating with confrontations domestically and pressures and a blockade abroad.

Lebanon: Trials And Tribulations For Mr. Bellemare

By Michael Young
This comment was published in the Daily Star on 25/11/2010 

The documentary aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation earlier this week has set in motion various conspiracy theories. However, the urgent question is what the information disclosed means for the case that will be presented by Daniel Bellemare, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal of Lebanon, presumably in the near future.

The program provides compelling evidence of Hizbullah’s alleged involvement in the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, based mainly on telephone analyses. These analyses, the CBC  contends, were significantly advanced by the doggedness of the late Internal Security Forces captain, Wissam Eid, who was assassinated in January 2008. Eid’s boss, Colonel Samir Shehadeh, miraculously survived an earlier assassination attempt in September 2006.

Several things can be said about the matter. The first is that the detailed information in the documentary was not handed over recently to the journalist who broke the story, Neil Macdonald, therefore is not tied into recent political developments, as some are contending. This I know because I had heard that such documents were circulating at the beginning of this year (although I was unaware of their content). If one had to guess, the highly sensitive documents were passed on to Macdonald by someone unhappy with the lack of progress in the investigation. It’s best to keep an open mind on the agenda of a leaker, or leakers, but much of what Macdonald says about the shortcomings of the United Nations investigation between 2006 and 2008 under the stewardship of Serge Brammertz, like his criticism of Bellemare’s investigative and management skills, has long been echoed by others working with the investigation or familiar with its progress.  

But let’s give Bellemare the benefit of the doubt. Unlike Brammertz, he appears to have seriously tried to investigate, even if the results until now remain, at best, uncertain. However, on the basis of the CBC report, does the prosecutor have enough to make his indictments stick – bearing in mind that we may not necessarily see indictments soon. Bellemare must first earn the formal approval of the pretrial judge, and this will be determined by the strength of his legal arguments. If these are found wanting, the prosecutor may be asked to rework his indictments. 

Assuming his indictments are accepted, however, and that the details provided in the CBC documentary represent the core of Bellemare’s arguments, could he easily win a trial? Surprisingly, the revelations, regardless of how forceful they may look, suggest the prosecutor has a tough judicial climb ahead of him. Here’s why.

If the telephone analyses are Bellemare’s best shot, then as Macdonald pointed out in an article posted on the CBC website, he will first have to prove that the telephones used in the Hariri assassination were actually in the hands of Hizbullah members. Unless he has witness testimony affirming this, or suspects in custody willing to speak up, providing proof will not be easy. In fact it seems increasingly likely that Bellemare will suffer from two major handicaps in convincing the judges: his case may largely be conducted with suspects tried in absentia; and because of the dearth of witness testimony, brought on by Hizbullah’s secretive nature and its refusal to cooperate with the tribunal, the prosecutor may be overly reliant on circumstantial evidence – in other words indirect evidence that leads to conclusions effectively reached through deduction. 

In an interview conducted with the Now Lebanon website last August, Bellemare defended circumstantial evidence, declaring “I am strongly of the view that circumstantial evidence is more powerful than direct evidence.” Circumstantial evidence is doubtless important in certain situations, but most lawyers would count it as less persuasive, and more difficult to prove, than witness testimony and documentary or physical evidence. There is also the matter of how much circumstantial evidence a prosecutor relies upon. That is especially relevant to Bellemare.

In a vast conspiracy like the assassination of Rafik Hariri, there are multiple circles of involvement and different levels of decision-making. For Bellemare to win his case, he will need to peel back the many layers and identify who did what when, and who said what to whom. He will need to shed light on significant segments of the crime to expose the whole. The most effective way of doing so is to have suspects in hand willing to spill the beans, and physical or documentary evidence to lend credence to what they say. But to prosecute a complex political killing by relying heavily on conclusions reached through deduction against suspects most or all of whom are not in court can only favor the defense.

No matter how compelling is the material passed on to the CBC, it only casts light on a small corner of the Hariri assassination, and most probably not the one disclosing who ordered the crime. That is why Brammertz’s two years in office were so damaging. The former commissioner focused on crime scene analysis, failed to arrest new suspects, pushed the burden of telephone analysis onto the Lebanese, and more generally did not competently advance his investigation.

This was perhaps unintentional, but I am increasingly convinced it was intentional.

Now we are hearing Hizbullah and its political allies stating that Israel has infiltrated the telephone network, as if that will somehow help discredit the CBC’s information. But what the party must now accept is that this latest information cannot be explained away by false witnesses. It is considerably more difficult for the prime minister, Saad Hariri, to dismiss the hard work of Wissam Eid – work that ultimately cost the ISF captain his life – and subsequently that of UN telecom analysts, than it is for him to swallow the insidious idiocy of the false witnesses claim.

But come to think of it, who did kill Eid? Was it the Israelis? If so, that makes no sense at all, since his conclusions were pointing in the direction of Hizbullah, which is precisely, one assumes, what the Israelis wanted. The more those opposed to the tribunal try to manufacture ways to undermine its work, the more absurd their contortions become. Most worrisome is that UN ineptitude or manipulation may have already undermined the possibility of a successful prosecution, when or if the trial ever begins. 

Election Fever In Egypt

By Michael Jansen

This comment was published in The Jordan Times on 25/11/2010

Gamila Ismail is an independent candidate running for a seat outside the women’s quota in Egypt’s 508 member people’s assembly. She is a well-known figure in Cairo. She stood for parliament in 2001 and campaigned for the release from prison of her former husband Ayman Nour, the head of opposition Al Ghad party who ran and lost the presidential race in 2005.

Gamila met the world press at 7.30 on Monday at the Cilantro cafژ in Zamalek, a large island in the Nile. The BBC and CNN were there, as well as Swedish, German and Irish journalists. Her shining brown hair brushed her shoulders, her lips pursed in determination, she set out to challenge the government by campaigning in two of its forbidden strongholds.

Her first target were four private schools in Zamalek, a middle- and upper-middle-class residential area also housing embassies, cultural centres and high-rise hotels. She set off on her mission in a gleaming black car plastered with election posters. She began with the Port Said school, a small building on a leafy street.

“I want to reach parents through their children and move new voters” to register and cast ballots.

“I will hand out my brochures and speak to teachers. This is not legal, but the NDP [the ruling National Democratic Party] has been in the schools for years.”

She was able to speak to students only at the American City Schools, where she told three somewhat embarrassed teenagers that they should vote when they come of age and gave them her election brochures to pass on to their parents.

Strolling between schools, she stopped at shops selling beautiful fruit - piles of oranges, bananas and custard apples - to shake hands with proprietors and customers and distribute her leaflets. At the Gomhoria Butchery, she chatted with Fateh Said Muhammad, who stopped dressing a beef fillet to smile for a snap of Gamila and himself beneath a photo of Egyptian film star Omar Sharif, a good customer.

“If he were running, I would vote for him,” stated the butcher.

Gamila’s next halt was at the symbol of the modern Egyptian state, the Mogamma, the monumental office bloc at Tahrir Square, the core of this vast city of 18 million people. Here, thousands of civil servants - mostly women - provide documents needed by Egyptians to carry on their daily lives. Gamila waited patiently for permission to enter because by law, campaigning is banned in government buildings.

Eventually the security man ushered her - and the pencil press - into this vast edifice where she toured the dusty, dreary offices on the seventh floor. In the first room she entered, Gamila faced an angry woman in niqab.

“I protest the price of meat. We cannot afford to live... I have been working here for 27 years. I get 500 pounds a month ($90). If I go to vote, I am doing wrong.”

Gamila took issue with the woman, arguing that if the people do not tell the government what they want by voting, there will be no change. She was received more warmly in other offices where women livened up the environment by draping their battered steel desks with bright flower print cloths and plastic flowers.

While they listened politely to Gamila, most of these women will vote for her main rival, Hisham Moustafa Khalil, the son of a former foreign minister and an influential member of the NDP.

The party expects to win a solid majority of seats in Sunday’s election. There are 5,100 candidates standing for the 508 elected seats. Some 1,200 candidates represent 14 political parties, while 4,100 are running as independents, the majority of them members of the NDP who were not chosen as official candidates.

To complicate matters, the NDP is fielding 780 official candidates rather than one per seat. Since many are competing for the same seats, there has been a certain amount of intimidation and bullying of voters by NDP rivals.

The liberal Wafd party, established in 1918, has put forward 250 candidates, the second largest list of official contestants.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which is officially banned but allowed to support independents, originally chose 132 candidates, but the election commission reduced the number to 75. The NDP is keen to cut down the representation of the Brotherhood, which won 88 seats in the 2005 444-seat parliament.

The leftist Tagammu has put forward 70 candidates, the largest number ever.

This election is of considerable importance because Egyptians are set to vote next year in a presidential election which could give President Hosni Mubarak a sixth term or confirm a successor chosen by the NDP. For the time being, the NDP regards the president as the only candidate.

Israeli Actions Putting Two-State Plan In Peril

By Hanan Ashrawi from East Jerusalem This comment was published in Gulf Times on 24/11/2010

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a critical stage. For more than two decades, the two-state solution has been the basis of international efforts to make peace in the region. Yet the Israeli government’s refusal to cease settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem will shortly render the creation of a territorially contiguous and viable Palestinian state impossible. A failure of the two-state solution will generate further instability in the region, strengthen rejectionist elements on both sides and likely mean that the conflict will drag on for generations. It will also damage US standing in the Middle East and America’s national security interests. Despite this, there does not seem to be a recognition on the part of Israeli leaders and some in the US of the urgency of the moment. Many observers in the region and elsewhere have concluded that Israel’s policy of creating “facts on the ground” has already made a division of the land unfeasible. Settlements are not an abstract or secondary issue to Palestinians, who see the constant encroachment of Jewish-only colonies that swallow their land and their hopes for the future. There are half a million Israeli settlers living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and their numbers are growing. From the beginning, one of the driving motivations behind the settlement enterprise has been to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Thus it is by strategic design that the settlements have been located in such a way as to divide and isolate Palestinian population centres from one another and the outside world. Settlements not only usurp the land on which a Palestinian state is to be created; they bring with them armed, aggressive Jewish extremists who attack Palestinians, destroy their crops and property, and desecrate their holy places. In 1988, the Palestine National Council passed a binding resolution agreeing to an independent Palestinian state on just 22% of historic Palestine, and in 1993 the Palestine Liberation Organisation officially recognised Israel as part of the Oslo accords. These were major historic compromises on our part but they have never been fully recognised or reciprocated by Israel. Instead, the Israeli government is now asking us to compromise further on the 22%, while at the same time demanding we recognise not just the state of Israel, but Israel as a “Jewish state”. The Palestinian leadership remains committed to a peaceful, negotiated settlement to our conflict with Israel based on the two-state solution, but we do not want to engage in a process that leads nowhere and lends cover to the continued colonisation of our land. Between 1993 and 2000, while we negotiated with the Israelis, the number of settlers doubled and the situation on the ground for Palestinians worsened each year. We will not take unilateral action, but that does not mean that we won’t explore all of our options and act in co-ordination with members of the international community and international bodies such as the United Nations. If Palestinians cannot safeguard their rights using peaceful means such as popular nonviolent protest or seek legal redress through international organisations such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, many will conclude that a return to armed resistance is the only alternative - with tragic consequences for all. For its part, Israel wishes to avoid multilateralism and references to international law, preferring to engage in bilateral talks that reflect and incorporate the massive asymmetry in power between the two parties. It wishes to dictate terms, not negotiate them. To ensure this doesn’t happen, we need serious, positive engagement on the part of the United States and other international players. The Israelis have painted themselves into a corner. They can continue the status quo of ruling over millions of Palestinians without granting them political rights, an untenable situation that many, including two former Israeli prime ministers, have likened to apartheid; they can grant Palestinians equal rights and the vote in a single bi-national state; or they can dismantle their settlements and allow for the creation of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Israel’s prime minister says he supports the two-state solution, but the actions of his government and the long list of conditions he has put on any future Palestinian state leave much room for doubt. If the two-state solution is to be salvaged, Israeli leaders must change course and demonstrate their seriousness of intent immediately by putting an end to all settlement activity without conditions, thereby creating the space for the possibility of a genuine and lasting peace to be reached between our two peoples.

Media ‘Boosts’ Iranian Morale

By Ahmad Al-Jarallah

This comment was published in Arab Times on 25/11/2010

The Tehran regime has once again affirmed its resolve to move towards the opposite direction — against the will of the Iranian majority and the regional and international communities. While the entire world is pushing for peace and cooperation among nations, Iran continues to use obsolete language and threaten world peace through the expansion of its military projects, which it keeps announcing every day. It has continued to raise slogans on its plan to test rockets, war planes or warships, as if it has become a large industry for destruction. However, to a close observer of the Iranian case, most of these scenes are nothing but media propaganda. The most recent proof of this is the harsh criticism that the Iranian leaders hurled at Russia two months ago when the latter cancelled the S-300 antiaircraft deal.

Iran considers the cancellation as an expression of enmity against it even if it announced several days earlier that it was capable of developing such missiles. If this is true, why did Iran engage in the deal? Why did Iran launch a scathing political and media attack on the Russian government and accuse it of enmity?

The activities of Iran in recent years reveal the emptiness of the Iranian system. This happens while the internal political and economic crises continue to worsen due to the international sanctions imposed on the regime to prevent it from causing trouble in the world and dragging the international community into military escapades that will only result in more disasters and instability. All this for protecting the minority cliques’ grip on power and the capabilities of Iran, which is regarded as the fifth nation with the largest oil reserves, yet its people are still trapped in a suffocating economic crisis.

The Iranian regime has been bragging about its advanced military production but this is nothing but a media ‘bubble’ to boost the morale of the ruling group and at the same time to sprinkle sand into people’s eyes. This only means the regime has not learned from the experiences of similar administrations, which showed their weakness and ignominy when the whole world asked them to undergo difficult tests. The scenario only proves that a destructive scheme is unacceptable to any reasonable person.

If the media babble on the alleged military production excites the Iranian leaders, they should understand that the world is not a place for spreading terror and issuing threats, while the Gulf is not an extension of their system. The region consists of leading independent states with the ability to defend themselves. Therefore, the threats issued by some Iranian leaders against nations in the region mean nothing, because these leaders, who have lost their senses and disregard international agreements, have yet to understand the peaceful language used by Arabian Gulf countries to maintain harmonious relations with their neighbors and regional stability.

The region has affirmed more than once its commitment to promote peace. It is now up to the Iranian leaders to comprehend that this peaceful approach and the use of gentle language are not signs of weakness, instead they are part of a strategy to stabilize the region.

These leaders should realize that their military charade and muscle-flexing are no longer enough to cover up the crisis, and their missiles are nothing but media rockets, which do not scare anyone - not the Arabian Gulf nor the entire world - because the region is keen on taking decisive steps to stop their frivolous political acts.