Issue No. 605
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26 Sept. - 2 October 2002 Issue No. 605 Special |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Bringing the Intifada to Egypt
Responding to mass anger at the situation in Palestine, a group of approximately 20 Non-Governmental Organisations and 20 individuals formed the Egyptian Popular Committee for Solidarity with Palestine. Two years on, Adel El-Mashad, a founding member of the committee, talked of the successes and the many challengesHow would you sketch the development of the Egyptian Popular Committee for Solidarity with Palestine over the past two years?
At the very beginning the problem -- a problem which faces any political activity in Egypt outside the legal realm (political parties, associations, etc) -- was to gain legitimacy. And so we focused on gaining legitimacy. We were keen on bringing into our ranks important people, even if we knew they would not necessarily be active. Also at that time we were concerned with advancing the idea of the relief convoys. We felt this would legitimise the activities of the committee, because the government could not possibly oppose extending much needed medical and other aid to Palestine.
We were also careful to contact officials such as then minister of foreign affairs Amr Moussa, who sent us a letter encouraging our effort. We also reached out to all forms of media.
The committee succeeded through these means in confirming its existence. And in my personal opinion it was a great feat to convince people of collective popular work.
Since then we have continued to extend material assistance, and it also became possible for us -- after having gained our legitimacy -- to disagree with the government regarding some of its policies in relation to the management of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
However, recently there have been attempts to curb the margin of democratic freedom we carved for ourselves. Some of our members have been harassed by the police and arrested on various charges, among them renowned labour activist Attia El-Serafy for collecting donations.
To what extent has this affected the committee's work?
One of dozens of student protests held in support of the Palestinian uprising at Cairo University in recent months
photo: Khaled El-Fiqi
Of course it has put a damper on our activity. Also we are influenced by the ebb and flow of the movement with which we are in solidarity. And so the loss of momentum suffered by the Intifada has affected us as well.
There has always been talk of the need to create "grass roots" for the committee, namely local committees in popular areas, etc. However, university activists I talked to argued that, by virtue of the fact that those who introduced the committee on campus were politicised, there could be no "popular" committee, only a committee representing and represented by members of a specific political group.
The university is a difficult place to work and of course it is true: to make a presence on campus we had to work through people who were political. I agree this has had its drawbacks.
Further, in popular areas where there were leaders and a heritage of political activity, the committee was able to make a presence. However, in the many areas where there is no such framework it was virtually impossible for us to function. In the end we cannot create a social movement through our political activity.
The disposition of the "street", especially since 9/11, has been Islamist. For example, empathy with Bin Laden. How has this affected the work of the committee?
Within the committee itself there are such sympathies. And no doubt the Islamists have gained influence and succeeded to win over members of the nationalist trend, and even members of the left. And so there has been conflict on the position to take regarding several issues, and at the end of the day we chose to disagree and not issue a position.
For example, after 9/11 some of us felt we should issue an announcement extending our condolences to the families of those who died and explaining the general context of the crises. Others among our ranks opposed the idea. In the end we issued nothing.
Many international movements -- such as the anti- globalisation movement -- face this quandary. Either to limit their ranks to like-minded people, or to open up and incorporate all different views and live with that difference. We have chosen the second option, and we feel that it is more productive, even if on certain issues we are unable to take a collective stand.
The boycott lists -- which have been very popular -- were many and in most cases lacked concept. What was the input of the committee?
We never considered the boycott a main activity for the committee. When we discussed the tactic we decided that it would be futile to make a long list, and that essentially a commodity boycott was symbolic. We also discussed the need to make another list of companies that should be boycotted. But we agreed that a list of American companies -- to be boycotted on the grounds that they were American -- was not useful. Instead we wanted to single out companies that gave support to Israel. It all sounded very nice but implementation was a different matter. We found that to make such a selection would require a huge amount of research and information not available to us. So we discarded the idea completely.
How do you see the future of the committee especially with a possible war in Iraq?
Political developments in the region service the development and growth of the committee. There is the escalated violence in Palestine and the situation in Iraq. All of this will require by definition a strong solidarity movement in Egypt. However, how successful such a movement is depends on the ability of those activists to get busy and seize the moment to the movement's best advantage.
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