From Red Sea to Dead Sea
Normalisation, more government employees and new leadership prospects were debated by the Egyptian press this week, writes
Aziza Sami
Subtle developments, and others not so subtle, appeared in this week's newspapers. Articles in the national and independent press, commenting on the recently held "Davos-Amman" summit, also known as the Red Sea Summit, again underscored the contradictions between the Pax Americana propagated by US officials at the summit and the less Utopian realities on the ground.
The irony of top Arab officials kowtowing to their new American counterpart, the "ruler" of Iraq, was also not lost on the majority of commentators. Nor, for that matter, was the exclusion of two major regional protagonists, Syria and Lebanon, from a summit purporting to set in place a final political and economic "vision" for the Middle East.
Writing on 25 June in the national daily Al-Akhbar, columnist Said Sonbol stressed that "many Arab parties have reservations about the American project, saying that the US administration is anticipating events in calling for a free-trade area in which Israel will participate at a time when the region is suffering instability, turbulence and animosity." Of Jordan, Sonbol wrote that the country "has placed its economic interests above everything else. And so there are many projects now being considered, such as digging a canal joining the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, with Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian participation at a cost of $3 billion."
The national daily Al-Ahram on 24 June published a small and unobtrusive front-page news item referring to "a Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian canal joining the Red Sea to the Dead Sea", which is the revival of a long-stalled normalisation plan between Jordan and Israel.
Al-Ahram's inside pages underscored the "immediate" implementation of the project, which would supply Amman, the Galilee region and Jerusalem with water and electricity.
On 26 June, Al-Ahram quoted a Suez Canal official as saying that the project "would not affect the [Suez] Canal". However, this ambitious form of normalisation failed to elicit in either the national or independent press the obvious question as to how "immediate" its implementation would be, given that the "independent Palestinian state", which is supposed to participate in the scheme, has yet to materialise.
Writing in Al-Ahram on 28 June that "Investment is the solution", Egyptian businessman Shafiq Gabr recapped the essential requirements for the country's "economic liberalisation", which the government has to date tackled at a snail's pace. Gabr's article resonated well with the economic "roadmap" set out by US Trade representative Robert Zoellick at the Davos-Amman summit. In concluding, the businessman urged Egypt to emulate the example of Jordan, which has successfully implemented a free-trade arrangement with the US through an arrangement known as Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs). Gabr, who was voted head of the "first-ever Arab business council" at the Davos-Amman summit, failed to mention that such QIZs necessitate the inclusion of Israel as a third party in such "free trade". QIZs have up till now remained a contentious political issue between Egyptian decision- makers and the US government.
The national press, for once, displayed some sensitivity over the rather grudging attitude typical of US trade officials speaking of the Egyptian economy and its dim prospects for "free trade" with the US. On 27 June, the economic pages of Al-Ahram reported "surprise in [Egyptian] economic circles at statements made by the US Trade Representative [at the Amman summit]". The paper said that the source of this surprise had been "Zoellick's ignoring a number of important and positive developments in the Egyptian economy, such as the issuing of IPR, labour and unified banking laws, as well as Egypt's positive role in recent WTO negotiations".
A government under pressure to secure resources to fund its budget was accused of de facto pick-pocketing from pensioners. On 23 and 24 June, the opposition daily Al-Wafd, issued by the Wafd Party, reported on what it called an emerging "crisis" between the national Post Office and the Government Employees Pensions Fund after the former had levied "a procedural charge" on the pensions it dispenses to over seven million retired employees. Al-Wafd quoted the Head of the Pensions Fund and Ministry of Social Affairs officials as saying that the Post Office's raising of the charge from 40 piastres to between one and three pounds was "illegal and unconstitutional".
On 23 June, Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar announced that the government would "appoint 150,000 graduates from the year 2001, and the preceding years, starting next July". To these would be added the appointment of 50,000 employees with temporary contracts and 26,000 in the rural population programme. The picture does not seem encouraging, in view of news published by the economic daily Al-Aalam Al-Yom on 29 June of a recent report prepared by parliament's economic committee. Al-Aalam Al-Yom quoted the report as saying that Egypt's private sector contributes no more than 46 per cent of overall investment, with a drop in domestic investment from 18 per cent in 2001-2002 to 16 per cent in the current year.
Over the week, a new tone became apparent in the manner in which the national press was covering the Washington visit undertaken by a "high-level" delegation including the head of the NDP's Policies Committee, the president's son Gamal Mubarak. The frequency and prominence with which news of the visit was relayed in the front-page headlines of Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar was notable.
The two dailies mentioned Gamal Mubarak as being the delegation's main spokesman, who, in addressing American political and media circles, had touched not only upon the economic and domestic issues that he usually discusses, but also the Arab-Israeli peace process and the mediation efforts currently being undertaken by Egypt with the Palestinian factions (Al-Ahram, 29 June).
The newspapers reiterated answers given by Gamal Mubarak to the US's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in response to questions over whether he entertained aspirations to become Egypt's next president. "Gamal Mubarak says that reform in Egypt is to be undertaken by a whole generation of Egyptians and not only by one person," wrote Al-Ahram on its front page on 28 June, though the paper did not mention the question that had elicited such an answer.
As usual, it was left to the opposition and independent press to fill in the blanks. "A surprise in Washington: Gamal Mubarak does not deny the possibility of inheriting the presidency", wrote the opposition weekly Al-Arabi, issued by the Nasserist Party, on 29 June, citing an article that had appeared in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat on the same matter. The independent weekly Sout El- Umma also announced in its banner that "Gamal Mubarak speaks in Washington of his political aspirations". The paper's editor-in- chief, Adel Hammouda, writing from Washington, said that in response to questions from the US media on his political ambitions Mubarak had said that he, along with a generation of young Egyptians, was trying to play "an active role" in shaping Egypt's future.
On 29 June, Al-Akhbar satirist Ahmed Ragab wrote of the "schizophrenic" split that characterised the attitudes of the satellite channel Al-Jazeera. The channel, which is based in Qatar, one of America's staunchest allies in the region, nevertheless attacks US policies at every turn, he said, adding that the dichotomy in the channel's attitudes reminded him of "belly-dancer Aziza Elastic- Band, founder of the Society for the Protection of Virtue".
