Mixed bag

The Palestinian crisis, the July Revolution, and the new cabinet's performance vied for the reader's attention in Egypt's press this week, writes Gamal Nkrumah

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The Palestinian situation and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision ; E-government: Wait boy! Let's get on the net and see how much your Uncle Nazif wants us to sell tomatoes for

Hope springs eternal in the columns of the country's pundits that the nascent democratic process will wax and not wane in Egypt, and especially on the 52nd anniversary of the July Revolution. For some the curse and the shadow of the revolution still hang over the country like an ever-recurrent nightmare. For others, its blessed memory is an excuse for nostalgic indulgence.

Be that as it may, the anniversary of the July Revolution got lukewarm attention in the Egyptian press this week, with the notable exception of the opposition weekly newspaper Al-Arabi, issued by the Nasserist Party.

The paper's Editor-in-Chief Abdallah El- Sinnawi, however, busied himself with a more topical curiosity: the arrest in England of the Egyptian consultant Mamdouh Hamza who, it has been insinuated, was charged with attempting to assassinate the Minister of Housing Mohamed Ibrahim Soleiman. However, the official charges brought forth against Hamza remain unclear, adding to the mystery.

The same topic was picked up by the independent weekly Sawt Al-Umma. The paper ran a front page headline in its 26 July edition highlighting the arrest in London of the Egyptian architect who allegedly planned to assassinate Ibrahim Soleiman, Fathi Sorour and Kamal El-Shazli among others. Sawt Al-Umma, like many other Egyptian papers, tried to piece together the truth about the arrest of Hamza. The sensationalist weekly was, naturally, far more interested in the mysteries of the present than in the drear certainties of the past.

The incriminating snippets of Hamza's private conversation were included in the very entertaining, albeit not particularly informative article.

Most papers were somewhat muted about the 52nd anniversary of the July Revolution. In some the anniversary was seen as an opportunity to sully the memory of the late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser. In a provocative article relegated to the back page of the paper, Sawt Al-Umma 's Hisham El-Salamoni pondered the reason behind Nasser's alleged "butchering of the judges". The writer insisted that Nasser could not stomach the independence of the judiciary and that he schemed to thwart democracy. "Gamal Abdel-Nasser prepared a snare for democracy from which it cannot free itself to this day," was his incriminating conclusion.

On a different tenor, Hussein Abdel- Wahed, in the national daily Al-Akhbar 's Friday edition, highlighted the crucial role played by the July Revolution in laying the foundation stones of Egyptian foreign policy. However, the writer pointed out that there is a widespread feeling that the leaders of the July Revolution failed to capitalise on the initial welcome by the United States of the revolution and the favourable impression it made on US policy-makers. The writer, nevertheless, stressed that the driving force of US policy towards the Middle East and the Arab world was furthering US economic interests and a determination to exploit the resources of the region.

Domestic concerns, and especially the performance of the newly installed cabinet, received scant attention in official papers and fervid scrutiny in the opposition press. For the time being, the views of the country's opinion-makers seemed hopelessly divided on the subject. Opposition commentators on the whole appeared to be relentless in their critical assessment of the performance in the first two weeks of the new cabinet ministers. Doubts were cast in Wednesday's issue of the opposition Al-Ahali, mouthpiece of the left-wing Taggamu Party, about the efficacy of the new government reshuffle. "A bigoted lot creeps towards the corridors of power under false pretences," ran a front page headline. The paper also alluded to the long-anticipated changes of the editors of the country's leading official papers. "Radical change of guard among the country's top-notch newspapermen", ran another ominous front page headline of the paper.

Social concerns were not the exclusive domain of the leftist Al-Ahali, though. The national daily Al-Ahram tackled a wide range of social issues that included the strange fires attributed to ghosts, evil spirits and jinns in Upper Egypt, food security and the country's cultural heritage. In Sunday's edition, Abeer El-Damrani interviewed Samir Farag the new head of the Higher Council of Luxor City. Provocatively entitled "The removal of slums encroaching on Egypt's treasures", the article gives the impression that the city's poor are less important than its ancient treasures. Unabashedly, the focus of the interview seems to be more on aesthetics than on the welfare and well-being of the city's poor. The onus seems to be on making Egypt's ancient capital more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes of tourists. The crux of the new policy seems to be cleaning up the streets and shooing the poor out of the haunts of foreign tourists. The politics of aesthetics is wrecking havoc on the city's poor and homeless.

Under the title "The theory of war", columnist Ahmed Bahgat continued, in Sunday's Al-Ahram, a re-reading of the thought of the late Sheikh Mohamed Abu Zahra. "The Imam Sheikh Mohamed Abu Zahra emphasised that fighting and warfare are legitimised in Islam as a means of driving away aggression. The Qur'an does not recommend war at the earliest signs of impending danger," Bahgat noted. The writer explained that Prophet Mohamed resorted to arms only in self-defence. "Muslims," Bahgat wrote, "wage war only in self- defence. We only fight against those who attack us first," he concluded.

"The Iraqi prime minister insists on entangling Egypt [in Iraq]", ran an angry front page headline in Al-Wafd, the newspaper of the opposition Wafd Party. The paper was clearly in favour of the Iraqi resistance fighters' cause and against the United States-led occupation of Iraq. Al- Wafd refused to oblige the visiting Iraqi premier, barely containing its derisive contempt of the interim Iraqi government.

On Sunday the paper's front page headline read: "The Wafd rejects the idea of sending a single Egyptian soldier to Iraq to save the lives of American occupation forces". The paper also warned Egypt against sinking into the Iraqi morass, after getting bogged down in Gaza.

Indeed, the views of opposition and official papers differed markedly in their coverage of the deteriorating security situations in Iraq and Palestine and in their interpretation of Egypt's official stance towards the two trouble spots. The opposition papers were decidedly against such stance while the official papers, on the other hand, were far more reticent "Egyptian- Iraqi cooperation in the fields of security and economic development", ran a front page headline in the national daily Al- Gomhuriya.

The national weekly magazine Al- Mussawar 's editor-in-chief, Makram Mohamed Ahmed, predicted that "the conflict between the various rival Palestinian factions will inevitably lead to civil war." He counselled restraint, warning the Palestinians not to play into the hands of the Israelis. "The problem of [the Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat is that he is a leading player in the power struggle instead of being the judge above the law mediating between the rival Palestinian factions," he explained.

In much the same vein, Ragab El-Banna, the editor-in-chief and chairman of the board of the weekly magazine October, warned against the dire consequences of the sinister developments in Gaza and the West Bank. "If this armed insurrection continues," he wrote, "or even if it cools down and then re-occurs with a vengeance, then the dream of establishing a Palestinian state might sadly be unattainable," he prophesied.

On a more upbeat note, the humiliation of Israel at the United Nations was widely cheered. "We salute and applaud civility and justice", ran a front page headline in Friday's edition of Al-Akhbar, referring to the unanimous decision of the European Union's 25 member states to denounce Israel's "apartheid wall" at the United Nation's General Assembly. The paper's Editor-in Chief Galal Dweidar applauded the European Union's stance at the UN General Assembly and contrasted the European position with that of states founded by colonial settlers such as the US and Australia.

The independent weekly Al-Osbou 's gave scant attention to the memory of the July Revolution. Instead, it focussed squarely on the "Future of Gamal Mubarak", as it so bluntly put it, splashed in eye-catching scarlet on the front page of the paper's Monday 26 July edition. "Will there be a change in the constitution?" the paper asked. "Will the old guard be banished from the corridors of power and demoted?"