A closer call at the Israeli embassy in Cairo than initially realized, plus analysis of the new dynamic for Israel in MENA

September 12:

Israel watches its old alliances crumble

The overthrow of President Mubarak in Egypt, the estrangement of Turkey and a UN vote on Palestinian statehood combine to make an intractable set of problems.

By Adrian Blomfield
8:34PM BST
(U.K.) Telegraph

Secluded in an emergency operations bunker, long after darkness had fallen to mark the start of the Sabbath last Friday, Israel’s most powerful men had become convinced that history was about to repeat itself.

Hundreds of miles away, six intelligence officers, detailed to protect Israel’s embassy in Cairo, had barricaded themselves in the building’s strongroom. A mob of hammer-wielding Egyptians were closing in. The rioters had already broken down two of the strongroom’s doors and were now hammering on the third. Three of the Israelis drew their guns, preparing for a last stand.

Speaking to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who had been patched through on a secure line, the most senior of the men, identified only as Jonathan, asked his commander-in-chief to deliver news of his capture or death to his wife in person, rather than by telephone.

For all involved, as Israeli officials later recounted, the drama threatened to become a reprise of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 US diplomats were held captive for 444 days after an Islamist mob had stormed the American mission in Tehran.

This time, the most feared outcome was averted -– thanks to the intervention of the White House. Facing American threats of dire retribution if any of the Israelis was harmed, Egypt’s military rulers dispatched a team of commandos to rescue the trapped men, a mission completed in the nick of time.

In the wake of the incident, Egypt and Israel have worked hard to avert a full-scale diplomatic crisis, with both states emphasising their commitment to the peace treaty they signed in the same year the Shah fell. Even so, in Israel the mood was one of relief rather than jubilation. There is a growing conviction that disaster has merely been postponed rather than resolved.
[...]

The rest of the report is an excellent analysis of fast-collapsing support for Israel among regional players and ends with the following observations about the U.S. role:

Even as Israel grapples with the situation in Egypt, a fresh crisis – one of possibly even greater magnitude – is about to wash over the Netanyahu government, which could also cause serious damage to Washington’s already weakened standing in the region.

Ignoring vocal US opposition, the Palestinian leadership has announced it will press ahead with a bid for statehood recognition at the United Nations when the General Assembly convenes next week. Both Israel and the United States denounce the move as a unilateral step that will undermine the Middle East peace process, perhaps fatally.

President Barack Obama has already signalled his determination to wield the American veto if the application is brought before the Security Council, scuppering any chances of the state of Palestine being given full membership of the UN. That threat has failed to deter the Palestinians, who could seek recognition instead from the General Assembly, which has the power to make Palestine a non-voting member of the UN . For the Israelis, such an outcome is seen as disastrous because it could pave the way for the Palestinians to pursue them in international courts .

The United States has threatened Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, with a reduction in American aid if he persists with his application. But such a move could be worse news for Israel. Without US financing, the Palestinian Authority could go bankrupt, forcing itself to dissolve and hand full control of the West Bank back to Israel. The prospect of Israeli troops returning to Palestinian cities is relished by no one in Israel .

Protests against the occupation could erupt anyway, leading to demonstrations in sympathy elsewhere in the Arab world, and increasing the pressure on Egypt and Jordan, Israel’s only other ally in the region, to downgrade or even sever relations.

The anger of the street could also be turned against the United States. Mr Obama was once hailed as a hero for standing up to Israel and demanding a halt to Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank. But, facing a backlash from the pro-Israeli lobby at home, he later vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement building.

A second veto, or a reduction in Palestinian aid, would only confirm in the eyes of many that the United States – just like Israel – is the enemy of the Arab people and their aspirations.

State of emergency widened in Egypt: "The military is giving broad and excessive powers to a police force that continues to be abusive."

September 12:

Egypt military to widen state of emergency
By Samer al-Atrush
AFP
[Report posted 2:00 PM EDT]

CAIRO — One of Egypt's ruling generals said Monday the military will expand a state of emergency because of a "breach in public security" after protesters stormed Israel's embassy and clashed with police, state news agency MENA reported.

The ruling military council issued a decree to widen the scope of the emergency law -- restricted in 2010 by ousted president Hosni Mubarak to narcotics and terrorism cases -- to target labour strikes and the "spread of false rumours."

It will also target acts that "disrupt traffic," MENA reported. That could possibly outlaw many demonstrations like the regular protests held after an uprising overthrew Mubarak in February.

"Widening the scope of crimes liable under the emergency law along with terrorism and narcotics is the result of the security conditions the country is undergoing and the breach in public order," the agency quoted General Mamduh Shahin as saying.

The general, a member of Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, stressed the "necessity of confronting thuggery and all who threaten Egypt's security and harm its reputation abroad."

Those arrested under the law face emergency state security courts, which critics say are unfair and result in harsh sentences.

Protesters clashed with police overnight on Friday after demonstrators stormed a high-rise building housing the Israeli embassy and dumped thousands of documents from a balcony.

Three protesters were killed in the clashes, which left more than 1,000 people wounded. Israel's ambassador and many of his staff were evacuated home.

The incident proved an embarrassment to the country's rulers, with US President Barack Obama calling on Egypt to "honour its international obligations to safeguard the security of the Israeli embassy."

Since the 18-day uprising that ousted Mubarak, Egypt's police force has largely collapsed and the military, unused to civilian policing, has struggled to deal with sporadic and at times deadly unrest.

But critics say widening the emergency law, continuously in place since Islamists assassinated Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat in 1981, is unnecessary and a revival of former practices.

The military had promised that parliamentary elections scheduled by the end of the year would not be conducted under a state of emergency.

"It's a human rights catastrophe," said Hossam Bahgat, the director of the Egyptian Initiative For Personal Rights, a leading rights group.

"It's not only reneging on the promise to lift emergency law, but it revives one of the worst aspects of Mubarak rule and risks introducing the notorious system of administrative detention without charge and trial," he said.

Heba Morayef, a Cairo-based representative of the international rights watchdog Human Rights Watch, called the measure "unnecessary, overly broad and disproportionate."

"This is the classic Mubarak reaction to any perceived security risk," she said. "The military is giving broad and excessive powers to a police force that continues to be abusive and incompetent."

Essam al-Erian, vice president of the influential Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said "the general trend is in opposition" to the measure.

"There was a promise that elections would be held without the emergency law. What this means is that either the elections will take place under the emergency law or they will be delayed," he said.

The military has not suggested that it would delay the elections.

But the state-owned Al-Akbar newspaper reported on Monday that the electoral commission agreed in a meeting with military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to hold separate parliamentary and senate elections rather than simultaneously as planned previously.

Amr Mussa, a leading presidential candidate and former Arab League chief, suggested in an interview published on Monday that the military work on a "road map" with a civilian council on a transition to civilian government.

In the interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, he added that attacking embassies and "Egyptian institutions" was "an attempt to spread chaos and assert lawlessness."

US officials save guards at Israel's Cairo embassy from mobs; meanwhile Egypt's authorities tell their side of the story. Rise of Piñata Journalism.

Whereupon propaganda outlets Xinhua and Al Ahram, battered by opposing forces, struggle to report the news from Egypt......


The following report is from Xinhua, China's official press agency, which is being pressured by its CCP bosses to become a world-class news source while presenting the party line and at the same time appeasing China's increasingly restive upper-income readers, who want 'real' news:

U.S. officials involved in rescue of Israeli embassy guards in Egypt: media

["Media" meaning culled from unidentified news reports outside China. Side note to Mu Xuequan: You know, I too hate collecting links and taking the time to identify every news report that I quote to my readers; in fact I don't know anyone who enjoys the tedious, time-consuming chore. Tell your bosses to suck it up if they want Xinhua taken seriously as a news source outside China.]

JERUSALEM, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- More than 100 U.S. officials were involved in pressing Egypt to order the rescue operation of six security guards at the Israeli embassy in Cairo that had come under attack over the weekend, Israeli media revealed Sunday.

As hundreds of Egyptian rioters swarmed through the embassy building, the six men barricaded themselves inside a safe room sealed with a steel door and reinforced glass. At some point, they had fired warning shots in the air with their pistols in a bid to deter some demonstrators who had tried to break down the door.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accompanied by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yoram Cohen, had overseen the frantic attempts to secure the rescue of the six guards from a situation room at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

Reports said that around midnight Friday Netanyahu decided to call U.S. President Barack Obama to ask for his personal involvement after all attempts to reach the head of Egypt's Supreme Military Council and the de facto head of state, Gen. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, had failed.

The source said that in the hours that preceded the arrival of Egyptian commandos at the scene, "Obama spoke with Gen. Tantawi and was in constant contact with (his national security advisor Tom) Donilon and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."

Donilon and Clinton reportedly coordinated the efforts of more than 100 U.S. officials who were scrambled to press the Egyptians to rescue the Israelis, among them senior officials in Washington and the U.S. embassies in Tel Aviv and Cairo.

The Egyptian commandos who ultimately arrived at the embassy were able to get to the Israelis after firing live ammunition and tear gas at the demonstrators.

The Israelis were dressed in keffiyehs and traditional Arab dress to conceal their identities, placed inside armored personnel carriers and rushed to Cairo's airport, where they boarded a private jet dispatched by the Israeli Air Force.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

The following report is from Al Ahram, for generations Egypt's more-or-less state-run press outlet, which did a volte-face during the 'peaceful' protests that brought down the Mubarak regime so that its editors and reporters wouldn't be strung up by mobs chanting, 'The People demand change!'

(Actually, signs of an about-face were emerging at Al Ahram even before the Tahrir Square protests, when it began sharply criticizing the National Democratic Party under Gamal Mubarak's leadership. This gave early warning that the country's military rulers were very angry with Gamal Mubarak and the Gamalists in his father's government.)

Today, while trying to stay on the good side of The People, the paper also strives to appease the country's military leaders. This buffeting from conflicting forces is adding to what might be termed the Piñata style of journalism.(1)

Egypt and Israel after the embassy

Egypt told Israel to allow its ambassador to take a holiday, but it didn't. Then the embassy was attacked, say officials

Dina Ezzat
11 September 2011

"For Israel, good relations, even in the context of the so called 'cold peace', are a very serious matter; it is much more important than relations with Turkey or the situation in Syria, and for us in Egypt keeping peaceful relations with Israel is essential and there is no doubt about it," said an Egyptian diplomat who asked for his name to be withheld.

He added that the US, the guarantor of the Egypt-Israel peace, is also "very serious about avoiding any rupture in relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv, especially now with so many anti-Israeli sentiments being expressed all over the region".

The tension, however, is not to be underestimated. Israel, according to Western diplomats in Cairo, is complaining a lot about the vibes of animosity that are being increasingly voiced against its limited presence in Cairo.

The consecutive angry demonstrations in front of the Israeli Embassy in Giza, to protest the killing of six Egyptian border guards last month by the Israeli army, who violated Egyptian territorial sovereignty, and the taking down of the Israeli flag twice in less than four weeks is making the government of Binyamin Netanyahu very uncomfortable.

"The Israelis tell us they know that the Egyptian authorities are committed to peace with Israel, but they are not sure how far the public anger could go, and how much it would influence the decisions of the authorities towards Israel," the same diplomat added.

According to identical accounts offered by Egyptian officials and foreign diplomats in Cairo, Egypt had asked Israel before the developments of last Friday to keep the Israeli ambassador in Tel Aviv and to reduce the volume of its staff to the minimum, but Netanyahu insisted on sending the ambassador back only a few days before the latest protest.

"We are not expelling him, but we thought a long holiday for the Israeli ambassador in Egypt would be useful for all of us now; unfortunately, Israel thought otherwise and when anger erupted on Friday evening they had to solicit the intervention of the Americans who sent a plane to carry him and the rest of the staff out of Egypt," said one official.

Today, there is a tacit agreement between Egypt and Israel that the long holiday for the ambassador is in place and there are guarantees offered by Cairo to both Washington and Tel Aviv that stepped up security measures will be in place to prevent another attack on the embassy.

Meanwhile, Egypt is insisting that Israel should proceed faster with its investigation in the killing of Egyptian border guards – despite Israeli hesitation and complaints about the attack on its embassy.

"We are telling the Israelis that the authorities have to tell the public that it did not turn a blind eye to the killing of Egyptian soldiers," the same official added.

1) For more on the present relations between Egypt's military and the nation's news media, see Egypt's Military Criticized for Move to Rein In Media (September 9, Wall Sreet Journal), which reported on the decision by Egypt's interim ruling military council to freeze licenses for new satellite-news channels in order to control what it called the nation's "unruly" news media. The decision, announced late on September 7, two days before planned massive street protests that included the attack on Israel's embassy, "added to a growing list of complaints by politicians and activists that the military leading the nation's transition is retreating to the authoritarian methods of the former regime."

"Retreating?" That's an odd way of describing the situation. But then the Wall Street Journal never got the memo that Mubarak was removed by a military-backed coup. The military showed leniency during the protests that brought down Mubarak only to the extent that this suited its purpose of ejecting the Gamalists; otherwise, there has been no change in what has been a military dictatorship since the overthrow of Egypt's monarchy.

Egyptian mob near Israeli embassy attacks CNN, PBS and other journalists, accusing them of being American spies

1. First, a correction to the "Two photos" post. From the following CNN report, journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy is "a producer working for CNN." So this corrects -- at least tentatively -- my original guess, in the earlier post, that he was an independent reporter.

September 10, 8:42 PM EDT:

Angry crowd turns on journalists reporting embassy attack in Egypt
From Ivan Watson, CNN
September 10, 2011 8:54 p.m. EDT

Cairo (CNN) -- An angry crowd lingering near the Israeli embassy in Cairo after an attack on the building a day earlier turned on journalists reporting the incident Saturday, accusing at least one of being an Israeli spy.

As a CNN crew filmed the embassy from across the street, another crew from American public television -- led by Egyptian television producer Dina Amer -- approached the building.

The crew's Russian cameraman was preparing to film the embassy when a woman in the crowd began hurling insults at the TV team, Amer said.

"There was this older lady who decided to follow me and rally people against me," Amer recalled.

"She said 'you're a spy working with the Americans.' Then they swarmed me and I was a target."

A growing crowd surrounded Amer and her colleagues, as they tried to leave the scene.

Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, a producer working for CNN, rushed to help escort Amer through the angry crowd. But suddenly the two reporters were pinned against the railing of an overpass by young men who were accusing Amer of being an Israeli spy.

Yelling "I'm Egyptian," Fahmy managed to pull Amer another 10 meters down the road, until the pressure from the mob overwhelmed the pair.

Amer screamed as she and Fahmy were knocked to the ground and the crowd started to trample them.

Other CNN journalists tried to reach in to help, but were pushed back by a wall of angry men.

Fahmy lay on top of Amer, shielding her with his body.

"I was thinking, how powerless I was because there was no police to save us," Fahmy said. "I was worried that they were going to rape her."

At that moment, a student bystander named Mohammed el Banna called out to the journalists and pointed out a nearby car.

Somehow, Fahmy managed to carry Amer to the open door of the public television crew's car, where two of her female colleagues were waiting just a few feet away.

The mob pounded on the windows and tried to reach into the vehicle as the panicked reporters fumbled and struggled to get behind the steering wheel.

When Margaret Warner, a correspondent with the PBS program "Newshour" managed to get the vehicle moving away from the crowd, men threw stones at the departing vehicle.

Amer had few words to describe the terrifying ordeal.

"They were animals," she said.

Other Egyptian journalists told CNN they were also attacked Saturday while trying to report near the Israeli embassy.

Ahmed Aleiba, a correspondent with Egyptian state television, said he was pursued by civilians and soldiers.

"I had to run because obviously they were targeting journalists," Aleiba said in a phone call with CNN. "They attacked two other TV crews."

"I was in the car getting ready to film. A soldier knocked on the window with his stick and said 'if you don't leave by midnight your car will be destroyed,"" said Farah Saafan, a video journalist with the English-language newspaper Daily News Egypt.

Journalists have been targeted before in Cairo.

On February 2, dozens of journalists of different nationalities were beaten and pursued around the city while trying to report on pro-Mubarak demonstrations. The day descended into one of brutal street violence, as pro-regime supporters backed by men on horses and camels attacked opposition demonstrators on what became known as the "Battle of the Camel."

And CBS News correspondent Lara Logan suffered a brutal sexual assault in Tahrir Square while covering the celebrations that followed former President Hosni Mubarak's resignation on February 11.

On Saturday, as some journalists ran for their lives from the Israeli Embassy, the interim government was holding crisis talks with Egypt's ruling military council and top intelligence chief.

The emergency session concluded with a pledge to honor Egypt's international treaties and defend foreign embassies. The government also announced plans to re-activate the country's 30-year-old emergency law.

Application of the law had lapsed since the overthrow of Mubarak, according to a senior official in the National Security Directorate, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity.

One of the five measures announced after Saturday's crisis talks calls on authorities to make "media and political powers accountable for inciting security lapses."

"It's obvious that there is some sort of plan leading to military rule in this country," warned Egyptian state TV's Aleiba. "The next step will be martial law."

Note (UPDATED 10:43 PM EDT

UPDATE September 10, 10:43 PM EDT
From a CNN report published at 8:54 EDT tonight (Angry crowd turns on journalists reporting embassy attack in Egypt), journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy is "a producer working for CNN." So this corrects my original guess in the 'Egypt photos' post that he was an independent reporter. I note from the CNN report above Fahmy is a producer who risked his life to save a female reporter who was being trampled by a furious mob.
*************
I just added an extensive update to the 'Egypt photos' post. (See following post). Over and out for the rest of the weekend.
Pundita