WarSclerotic

Israel Hayom | Obama’s hopes of a moderate Brotherhood dashed.

Dan Margalit

It’s official: Egypt’s Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has deposed President Mohammed Morsi. Another revolution made it to the history books. July, with its high temperatures, has a tendency to produce revolutions and regime changes in the land of the Nile.

Sixty-one years ago to the month, Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser spearheaded the Free Officers’ coup that ousted King Farouk and sent him into exile. In July 2012, Morsi appointed Hesham Kandil as prime minister. His government imploded within the year. Once again, in July.

The United States is celebrating 237 years of independence on Thursday. That the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood took place on this day is charged with symbolism. U.S. President Barack Obama has actively contributed to the mirage of Egyptian democracy under the Muslim Brotherhood that has developed in the wake of his Cairo Address in 2009, after which he abandoned his ally, former President Hosni Mubarak.

Obama threw his support behind Morsi, dismissing reports that his election was rigged, because he believed the Muslim Brotherhood’s voice was the voice of the Egyptian street.

Obama was convinced that there were moderates in the Muslim Brotherhood. He envisioned a Turkish-style democracy emerging in Egypt, only to discover that Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was constantly obstructing the American bandwagon’s path.

Obama’s phone call to Morsi reflects a sense of disappointment in Washington over the Muslim Brotherhood’s conduct and their supposed promise of democracy. During the call, Obama hinted that Morsi, only a year into his first term as president, should start packing. Sissi’s announcement late Wednesday night made that suggestion a reality, and Morsi is no longer in charge.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s failure was inevitable; it had nothing meaningful to offer to the tens of millions of starved, unemployed Egyptians or those who, despite their academic backgrounds, are now aimlessly wandering the streets.

Morsi’s departure dashed the romantic hope that there was someone inside the Muslim Brotherhood you could do business with.

For now though, the turmoil continues. Some form of military council will be in charge, but Israel should not shed a tear. Morsi alienated everyone, but because of the geo-political situation, he felt compelled to maintain Israeli-Egyptian cooperation on defense matters. This was evident in the coordinated redeployment of forces in Sinai that was meant to counter the global jihad elements in the peninsula.

There is good reason to believe that these professional ties will continue, perhaps even improve. Although the protesters in Tahrir held on to tradition by chanting anti-Israeli slogans, such chants have more to do with what they were taught to believe than with any core conviction. Their rage is directed at Hamas in the Gaza Strip more than at the Jewish state, because the former represents the Muslim Brotherhood.

From a regional viewpoint, the Muslim Brotherhood has made enormous strides over the past several years.

One state after another fell by the wayside, and the Brotherhood filled in the vacuum. Each victory propelled them to the next.

Among the affected countries, Egypt is the most important; if the Muslim Brotherhood’s gains could be undone in Cairo, perhaps too in other Arab states, one after another.

As they say in Arabic, inshallah (God willing).

Coup? What coup? Many Egyptians see no evil – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Don’t mention the coup.

Certainly not on Tahrir Square, or pretty much anywhere in polite, liberal society in Egypt.

As military jets periodically screamed over Cairo, even making a formation salute with colored smoke trails, many Egyptians took pains to stress that the toppling of their elected president, announced by a general, was not a “coup.”

“A coup? No!” said Ahmed Eid, 19, a business studies student at Cairo University, as he and his friends snapped souvenir pictures of each other, draped in the national flag, on Tahrir Square. “This was our new revolution!”

“Our president was very bad. The army are our brothers.”

For educated liberals in the capital, ending the year-long presidency of Mohammad Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood was worth resorting to the national tradition of military force – even at the risk of the new democracy born out of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in 2011’s Arab Spring.

With foreign goodwill – and aid dollars – at risk, however, it is now imperative to show Mursi was wrong when – from the Republican Guard barracks where he is detained – he branded the maneuver against him “a total military coup.”

Many outside Egypt found it hard to fault Mursi’s logic. But Egyptians have proven creative in contradicting him.

Not a “coup” but a “popular impeachment” was one original expression, put forward by Amr Moussa.

A foreign minister under Mubarak, he now leads of one of the liberal parties that endorsed the “roadmap” back to democracy spelled out by the armed forces chief on Wednesday when he went on television, in full uniform, to suspend the constitution.

“Some Western media insist what happened in Egypt was a coupd’etat. In fact, this was unfair,” Moussa, who headed the Arab League until two years ago, told Reuters – as military helicopters clattered overhead near the Nile riverbank.

“This was a popular uprising, a popular revolution,” headded. “In fact it was a popular impeachment of the president.”

The army did not take the initiative, he said, it heeded mass protests which put millions on the streets on Sunday.

“It didn’t come as a result of a meeting between a few officers,” he said. “It was the people who insisted.”

A little understanding

The wild euphoria on Tahrir Square, reprising that which greeted Mubarak’s end, offered support to that view.

“I hope that the response coming from Washington and …from several Western capitals will be to understand,” Moussa said, well aware that aid may depend on that. “Yes, indeed, former president Mursi was democratically elected but after that, his performance was … against the will of the people.”

Over at the Foreign Ministry, Mohamed Kamel Amr, a career diplomat who tendered his resignation as foreign minister to Mursi after Sunday’s mass protests, is still in his office -he’ll remain there now until an interim government arrives.

He was busy on Thursday, working the phones, calling U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry among others to insist that Washington should have no worries about cutting off aid to Cairo because “definitely what happened was not a military coup.”

In Amr’s view, “a military coup means the military will come, overthrow a civilian government and sit in their place.”

“What happened actually is totally the opposite,” he said. “There is … no political role whatsoever, for the military.

“You cannot not tell me that this is a military coup. This is not a military coup. On the contrary, this is the total opposite of a military coup.

“This is not a military coup in any way.”

Many outside observers, don’t see it that way: “I understand Egyptians are sensitive about the word ‘coup’ because of the negative connotation,” said Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center. “But that doesn’t change reality – it’s a coup.

“This is not just a coup, but a textbook coup. There’s no way to know the true ‘will of the people’ without elections.”

With aid on the line, he conceded, it’s not just semantics.

But among the snack vendors, flags and post-party squalor of Tahrir on Thursday, in between barnstorming military fly-pasts, it was hard to find anyone ready to criticize the generals.

“The army are with us, with the revolution,” laughed Katya Ramzi, 64, as she strolled, flag in hand, with daughter Heidi.

“This is not a coup.”

(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by PeterGraff)

Egypt skittish ahead of massive Islamist protests | The Times of Israel.

Backers of deposed president Morsi plan rallies against military overthrow, with many fearing street violence

Supporters of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi chant slogans during a rally in Nasser City, Cairo, on Thursday. (photo credit: AP/Hassan Ammar)

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Morsi has fallen, but Hamas may be as big a loser | The Times of Israel.

Muslim Brotherhood’s Gaza offshoot banked heavily on support from Cairo’s regime. With Islamists being rounded up, Hamas could be forced to circle the wagons

Egyptian anti-riot soldiers stand guard in front of a destroyed banner of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, March 22, 2013. (photo credit: AP/Amr Nabil)

Thursday was a bad day for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist movement’s leaders were rounded up or forced to go into hiding, a day after seeing their man in Egypt’s presidential palace pushed from power by the military.

In Gaza, Hamas is likely feeling little better watching events unfold across the border. The Palestinian group, an offshoot of the Brotherhood, may come out to be the big loser in Egypt’s upheaval, right behind ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his cronies, analysts said Thursday.

“If Hamas was already screwed before” – with Morsi’s unbendable need for US financial aid trumping his and Hamas’s shared Islamist agenda in the short term – “now it is double screwed,” said Dr. Jonathan Fine,  a lecturer at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya who focuses on terror ideology and religious violence.

MK Yisrael Hasson (Kadima), a former deputy commander of the Shin Bet, said in a phone interview that from an Israeli perspective the coup seemed to be a positive development, both regionally and within the internal Palestinian power struggle between Hamas and Fatah.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which had “reaped most of the fruits of the Arab Spring,” he said, “have taken a very serious blow.” Likening the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the flagship of an armada, he said it was taking water but “has not been sunk.”

Hamas, which has designs on a West Bank takeover, had been dealt a blow by the ouster of Morsi and the rise of, at least for now, a more secular leadership in Cairo, Hasson said. The group had seen itself as the vanguard of the Arab Spring — with its own Islamist coup in Gaza in 2007 serving as an example of a triumph over a corrupt and somewhat secular regime. The fall of Morsi may now signal the fragility of Islamist regimes born out of the same spring.

As far as Israeli security is concerned, the Kadima MK said it was impossible to know how matters would develop, positing that Hamas, if neglected, could make itself felt by heating up the border. It could also reasonably say that, with a preoccupied Egypt, “now is not the time to let the Jews run wild.”

Israel’s security chiefs, he said, will “have to keep their eyes very open, look at things very suspiciously, and they’ll have to not express themselves publicly at all.”

What does seem certain, however, is that Hamas has been backed into a very tight spot. “This is a bad blow for the international Muslim Brotherhood, but for its Palestinian affiliate, Hamas, it is especially bad,” said Col. (res) Shaul Shay, a lecturer at IDC and a former military intelligence officer. “They gambled and broke away from Syria, banking on the natural alliance between them and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and that hasn’t worked out as planned.”

Hamas leadership left Damascus in January 2012, in the midst of the civil war, and has since been at odds with Tehran and Bashar Assad’s regime, severing most of its ties to the so-called axis of resistance.

Egypt, though not riven by the sort of sectarian hatred that has been ripping Syria apart, is sure to be unstable in the coming years and may have to weather a period of internal violence. Dr. Mordechai Kedar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies said that in light of such violence, Egypt may well “fasten the grip on the terror issue,” doing its utmost to seal the underground border between Gaza and Egypt so as to stop the flow of arms in a westerly direction. “Hamas now becomes suspect of collaboration with Morsi,” he said.

Shay, who said that Hamas would likely be extremely careful in its dealings with Egypt – a country on which it depends, no matter the ruler – also said that the Brotherhood lacks an organized militia and might, therefore, be willing to receive arms from Gaza. “The tunnels accommodate two-way traffic,” he noted.

With Egypt engaged in its own internal strife on the mainland, the Sinai Peninsula, already unruly and rife with global jihad terror operatives, could develop into an even greater problem, or it could be put down even more forcefully by the new regime in Egypt.

“The situation is so so so unique that almost anything could be correct,” said Hasson, who predicted that the Brotherhood would have to think long and hard “how to stay in the game.”

Islamist gunmen stage multiple attacks on Egyptian forces in Sinai | JPost | Israel News.

Loud explosions heard in Eilat | The Times of Israel.

( Heard nothing.  My son Zohar and I were riveted to an episode of “Elementary.” – JW )

No injuries reported; source of blasts unknown; Security forces dispatched to comb for rocket debris

A panoramic view of the southern Israeli city of Eilat. (photo credit: Moshe Shai/Flash90)

Two explosions were heard near the southern resort city of Eilat shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday night.

There were no reports of injuries. Security forces were dispatched to the area to determine the source of the explosions.

It is not clear if the explosions were the result of missiles being lobbed at the city from the Sinai Peninsula.

Eilat, which sits on the Red Sea, is wedged between Jordan and Egypt. Islamist terrorists based in Sinai have shot missiles at the city several times in past years, though most land in the sea, or open areas.

In 2010, a Katyusha rocket shot from Sinai overshot the Israeli city and hit a taxi in the Jordanian resort town of Aqaba, killing the driver and wounding five more people.

Russia, Turkey criticize Egyptian democracy | The Times of Israel.

Turkish officials call Morsi’s ousting anti-democratic, ‘backward’; Russian lawmaker suggests democracy may not come easily to non-Western states

A military helicopter files over the presidential palace as opponents of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi celebrate, in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, July 3 (photo credit: AP/Khalil Hamra)

The removal of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi from power demonstrates that democracy does not take hold easily, particularly in non-Western states, an influential Russian parliamentarian close to the Kremlin said on Thursday.

“The events in Egypt show that there is no quick and peaceful transition from authoritarian regimes to democratic politics,” Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Alexei Pushkov said, according to AFP.

“This means that democracy does not work as a panacea, especially in countries that are not part of the Western world,” he said.

Hüseyin Çelik, spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, was more emphatic, saying Morsi’s ousting was also a sign of “backwardness.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Çelik insisted Morsi had “deservedly won by his own efforts the elections organized by a bureaucracy inherited from Hosni Mubarak’s era and that took weeks to come to a conclusion,” Hurriyet Daily News reported.

“This coup has also received foreign support. Some Western countries have not accepted Muslim Brotherhood’s arrival to power. They have mobilized the streets, then issued a memorandum, and are now staging the coup,” Çelik said.

Çelik called on the sides to avoid bloodshed. “Can Morsi resist against tanks and artillery cannon? We don’t know that. If Morsi’s supporters fight with his opponents, blood will be spilled. We will not approve that.”

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ also chastised the military for defying democratic elections.

“The ballot box is the only way to change the governments in democracies,” Bozdağ said.

Turkey’s EU Minister Egemen Bağış concurred. “We should appreciate Morsi’s position against coup supporters and object to any kind of coup anywhere,” he said.

Officially silent, Israel privately upbeat over Morsi’s ouster | The Times of Israel.

Jerusalem sees reduced likelihood of war, and a weakening of Hamas, while its ties with military strongman el-Sissi are robust

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi meets Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Cairo, July 26, 2012 (photo credit: Mohammed al-Ostaz/Flash 90)

While Israeli leaders have refrained from commenting on the ousting of Egypt’s president Mohammed Morsi by the army, political and military sources privately indicated Thursday that they considered the turn of events potentially beneficial to Israel, if also largely unpredictable.

Asked directly about the unrest in Israel’s southern neighboring state earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said blandly in an Italian newspaper interview, “Like everybody, we are watching very carefully what’s happening in Egypt… Remember that for 30 years now we have had an anchor of peace and stability in the Middle East, and that was the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. We hope that peace will be kept.”

In similar vein, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni told Channel 2 on Monday that she had “no intention” of being drawn into a discussion of the fast-moving crisis there.

Privately, though, Israeli officials indicated Thursday that, viewed from an Israeli perspective, Egypt’s internal divides and economic challenges render it less likely to constitute a conventional military threat to Israel in the short or medium term. Jerusalem sees “a reduced likelihood of war with Egypt,” a Channel 2 report stated on Thursday afternoon.

“The Israel partnership with Egypt in the past year or so “was not with Morsi but with [Abdel-Fattah] el-Sissi” — the military chief who oversaw the president’s ouster, the TV report noted, so relations “may even improve.”

Indeed, The Times of Israel has been told that senior Israeli defense officials consider relations with el-Sissi’s military establishment to have been close and robust, with ongoing cooperation between the two military hierarchies, including in regard to confronting terrorist threats in the Sinai.The hope and expectation is that these ties will be maintained.

Netanyahu had been concerned by the prospect of the Muslim Brotherhood and its various partners rising to ever-greater power in the Middle East. Now, after an 80-year battle for control in Egypt, “it has failed after jut one year,” the Channel 2 report noted.

Still, Arab affairs analyst Ehud Ya’ari warned Thursday that Egypt might now deteriorate into a failed state, with no effective central government. That could present Israel with escalated terror threats from an anarchic Sinai, Ya’ari said. (The former Labor defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, a long-time friend of deposed president Hosni Mubarak, had warned on Tuesday that Egypt was headed for civil war.)

Israel also regards the fall of Morsi as a blow to Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hebrew media reports underlined Thursday. The Egyptian authorities have warned Hamas not to seek to intervene in the Egyptian crisis, bolstered their military presence on the Gaza border, and arrested several Hamas members in Egypt.

Hamas spokesman Ahmad Yousef told the Ma’an news agency Wednesday that Hamas was not concerned by Morsi’s fall, but said, “We fear the dramatic changes that could cause things to get out of hand and lead to bloodshed… We only care about stability in Egypt regardless of who is in charge. Egypt is a lifeline to us; it’s a major factor in the stability of the internal Palestinian situation — it is our backbone,” he said.

In Ramallah, meanwhile, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday applauded the Egyptian people for their revolution, congratulated Adly Mansour on taking over as Egypt’s interim president, and praised el-Sissi and the Egyptian army for “preserving security in Egypt,” Ma’an reported.

Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas, which ousted Fatah from Gaza in a 2007 coup, are bitter rivals, and some in the West Bank PA leadership hope that the fall of the Brotherhood in Egypt “might just be the first step” toward the demise of Hamas in Gaza, Channel 2 said.

Fatah calls on Palestinians to overthrow Hamas in wake of Morsi’s fall | JPost | Israel News.

( Wow! – JW )

Morsi ouster: Meet Egypt’s newest leaders – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Chief justice turned interim president, young activist who signed 22 million on ouster petition, dentist leading Salafi party – these are the men behind Egypt’s second revolution

Roi Kais

Though they may have more differences than similarities, they posed a united front against their common enemy – Mohamed Morsi.

On Thursday, Egypt’s Constitutional Court President Adli Mansour was sworn in as Egypt’s interim head of state, but his achievement will be shared by several figures who became prominent critics of the ousted president in the past year.

Founder of the young protest movement, leader of the Islamist party and a former presidential candidate attempting a comeback – these are some of Egypt’s newest leaders:

Adli Mansour

Egypt’s judiciary, which has been at loggerheads with Morsi on many occasions during his short term, has the most to gain from his ouster – with Adli Mansour as the direct beneficiary.

Adli Mansour

Masses celebrating Morsi ouster (Photo: Reuters)

(Photo: EPA)

Mansour, who was appointed president of the Constitutional Court only last Monday, is considered by the Egyptian media as a “mysterious figure,” and few of his photographs can be found online.

However, it’s clear he is a committed technocrat, and is hailed by colleagues as a “first rate jurist.”

Mansour, 68, spent most of life pursuing a career in law, and his term as judge is one of the longest in Egypt’s history. He finished his studies in Cairo University and was admitted into the bar in 1967.

After slowly moving up the ranks, in 1992 he was appointed deputy chairman of the State Committee, one of Egypt’s judicial branch’s three bodies.

That same year he was also appointed as deputy president of the Constitutional Court.

Generally, it seems Mansour’s star shone during deposed President Hosni Mubarak‘s reign.

In May 19, 2012 the Constitutional Court’s general assembly decided to appoint Mansour as president of the Court, replacing Judge Maher al-Bahiri, who retired on June 30. His election was a precedent, since in the last 22 years no constitutional court’s president served as one of the institution’s judges.

As noted, Mansour only officially started this role when a new title was hoisted on him – that of Egypt’s interim head of state.

It should be noted that Mansour is the second to hold the title, after Sufi abu-Taleb, who served at the same role after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Mohamed Bader

Another figure who can rest on his laurels after Wednesday’s events the founder of the Tamarod (“rebellion”) movement, which ran the campaign for Morsi’s ouster – sometimes with the aid of creative measures.

Mohamed Bader

Army in Cairo streets (Photo: AP)

Mohamed Bader is a well-known activist for the opposition, starting in the Mubarak period when he worked for the Kafaya (“enough”) opposition movement, which also objected to any normalization of relations with Israel.

He later became a member of the political coalition of the Youth of the Revolution, which actively participated in the January 25 revolution which deposed Mubarak, and was dismantled after the presidential elections.

Bader represents a significant portion of young Egyptians who feel that the Muslim Brotherhood movement has robbed them of the revolution, and have now returned to center stage.

Younes Makhioun

A perhaps surprising winner, affiliated as he is with the Islamist camp, is the leader of the Salafi Al-Nour party, which came in second after the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2012 parliamentary elections.

Makhioun, a trained dentist from the city of Abu-Homs to the west of the Nile delta, was also active in the January 25 revolution. In 2012 he served as a lawmaker, and when Al-Nour’s last chairman, Imad a-Din Abd a-Rafur, left the party’s ranks last January – Makhioun stepped in.

Over recent months the Al-Nour party quarreled with the Muslim Brotherhood, especially over Morsi’s policies, and Makhioun joined the opposition’s calls for early presidential elections when the army presented Morsi with the 48 hour ultimatum on Monday.

On Wednesday, he and his party found themselves on the winning side, and they now have the opportunity to rebrand themselves as the alternative to the maligned Muslim Brotherhood.

Mohamed ElBaradei

Morsi’s ouster also benefits the opposition’s leader and previous contender for the presidency. Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAAE), returned to Egypt in February 2010, after a long residency in Austria and the United States, and took an active part in the wide-scale unrest which lead to Mubarak’s ouster.

Mohamed el-Baradei (Photo: AP)

Following the revolution he was an outspoken critic of the Muslim Brotherhood, and on April 2012 he formed a new party, through which he intended to unite the Egyptian people and preserve the revolution’s achievements .

So far, ElBaradei stood at the helm of the opposition to Morsi, and slammed many of the latter’s contested moves. After the ouster, he announced that the roadmap formed with the army for a transition of power will correct the faults which resulted from the previous revolution.

“The roadmap supplies the Egyptian people’s basic and true demand which is presidential elections,” he said, adding: “During the interim, the constitution will be mended and a national reconciliation will take place.”

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi

The man most recognized with Wednesday’s revolution is the one who presented Morsi with the ultimatum, and later won the honor of declaring his ouster. Al-Sisi, 58, was appointed as the army chief of staff and defense minister in August 2012, while his detractors’ claimed that he is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Sisi announcing ouster

When appointed, al-Sisi was the youngest of the High Military Council, and compared to his colleagues he avoided the press, maintaining relative anonymity. He was mostly known after the revolution which ousted Mubarak due to his determined objection to the violent treatment of protestors and detainees.

But Wednesday evening he was crowned a hero by the masses after announcing on the Egyptian state TV channel that “Morsi is no longer president.”

Hearing the news, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square the crowds rejoiced, and many drivers honked their horns in support of the chief of staff.

“Come to us, Sisi, Morsi isn’t our president,” the protesters calls. The chief of staff returned their love in the form of army helicopters which hovered over the Cairo sky, hanged with the republic’s flag – as befitting the second revolution new face.