Joe Biden says Egypt's Mubarak no dictator
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CAIRO (Reuters) President Hosni Mubarak, clinging on despite unprecedented demands for an end to his 30-year rule, met on Sunday with the military which is seen as holding the key to Egypt's future while in Cairo, protesters defied a curfew.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States wanted an "orderly transition" through free and fair elections in its key ally and the Arab world's most populous nation.
An earthquake of unrest is shaking Mubarak's authoritarian grip on Egypt and the high command's support is vital as other pillars of his ruling apparatus crumble, political analysts said as protests ran on through a sixth day.
As thousands gathered in the streets, unmolested by patient troops in their American-built tanks, the fragmented opposition gave a sign of coming together. Nobel peace laureate and retired international diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei said he had been given a mandate to reach out to the army and build a new government:
"Mubarak has to leave today," he told CNN before joining thousands of demonstrators in central Cairo's Tahrir Square.
"The people want the regime to fall!" the crowd chanted.
Clinton told Fox News: "We want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void ... We also don't want to see some takeover that would lead not to democracy but to oppression and the end of the aspirations of the Egyptian people." As many as 10,000 people protested in Tahrir Square, a rallying point in the center of Cairo, to express anger at poverty, repression, unemployment and corruption.
As the curfew started and was ignored, warplanes and helicopters flew over the square. By late afternoon more army trucks appeared in a show of military force but no one moved.
"Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans," shouted protesters, referring to the appointment on Saturday of intelligence chief Suleiman as vice president, the first time Mubarak has appointed a deputy in 30 years of office.
It was the position Mubarak, 82, held before he become president and many saw the appointment as ending his son Gamal's long-predicted ambitions to take over and as an attempt to reshape the administration to placate reformists.
Mubarak held talks with Suleiman, Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Chief of Staff Sami al-Anan and others.
Clearly those in Tahrir Square did not wish to see Mubarak's ruling structure replaced by a military line-up featuring his closest associates. "Mubarak, Mubarak, the plane awaits," they said. There was also a big protest in Alexandria.
A senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group that has long seemed the strongest single force against Mubarak, said it backed ElBaradei as negotiator.
The Muslim Brotherhood has stayed in the background although several of its senior officials have been rounded up. The government has accused it of planning to exploit the protests.
SHOCKWAVES AROUND MIDDLE EAST
The turmoil, in which more than 100 people have died, has sent shock waves through the Middle East where other autocratic rulers may face similar challenges, and unsettled financial markets around the globe as well as Egypt's allies in the West.
In Tunisia, the detonator of the regional movement, an exiled Islamist leader was welcomed home by thousands on Sunday. In Sudan, Egypt's southern neighbor, police beat and arrested students taking part in anti-government protests in Khartoum.
For Egyptians, the final straw seems to have been parliamentary elections in November last year, which observers said authorities rigged to exclude the opposition and secure Mubarak's ruling party a rubber-stamp parliament.
The military response to the crisis has been ambivalent. Troops now guard key buildings after police lost control of the streets, but have neglected to enforce a curfew, often fraternizing with protesters rather than confronting them.
It remains to be seen if the armed forces will keep Mubarak in power, or decide he is a liability to Egypt's national interests, and their own. It was also unclear if Mubarak had decided to talk with the generals or if he was summoned by them.
It was Tunisian generals who persuaded former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee last month after weeks of protests.
In Suez, on the canal, one senior local officer, Brigadier Atef Said said his troops would give protesters a free voice:
"We will allow protests in the coming days," he told Reuters. "Everyone has the right to voice their opinion. We're listening and trying to help and satisfy all parties. We're not here to stop anyone. These are our people."
The crisis deepened on Sunday with Egyptians facing lawlessness on the streets with security forces and citizens trying to stop rampaging looters.
Through the night, Cairo residents armed with clubs, chains and knives formed vigilante groups to guard neighborhoods from marauders after the unpopular police force withdrew following the deadly clashes with protesters.
As a result the army has deployed in bigger numbers across Egypt, easing some of the panic over law and order. In central Cairo, army check points were set up at some intersections.
"The armed forces urged all citizens to abide by the curfew precisely and said it would deal with violators strictly and firmly," state television issued a statement.
Residents expressed hope the army, revered in Egypt and less associated with daily repression than the police and security agencies, would restore order.
Army tanks and tracked vehicles stood at the capital's street corners, guarding banks as well as government offices including Interior Ministry headquarters. State security fought with protesters trying to attack the building on Saturday night.
TANKS SPRAYED WITH SLOGANS
In surreal scenes, soldiers from Mubarak's army stood by tanks covered in anti-Mubarak graffiti: "Down with Mubarak. Down with the despot. Down with the traitor. Pharaoh out of Egypt."
Asked how they could let protesters scrawl anti-Mubarak slogans on their vehicles, one soldier said: "These are written by the people, it's the views of the people."
Egypt's sprawling armed forces -- the world's 10th biggest and more than 468,000-strong -- have been at the heart of power since army officers staged the 1952 overthrow of the king. It benefits from about $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid.
Egypt's military appears to be showing restraint and there is no talk at this time about halting U.S. aid to Egypt, Clinton told ABC on Sunday.
Egyptian state television largely ignored protests until Friday, the biggest day when a curfew was announced. Since then it has given more coverage but has focused on disorder and shown pictures of small protests, not the mass gatherings.
The government has interfered with Internet access and mobile phone signals to try and disrupt demonstrators' plans.
TUMULT HITS TOURISTS
The tumult was affecting Egypt's tourist industry and the United States and Turkey said they were offering evacuation flights for citizens anxious to leave. Other governments advised their citizens to leave Egypt or to avoid traveling there.
The United States and European powers were busy reworking their Middle East policies, which have supported Mubarak, turning a blind eye to police brutality and corruption in return for a bulwark against first communism and now militant Islam.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was closely watching events in Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979. It has served a key role in Israel-Palestinian peace talks.
"This is the Arab world's Berlin moment," said Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics, comparing the events to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "The authoritarian wall has fallen, and that's regardless of whether Mubarak survives."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States wanted an "orderly transition" through free and fair elections in its key ally and the Arab world's most populous nation.
An earthquake of unrest is shaking Mubarak's authoritarian grip on Egypt and the high command's support is vital as other pillars of his ruling apparatus crumble, political analysts said as protests ran on through a sixth day.
As thousands gathered in the streets, unmolested by patient troops in their American-built tanks, the fragmented opposition gave a sign of coming together. Nobel peace laureate and retired international diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei said he had been given a mandate to reach out to the army and build a new government:
"Mubarak has to leave today," he told CNN before joining thousands of demonstrators in central Cairo's Tahrir Square.
"The people want the regime to fall!" the crowd chanted.
Clinton told Fox News: "We want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void ... We also don't want to see some takeover that would lead not to democracy but to oppression and the end of the aspirations of the Egyptian people." As many as 10,000 people protested in Tahrir Square, a rallying point in the center of Cairo, to express anger at poverty, repression, unemployment and corruption.
As the curfew started and was ignored, warplanes and helicopters flew over the square. By late afternoon more army trucks appeared in a show of military force but no one moved.
"Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans," shouted protesters, referring to the appointment on Saturday of intelligence chief Suleiman as vice president, the first time Mubarak has appointed a deputy in 30 years of office.
It was the position Mubarak, 82, held before he become president and many saw the appointment as ending his son Gamal's long-predicted ambitions to take over and as an attempt to reshape the administration to placate reformists.
Mubarak held talks with Suleiman, Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Chief of Staff Sami al-Anan and others.
Clearly those in Tahrir Square did not wish to see Mubarak's ruling structure replaced by a military line-up featuring his closest associates. "Mubarak, Mubarak, the plane awaits," they said. There was also a big protest in Alexandria.
A senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group that has long seemed the strongest single force against Mubarak, said it backed ElBaradei as negotiator.
The Muslim Brotherhood has stayed in the background although several of its senior officials have been rounded up. The government has accused it of planning to exploit the protests.
SHOCKWAVES AROUND MIDDLE EAST
The turmoil, in which more than 100 people have died, has sent shock waves through the Middle East where other autocratic rulers may face similar challenges, and unsettled financial markets around the globe as well as Egypt's allies in the West.
In Tunisia, the detonator of the regional movement, an exiled Islamist leader was welcomed home by thousands on Sunday. In Sudan, Egypt's southern neighbor, police beat and arrested students taking part in anti-government protests in Khartoum.
For Egyptians, the final straw seems to have been parliamentary elections in November last year, which observers said authorities rigged to exclude the opposition and secure Mubarak's ruling party a rubber-stamp parliament.
The military response to the crisis has been ambivalent. Troops now guard key buildings after police lost control of the streets, but have neglected to enforce a curfew, often fraternizing with protesters rather than confronting them.
It remains to be seen if the armed forces will keep Mubarak in power, or decide he is a liability to Egypt's national interests, and their own. It was also unclear if Mubarak had decided to talk with the generals or if he was summoned by them.
It was Tunisian generals who persuaded former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee last month after weeks of protests.
In Suez, on the canal, one senior local officer, Brigadier Atef Said said his troops would give protesters a free voice:
"We will allow protests in the coming days," he told Reuters. "Everyone has the right to voice their opinion. We're listening and trying to help and satisfy all parties. We're not here to stop anyone. These are our people."
The crisis deepened on Sunday with Egyptians facing lawlessness on the streets with security forces and citizens trying to stop rampaging looters.
Through the night, Cairo residents armed with clubs, chains and knives formed vigilante groups to guard neighborhoods from marauders after the unpopular police force withdrew following the deadly clashes with protesters.
As a result the army has deployed in bigger numbers across Egypt, easing some of the panic over law and order. In central Cairo, army check points were set up at some intersections.
"The armed forces urged all citizens to abide by the curfew precisely and said it would deal with violators strictly and firmly," state television issued a statement.
Residents expressed hope the army, revered in Egypt and less associated with daily repression than the police and security agencies, would restore order.
Army tanks and tracked vehicles stood at the capital's street corners, guarding banks as well as government offices including Interior Ministry headquarters. State security fought with protesters trying to attack the building on Saturday night.
TANKS SPRAYED WITH SLOGANS
In surreal scenes, soldiers from Mubarak's army stood by tanks covered in anti-Mubarak graffiti: "Down with Mubarak. Down with the despot. Down with the traitor. Pharaoh out of Egypt."
Asked how they could let protesters scrawl anti-Mubarak slogans on their vehicles, one soldier said: "These are written by the people, it's the views of the people."
Egypt's sprawling armed forces -- the world's 10th biggest and more than 468,000-strong -- have been at the heart of power since army officers staged the 1952 overthrow of the king. It benefits from about $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid.
Egypt's military appears to be showing restraint and there is no talk at this time about halting U.S. aid to Egypt, Clinton told ABC on Sunday.
Egyptian state television largely ignored protests until Friday, the biggest day when a curfew was announced. Since then it has given more coverage but has focused on disorder and shown pictures of small protests, not the mass gatherings.
The government has interfered with Internet access and mobile phone signals to try and disrupt demonstrators' plans.
TUMULT HITS TOURISTS
The tumult was affecting Egypt's tourist industry and the United States and Turkey said they were offering evacuation flights for citizens anxious to leave. Other governments advised their citizens to leave Egypt or to avoid traveling there.
The United States and European powers were busy reworking their Middle East policies, which have supported Mubarak, turning a blind eye to police brutality and corruption in return for a bulwark against first communism and now militant Islam.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was closely watching events in Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979. It has served a key role in Israel-Palestinian peace talks.
"This is the Arab world's Berlin moment," said Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics, comparing the events to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "The authoritarian wall has fallen, and that's regardless of whether Mubarak survives."
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ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit on Sunday said that Pakistan is monitoring the situation in Egypt closely and is in constant contact with the Pakistani diplomatic mission in Egypt.
The spokesman said that there were more than 150 Pakistani families in Egypt and preparations to bring them back to the country were complete.
While speaking to Dawn.com, Abdul Basit said that more than 500 Pakistanis were present in Cairo and due to the deteriorating situation there, they will be brought back to Pakistan by PAF C 130 aircrafts.
Meanwhile, also on Sunday, the United States said it was offering evacuation flights to Europe for US citizens who wish to leave Egypt, which has been rocked by violent protests seeking an end to President Hosni Mubaraks rule.
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo informs US citizens in Egypt who wish to depart that the Department of State is making arrangements to provide transportation to safehaven locations in Europe, the statement said.
Flights to evacuation points will begin departing Egypt on Monday, Jan. 31, it said, describing the evacuation as voluntary.
Turkey was also sending two Turkish Airlines planes to Egypt on Sunday to evacuate is citizens, state-run Anatolian news agency quoted embassy officials in Cairo as saying.
Witnesses said businesses were also starting to evacuate their staff and saw scenes of chaos at the airport, where many people, including Egyptians, were trying to get flights out of the country.
The spokesman said that there were more than 150 Pakistani families in Egypt and preparations to bring them back to the country were complete.
While speaking to Dawn.com, Abdul Basit said that more than 500 Pakistanis were present in Cairo and due to the deteriorating situation there, they will be brought back to Pakistan by PAF C 130 aircrafts.
Meanwhile, also on Sunday, the United States said it was offering evacuation flights to Europe for US citizens who wish to leave Egypt, which has been rocked by violent protests seeking an end to President Hosni Mubaraks rule.
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo informs US citizens in Egypt who wish to depart that the Department of State is making arrangements to provide transportation to safehaven locations in Europe, the statement said.
Flights to evacuation points will begin departing Egypt on Monday, Jan. 31, it said, describing the evacuation as voluntary.
Turkey was also sending two Turkish Airlines planes to Egypt on Sunday to evacuate is citizens, state-run Anatolian news agency quoted embassy officials in Cairo as saying.
Witnesses said businesses were also starting to evacuate their staff and saw scenes of chaos at the airport, where many people, including Egyptians, were trying to get flights out of the country.
Cheetah786
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Israel has called on the United States and Europe to curb their criticism of president Hosni Mubarak "in a bid to preserve stability in Egypt" and the wider Middle East, an Israeli newspaper reports.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the foreign ministry, in an urgent special cable, instructed its ambassadors to key countries, to "stress ... the importance of Egypt's stability".
Increasingly, president Mubarak has been isolated by swift and at times harsh criticism from Western leaders who called for reform. It is unclear how angry Egyptians will interpret Israel's apparent support for their government.
The protests in Egypt have reportedly thrown the Israeli government into turmoil, with military officials holding lengthy strategy sessions, assessing possible scenarios of a post-Mubarak Egypt.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, said on Sunday that his government is "anxiously monitoring" the political unrest in Egypt, his first comment on the crisis threatening a government that has been one of Israel's key allies for more than 30 years.
Israeli officials have remained largely silent about the situation in Egypt, but have made clear that preserving the historic 1979 peace agreement with the biggest Arab nation is a paramount interest.
The peace deal, cool but stable, turned Israel's most potent regional enemy into a crucial partner, provided security on one of its borders and allowed it to significantly reduce the size of its army and defence budget.
'Anxiously monitoring'
"We are anxiously monitoring what is happening in Egypt and in our region," Netanyahu said before his cabinet's weekly meeting on Sunday.
"Israel and Egypt have been at peace for more than three decades and our objective is to ensure that these ties be preserved. At this time, we must display responsibility, restraint and utmost prudence,'' Netanyahu added.
It was the first high-level comment from Israel on the Egypt protests, which began last week with disorganised crowds demanding the resignation of Mubarak and have grown into the most significant challenge to Egypt's autocratic regime in recent memory.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, discussed the situation in Egypt with Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, on Sunday, according to a statement from Barak's office. No details of the discussion were released.
Over the weekend, Israel evacuated the families of its diplomats from Cairo and security officials began holding urgent consultations.
Israel's primary concern is that the uprising could be commandeered by Egypt's strongest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and its allies, who would presumably move Egypt away from its alignment with the West and possibly cancel the peace agreement with Israel.
"[...] Israelis, have been overtaken by fear: The fear of democracy. Not here, in neighbouring countries," Sever Plocker, an Israeli commentator, writes in the daily Yediot Ahronot.
"Its as though we never prayed for our Arab neighbours to become liberal democracies," Plocker writes.
The benefits to Israel of peace with Egypt have been significant. In the three decades before the peace agreement, Israel and Egypt fought four major wars.
Defence calculations
Israel now spends nine per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, Shueftan said - compared with 23 per cent in the 1970s, when a state of war with Egypt still existed.
Where Israel once deployed thousands of soldiers along the Egyptian frontier, today there are several hundred. This reduction allowed the Israeli economy to begin flowering in the years after the peace deal, he said. Mubarak has also served as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
If Egypt resumes its conflict with Israel, Israelis fear, it will put a powerful Western-armed military on the side of Israel's enemies while also weakening pro-Western states like Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo, offered a grim assessment on Sunday in Yediot Ahronot.
"The assumption at present is that Mubarak's regime is living on borrowed time, and that a transition government will be formed for the next number of months until new general elections are held," he wrote.
"If those elections are held in a way that the Americans want, the most likely result will be that the Muslim Brotherhood will win a majority and will be the dominant force in the next government. That is why it is only a question of a brief period of time before Israel's peace with Egypt pays the price," Shaked wrote.
Egypt-Iran similarities?
Some in Israel have compared US president Barack Obama's response to the crisis to that of former US president Jimmy Carter to the Iranian revolution in 1979. Obama has called on Mubarak to show restraint and pass unspecified reforms in Egypt.
"Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as 'the president who lost Iran', which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic republic," Aluf Benn, an analyst in Haaretz, wrote.
"Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who 'lost' Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled."
Still, the Obama administration has stopped short of calling for the resignation of president Mubarak, and as of Sunday, the Pentagon continued to have high-level discussions with the Egytian military.
Former Israeli general Yaakov Amidror said that in the short term, Israel will face increased smuggling activities in the Sinai peninsula, where the authority of the Cairo government has been further weakened by the unrest.
As a result of Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip, widely lambasted as inhumane and an obstacle to the peace process, weapons, fuel and other goods enter the Hamas-controlled territory.
"They will now try to get in everything they couldn't get in before," Amidror said.
Israel captured Sinai in 1967 and then ceded it to Egypt in the 1979 peace deal. The area was demilitarised as part of the agreement.
For now, the unrest seems to have had the opposite effect. Gaza smugglers said the supply routes have been disrupted and that they have not received any merchandise from Egypt since Friday, apparently because of difficulties in transporting the goods across Egypt to the Gaza border.
The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the foreign ministry, in an urgent special cable, instructed its ambassadors to key countries, to "stress ... the importance of Egypt's stability".
Increasingly, president Mubarak has been isolated by swift and at times harsh criticism from Western leaders who called for reform. It is unclear how angry Egyptians will interpret Israel's apparent support for their government.
The protests in Egypt have reportedly thrown the Israeli government into turmoil, with military officials holding lengthy strategy sessions, assessing possible scenarios of a post-Mubarak Egypt.
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, said on Sunday that his government is "anxiously monitoring" the political unrest in Egypt, his first comment on the crisis threatening a government that has been one of Israel's key allies for more than 30 years.
Israeli officials have remained largely silent about the situation in Egypt, but have made clear that preserving the historic 1979 peace agreement with the biggest Arab nation is a paramount interest.
The peace deal, cool but stable, turned Israel's most potent regional enemy into a crucial partner, provided security on one of its borders and allowed it to significantly reduce the size of its army and defence budget.
'Anxiously monitoring'
"We are anxiously monitoring what is happening in Egypt and in our region," Netanyahu said before his cabinet's weekly meeting on Sunday.
"Israel and Egypt have been at peace for more than three decades and our objective is to ensure that these ties be preserved. At this time, we must display responsibility, restraint and utmost prudence,'' Netanyahu added.
It was the first high-level comment from Israel on the Egypt protests, which began last week with disorganised crowds demanding the resignation of Mubarak and have grown into the most significant challenge to Egypt's autocratic regime in recent memory.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, discussed the situation in Egypt with Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, on Sunday, according to a statement from Barak's office. No details of the discussion were released.
Over the weekend, Israel evacuated the families of its diplomats from Cairo and security officials began holding urgent consultations.
Israel's primary concern is that the uprising could be commandeered by Egypt's strongest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and its allies, who would presumably move Egypt away from its alignment with the West and possibly cancel the peace agreement with Israel.
"[...] Israelis, have been overtaken by fear: The fear of democracy. Not here, in neighbouring countries," Sever Plocker, an Israeli commentator, writes in the daily Yediot Ahronot.
"Its as though we never prayed for our Arab neighbours to become liberal democracies," Plocker writes.
The benefits to Israel of peace with Egypt have been significant. In the three decades before the peace agreement, Israel and Egypt fought four major wars.
Defence calculations
Israel now spends nine per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, Shueftan said - compared with 23 per cent in the 1970s, when a state of war with Egypt still existed.
Where Israel once deployed thousands of soldiers along the Egyptian frontier, today there are several hundred. This reduction allowed the Israeli economy to begin flowering in the years after the peace deal, he said. Mubarak has also served as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
If Egypt resumes its conflict with Israel, Israelis fear, it will put a powerful Western-armed military on the side of Israel's enemies while also weakening pro-Western states like Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo, offered a grim assessment on Sunday in Yediot Ahronot.
"The assumption at present is that Mubarak's regime is living on borrowed time, and that a transition government will be formed for the next number of months until new general elections are held," he wrote.
"If those elections are held in a way that the Americans want, the most likely result will be that the Muslim Brotherhood will win a majority and will be the dominant force in the next government. That is why it is only a question of a brief period of time before Israel's peace with Egypt pays the price," Shaked wrote.
Egypt-Iran similarities?
Some in Israel have compared US president Barack Obama's response to the crisis to that of former US president Jimmy Carter to the Iranian revolution in 1979. Obama has called on Mubarak to show restraint and pass unspecified reforms in Egypt.
"Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as 'the president who lost Iran', which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic republic," Aluf Benn, an analyst in Haaretz, wrote.
"Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who 'lost' Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled."
Still, the Obama administration has stopped short of calling for the resignation of president Mubarak, and as of Sunday, the Pentagon continued to have high-level discussions with the Egytian military.
Former Israeli general Yaakov Amidror said that in the short term, Israel will face increased smuggling activities in the Sinai peninsula, where the authority of the Cairo government has been further weakened by the unrest.
As a result of Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip, widely lambasted as inhumane and an obstacle to the peace process, weapons, fuel and other goods enter the Hamas-controlled territory.
"They will now try to get in everything they couldn't get in before," Amidror said.
Israel captured Sinai in 1967 and then ceded it to Egypt in the 1979 peace deal. The area was demilitarised as part of the agreement.
For now, the unrest seems to have had the opposite effect. Gaza smugglers said the supply routes have been disrupted and that they have not received any merchandise from Egypt since Friday, apparently because of difficulties in transporting the goods across Egypt to the Gaza border.
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If Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday.
Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers of the Jewish state to make no comment on the political cliffhanger in Cairo, to avoid inflaming an already explosive situation. But Israel's President Shimon Peres is not a minister.
"We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak," he said on Monday. He then switched to the past tense. "I don't say everything that he did was right, but he did one thing which all of us are thankful to him for: he kept the peace in the Middle East."
Newspaper columnists were far more blunt.
One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam." It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.
Who is advising them, he asked, "to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president ... an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?"
"The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations ... is painfully naive."
Obama on Sunday called for an "orderly transition" to democracy in Egypt, stopping short of calling on Mubarak to step down, but signaling that his days may be numbered. [nN30161335]
"AMERICA HAS LOST IT"
Netanyahu instructed Israeli ambassadors in a dozen key capitals over the weekend to impress on host governments that Egypt's stability is paramount, official sources said.
"Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications," Haaretz daily quoted one official as saying.
Egypt, Israel's most powerful neighbor, was the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state, in 1979. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed the treaty, was assassinated two years later by an Egyptian fanatic.
It took another 13 years before King Hussein of Jordan broke Arab ranks to made a second peace with the Israelis. That treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated one year later, in 1995, by an Israeli fanatic.
There have been no peace treaties since. Lebanon and Syria are still technically at war with Israel. Conservative Gulf Arab regimes have failed to advance their peace ideas. A hostile Iran has greatly increased its influence in the Middle East conflict.
"The question is, do we think Obama is reliable or not," said an Israeli official, who declined to be named.
"Right now it doesn't look so. That is a question resonating across the region not just in Israel."
Writing in Haaretz, Ari Shavit said Obama had betrayed "a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States, promoted stability and encouraged moderation."
To win popular Arab opinion, Obama was risking America's status as a superpower and reliable ally.
"Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo. Everyone grasps the message: "America's word is worthless ... America has lost it."
(Writing by Douglas Hamilton, editing by Diana Abdallah)
Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers of the Jewish state to make no comment on the political cliffhanger in Cairo, to avoid inflaming an already explosive situation. But Israel's President Shimon Peres is not a minister.
"We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak," he said on Monday. He then switched to the past tense. "I don't say everything that he did was right, but he did one thing which all of us are thankful to him for: he kept the peace in the Middle East."
Newspaper columnists were far more blunt.
One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam." It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.
Who is advising them, he asked, "to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president ... an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?"
"The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations ... is painfully naive."
Obama on Sunday called for an "orderly transition" to democracy in Egypt, stopping short of calling on Mubarak to step down, but signaling that his days may be numbered. [nN30161335]
"AMERICA HAS LOST IT"
Netanyahu instructed Israeli ambassadors in a dozen key capitals over the weekend to impress on host governments that Egypt's stability is paramount, official sources said.
"Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications," Haaretz daily quoted one official as saying.
Egypt, Israel's most powerful neighbor, was the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state, in 1979. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed the treaty, was assassinated two years later by an Egyptian fanatic.
It took another 13 years before King Hussein of Jordan broke Arab ranks to made a second peace with the Israelis. That treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated one year later, in 1995, by an Israeli fanatic.
There have been no peace treaties since. Lebanon and Syria are still technically at war with Israel. Conservative Gulf Arab regimes have failed to advance their peace ideas. A hostile Iran has greatly increased its influence in the Middle East conflict.
"The question is, do we think Obama is reliable or not," said an Israeli official, who declined to be named.
"Right now it doesn't look so. That is a question resonating across the region not just in Israel."
Writing in Haaretz, Ari Shavit said Obama had betrayed "a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States, promoted stability and encouraged moderation."
To win popular Arab opinion, Obama was risking America's status as a superpower and reliable ally.
"Throughout Asia, Africa and South America, leaders are now looking at what is going on between Washington and Cairo. Everyone grasps the message: "America's word is worthless ... America has lost it."
(Writing by Douglas Hamilton, editing by Diana Abdallah)
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