Eurasia Press & News
After Cairo played host on Friday to talks between Arab League foreign ministers on the latest developments in the Gaza Strip, Egyptian papers lament what is going on across the border.The government-owned al-Ahram, which has the largest circulation in the country, stresses in its editorial that “all roads seem blocked to any solution in Gaza”.
“There is a semi-state in Gaza and the remains of an authority in the West Bank.”
The paper says that the decisions of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sack the Hamas-led government and the subsequent rejection by Hamas of the new prime minister show how difficult it is “for the two sides to agree on a compromise”.
‘Coup d’etat’
Jamal Badawi, writing in the opposition daily al-Wafd, reflects frustration at the “beginning of the establishment of the Islamic Palestinian state of Hamas in Gaza in return for the Palestinian state of Fatah in the West Bank”.
“What is happening today in Gaza is a military coup d’etat that reminds us of the coups that took place in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Sudan.”
Badawi adds that while “Hamas assumed power through free elections”, it “revealed its armed face” and grabbed “its legitimacy by the gun” after all sides rejected the results of the ballot box.
The government-owned al-Jumhuriyah blames Israel, the US and Europe for the deterioration in the Palestinian territories.
“It would be easy to blame Hamas, Fatah, or the two together and to announce our support for one or the other,” the daily says.
It believes however that “the policy of the bloody fist with which Israel confronted the Palestinian people… and the international US-European siege” are the root causes.
‘Stop the humiliation’
Muhammad Radwan, writing in the independent al-Misri al-Yawm, criticizes the inter-Palestinian fighting in the strongest terms: “Please stop, stop the humiliation to our martyrs and your martyrs.”
“We have stopped believing in many important things and we do not want to reach the stage of stopping to believe in our right to live,” he says.
Meanwhile, the opposition al-Ahrar carries a commentary by Isam Kamil, in which he sees nothing to recommend the positions of either the Palestinians or the Arab League.
He writes that “Palestinians rose up against each other under a slogan that says: you claim to be a lion when dealing with me, but turn into a cat when you face the Zionists.”
“As for the Arabs,” he continues, “they have a different slogan, which is I do not hear, nor listen, I only talk.”
