1) Anger in the Streets Is Exerting Pressure On Arab Moderates (NYT)
2) Egypt Says It Will Limit Ties With Israel, but Rejects Calls to Sever Them Altogether (AP)
1) Anger in the Streets Is Exerting Pressure On Arab Moderates (NYT)
2) Egypt Says It Will Limit Ties With Israel, but Rejects Calls to Sever Them Altogether (AP)
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Anger in the Streets Is Exerting Pressure On Arab Moderates
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Source: The New York Times - April 3, 2002
AMMAN, Jordan--Thousands of Jordanians braved a frigid downpour to march
on Parliament today, demanding that the kingdom sever ties with Israel,
while protesters in Egypt packed the streets around Cairo University for
a fifth straight day.
Up to now the anger in the streets has not gone
beyond the control of any of the autocratic governments in the region.
But officials spend each day and much of the night monitoring television
reports or checking their mobile phones for the urgent headlines flashed
there by subscription services. They dread the moment when a major death
toll -- or worse, news of the demise or exile of the Palestinian leader,
Yasir Arafat -- will put moderate Arab governments squarely on a collision
course with their explosive, aggrieved populations.
"It's a volatile situation open to all possibilities,"
said Adnan Abu-Odeh, formerly a royal political adviser here and an ambassador
to the United Nations. "The only truth is that people are angry and frustrated.
So far the demonstrations have not been destabilizing, but nobody knows
what will happen in the next 24 hours."
The circumstances of Mr. Arafat's encirclement in
Ramallah, with Israeli soldiers stationed right outside his door, make
senior officials especially edgy.
Despite Israeli pledges not to harm him, there is
widespread concern that he might suffer some fatal accident. "The first
casualty is the peace process," said Marwan Muashar, Jordan's foreign minister,
urging Washington to press for an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from
the compound. "This is a regional problem. They are putting their Arab
friends at risk in the region."
The governments of Egypt and Jordan are counted
among the most vulnerable. They have repeatedly tried to explain their
peace treaties and full diplomatic relations with Israel as a means of
exerting positive pressure on the fate of the Palestinian cause. But skepticism
over such arguments is running high.
"The Arab regimes look more impotent than they ever
have," Mr. Abu-Odeh said. "Their legitimacy has been reduced enormously.
There is an implied test: if you say relations are rewarded, show me how
useful they are. People want proof that the government's good relations
with America and Israel are meaningful in that they will help both end
the siege on the Palestinian people and Arafat."
Up to now the Bush administration has shown scant
sign of being ready to meet such demands. Indeed, the president has made
clear that he regards the Israeli operation in the West Bank as broadly
justified, and he has focused his demands on Mr. Arafat, insisting that
he renounce terror, clearly and in Arabic.
Cabinet ministers here said dozens of protests flare
up daily throughout the country, with 38 counted on Friday alone.
The Amman march today was the largest in the capital
since Israel activated its intense assault on the West Bank on Friday.
The protest included a huge contingent from the Muslim Brotherhood flaunting
a picture of Osama bin Laden and chanting in favor of attacking Israel.
"The army of Muhammad will return," they intoned.
"The army of Muhammad is at the border."
Senior officials and political analysts said governments
in the area needed to take some measure to assuage the anger and frustration
on Arab streets. Egypt and Jordan have conferred on whether to downgrade
relations with Israel by expelling its ambassadors.
"The demonstrations are getting stronger by the
day," Mr. Muashar said. "The street is literally boiling." He said the
continuing Israeli assault, combined with Washington's approval, was forcing
moderate Arab governments to distance themselves from the United States.
"We are being forced to take steps we don't want
to take," he said, "because people are angry and public opinion in the
Arab world cannot be ignored."
Mr. Muashar was particularly critical of Washington
for suggesting in the midst of an Israeli assault, with tanks besieging
his compound, that Mr. Arafat should somehow be reining in Palestinian
extremists.
"The leader is under siege and cut off from the
outside world, and there are demands that he do more to stop the violence,"
Mr. Muashar said. "It is ludicrous."
After five days of resisting public pressure for
a legal demonstration, the Jordanian government finally acceded to the
request by opposition parties to march. But they tried to take the sting
out of it by dispatching a few ministers to take part.
Marchers in the crowd of about 6,000 who walked
through the city blocking traffic for three hours were scathing in their
criticism of Jordan's links to Washington and its peace treaty with Israel.
"The Jordanian government should throw out the American
ambassador even before the Israeli, because it is only America who can
pressure Israel to stop this aggression," said Wadha Rajoub. Like many
demonstrators, she said she had turned out in part because she had family
in the West Bank. Her cousin Jibril Rajoub, the West Bank security chief
for the Palestinian Authority, is also under siege.
She was horrified by television pictures of the
Palestinian dead in Ramallah being buried in a mass grave on hospital grounds
because the morgue there had run out of room and Israel had barred their
transportation elsewhere.
Protesters poured scorn on the official government
line that it should not break ties with Israel because it could still influence
the Sharon government to ease the measures against the Palestinians.
"Reality shows that you cannot trust the Israelis
nor influence them," said Omar Hudhud, one of dozens of attorneys from
the Lawyers Syndicate marching, many of them in their professional robes.
Officials in Jordan and Egypt have emphasized that
they will not break ties with Israel, despite the demands of their populations.
But those outside the government here speculated how long they could stick
to that pledge, especially as demonstrations increase in magnitude daily.
Hasan Abu-Nimah, a former Jordanian ambassador to
the United Nations, suggested that Washington should realize that its long-term
interests did not lie in letting the Sharon administration pulverize the
Palestinian Authority.
"To encourage Sharon, or to provide cover for what
he is doing, is bad for Israel," he said. "Destroying Palestinian society
is only going to create more suicide bombers."
The Arab League announced a special meeting of its
foreign ministers in Cairo on Wednesday to consider what action might be
taken. Iraq announced that it would press its proposal to revive the 1973
Arab oil embargo -- a plan highly unlikely to be enacted, given the state
of the economy among exporters.
Some members want countries bordering Israel to
open their borders to allow volunteer fighters to cross. Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi,
the Libyan leader, made such a similar suggestion a day earlier, mocking
the Arabs by saying their arms would be more useful sold as scrap and remade
into cooking pots.
But with no countries in the area ready to go to
war with Israel, it is virtually certain that the suggestion will be rejected.
Officials in Jordan noted that it had recently reinstated
its checkpoints along the Jordan valley after a team sent by Hezbollah
in Lebanon had tried to cross into Israel.
Thousands of demonstrators in Cairo trying to march
from Cairo University to the nearby apartment building housing the Israeli
Embassy were again turned back with water cannons and tear gas.
In a separate protest at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry,
crowds of artists, intellectuals and union leaders -- who have long opposed
relations with Israel -- urged the government to expel its ambassador and
sever ties with the "Zionist enemy."
In Tunis, the Tunisian capital, police in riot gear,
brandishing tear gas and truncheons, battled to keep several thousand students
within the campus of the national engineering school, where they were chanting
things like "Anger! Anger! No more summits, no more words!"
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Egypt Says It Will Limit Ties With Israel, but Rejects Calls to Sever Them Altogether
The Associated Press
Published: Apr 3, 2002
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAI8KCCLZC.html
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Egypt announced Wednesday it was suspending contacts
with Israel except diplomatic contacts that could help the Palestinians,
Minister of Information Safwat el-Sherif said.
Egypt's Middle East News Agency quoted el-Sherif
as saying Egypt would limit its contacts with Israel to those that "serve
the Palestinian cause."
Egypt, one of only three Arab states with diplomatic
relations with Israel, has been under pressure to cut its diplomatic ties
altogether and freeze its 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state. Wednesday's
step fell short of cutting ties.
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