War-Weary, Egypt Sticks With Peace

CAIRO —  His voice clear and stern, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak went on national television Thursday to lash out at Israel’s “inhumane” treatment of the Palestinians. But as he appeared to be building toward a dramatic announcement, jabbing his finger in the air, he instead declared Egypt’s commitment to peace--with Israel.

After accusing Israel of violating every international convention on human rights and warning the Jewish state not to harm the Palestinian leadership, Mubarak said, “Israel should recognize that right now Arabs are extending a hand of peace.”

Hastening to clarify his point, he said that Egypt’s hand--and that of the Arab League, which recently endorsed a Saudi peace initiative--was extended “out of rivalry, rather than weakness.”

The Egyptian president’s 15-minute speech, laced with volatile rhetoric, reflected the bind that Egypt and many other Arab countries are facing: There is widespread frustration with the Israeli military’s perceived ability to attack Palestinians with impunity, but there also is a deep reluctance to do anything that will have negative consequences at home, such as going to war.

“The Arab world will not fight America,” said Tasheen Bashir, a former Egyptian ambassador and aide to the late President Anwar Sadat. “The Arab world will do nothing.”

These conflicting realities have left people here angry, depressed, increasingly anti-American--and increasingly anti-Semitic.

Since Israel moved on the West Bank last week in a military operation that it says is aimed at rooting out terrorism, there have been student demonstrations across the Arab world and calls for opening the borders of Arab states to allow volunteers to fight for the Palestinian cause. Iraq and Sudan have called for stopping the sale of oil to states supporting Israel.

But the Arab world still bears the scars of its wars against the Jewish state and of a 1973-74 oil embargo that wreaked havoc not only on the industrial world but on the oil-dependent Arab economies as well.

There is little appetite for repeating those actions, even among hard-line states. Implacable Israel foe Syria, for example, has redeployed its troops in Lebanon to get them farther away from the increasingly hostile border with Israel. There is a sense that tough talk coming from some states is just that--talk.

“We have to make a difference between those who talk and those who act,” said Nabil Osman, the chief spokesman for the Egyptian government. “If somebody is so sure he can play a certain card, no one is preventing him or her.”

Nevertheless, the Egyptian government isn’t taking any chances and is trying to walk a tightrope between allowing the public to vent its frustrations and not letting public hostility get out of hand. A popular television show, “Editor in Chief,” was taken off the air 10 minutes into its broadcast Tuesday after the host, Hamdy Kandil, said the people want the government to close the Israeli Embassy and expel the ambassador.

In a column that appeared in the government-owned Egyptian newspaper Al Gomhouriya on Thursday, writer Abdel Azim Ramadan cautioned against being led into war.

“I always say that this Palestinian conflict brings problems to Egypt, because Egypt went through four wars because of this conflict,” he wrote. “And Egypt lost billions of dollars and thousands of Egyptians were killed, and this delayed the development of Egypt.”

The steam has seeped out in other ways.

An Egyptian fencing champion refused to participate in championship finals in Turkey because another competitor was Israeli. The Egyptian Sports Ministry applauded the decision.

A 13-year-old Egyptian boy was reported missing by his father, who said the youth left a note saying he had run off to fight for the Palestinians.

Egyptian media have ridiculed the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, for criticizing Egypt and Jordan for not cutting all ties with Israel, while Yemen is working with the U.S. military to fight Al Qaeda operatives.

Of all the Arab states, Egypt and Jordan are experiencing the most public pressure. They are the only two states to have signed peace treaties with Israel. On Wednesday, Egypt took a half step in response to the public mood, scaling back relations with Israel--while keeping open diplomatic channels that it says can be helpful to the Palestinians. Jordan’s King Abdullah II sent a letter to President Bush with his recommendations for bringing about a cease-fire.

Some Egyptians are happy with Mubarak’s course of action.

In a small shop along Ismail Mohammed Street on Thursday, where men gather daily to drink sweet tea and smoke tobacco through water pipes, many praised the longtime Egyptian president. The men love the Israel-bashing and support the aversion to war.

“Everybody who enters war will lose. Even the one who wins will lose,” taxi driver Hassan W. Hassan, 47, said as he puffed on his water pipe. “Most of the people who want war are the youth. They don’t have any experience with how much we suffered.”

Hassan and his friends sat quietly in the shop as the news blared from a small television in the corner, broadcasting pictures of tanks rolling through the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The men spoke of a desire for peace, but not out of any commitment to live in harmony with Israel. Peace, they hope, will bring economic prosperity. Without exception, they said they looked forward to the day Israel would be obliterated from the region.

“The Jewish people have no country,” said Mohammed Abboud, 35, an electrician. “The Jews from the start are scattered all over the world.”

This was Mubarak’s audience, an audience he knows well after 21 years as president. He stood at a lectern during his oration, saying the Jewish state has shown its true face, exploiting the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism while “besieging and humiliating the unarmed Palestinian people.” He waved his finger and said Israel is “sorely mistaken if it believes its present policy will lead to security. This policy will lead to more harm and serious damage to the Israeli people.”

And he said: “The current policy of the Israeli government will only contribute to deepening the sentiment of hatred of about 300 million Arabs toward the state of Israel and those who support its current policies.”

But if his goal was to command attention, Mubarak was upstaged. Less than an hour after the Egyptian leader finished his speech, Bush gave his own televised address on the Middle East conflict. It was the Bush speech that garnered the most attention on a later news show, with Mubarak ranking only a brief mention at the end of the broadcast.

Asked for comment on the Mubarak address, a prominent Arab leader working on the Palestinian issue said he hadn’t even seen it.