The Palestine Papers controversially revealed the Palestinian position in negotiations with Israel. Sir David is joined by Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator at the talks.
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Last week I was in Cairo and Alexandria. This is my diary Sunday January 30 We arrive at Ben Gurion airport at 9am after a panicky and much-delayed drive involving torrential rain and a broken-down car. The departures board says our flight to Cairo is cancelled. The woman at the ticket office is unsympathetic; she thinks we are insane to be trying to get to Cairo. The only other option is an El Al flight at 8pm. We’re told this one will depart as every seat on the return leg tonight is booked by Israelis desperate to get out of Egypt. We settle down for an 11-hour wait. At the boarding gate, it’s clear that there are only around a dozen people on the outward leg to Cairo – all journalists bar one, an EU official going to assess the situation in Cairo for staff based there. We land around 10.30pm and are told by a cheery airport official that there will be no problem getting into the city centre tonight, everything is “normal”. A cruel joke? The curfew means no taxis will take us downtown or indeed anywhere. We persuade a shuttle bus driver to drop us at an airport hotel. In the lobby, there are chaotic scenes: luggage piled up; people either milling about aimlessly or sleeping on every available chair and floor space. We decide to try the next-door hotel. The scene here is similar but not quite as bad; there are no rooms available, but the doorman says he might be able to find rooms at another hotel in half an hour. We go to the bar. An hour later, we cut our losses and find a corner of the lobby. But before we can lay down on the carpet to try to sleep, a group of stranded Brits want to tell us every detail of their abortive holiday. It is an extraordinary tale, but I am swaying on my feet, desperate to shut my eyes. Monday January 31 We wake up early, having slept fitfully. The curfew lifts at 8am, no chance of any transport until then. Eventually we get one taxi back to the airport terminal, then another into the centre of Cairo. The road is punctuated by army tanks and armoured personnel carriers. I wonder why the vehicles are painted yellow instead of the standard green until I try to find a more accurate description of the colour. Sand yellow. Ah yes, that’s why. There is almost no traffic on the roads: the journey from the airport takes around 40 minutes, in contrast to a more standard two hours according to one of my fellow passengers. Smog lies over the city. It is my first visit to Cairo. I check into the Marriott although the rest of the Guardian team are in another hotel, closer to Tahrir Square. I take a cab over there – a stupid mistake as what is a 15 minute walk becomes a 45 minute car ride as the driver takes a circuitous route to avoid roadblocks and vigilantes. Peter Beaumont and Jack Shenker are there, on the 19th floor in a room that looks a bit like a war zone itself. They give me a debrief on the latest situation and some useful phone numbers; then they are off to report stories. I head to Tahrir Square. It’s an amazing spectacle – thousands of people gathering with home-made signs and one message: Mubarak must go. The protesters are good-humoured and relaxed; everyone is keen to speak to a western reporter. I feel fine about wandering around on my own, tweeting, doing phone interviews with Matt Weaver, our live blogger in London, and filling my notebook. People are eloquent about the reasons for their uprising. Many speak of economic hardship, lack of democracy, the desire for freedom. One of the most memorable comments in a day, a week, of memorable conversations comes from a guy who tells me he has come “to fight the fear inside me”. The curfew starts at 3pm but no one takes any notice – in fact more and more people are coming into the square. There is no military or police presence in the square itself, and the soldiers a block back are friendly. Eventually I head back to file a piece. There is no internet of course, so the choice is dictating my copy down the phone or faxing it over to the office. I choose the former. This is what it was like before the internet. It’s not just getting the copy to London; I can’t find anything out. “Now I’m here, you know a million times more than me what’s happening,” I joke to Dave Munk, deputy foreign editor. Except I’m not joking. Tuesday February 1 I decide to leave for Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city, and the scene of some of the worst violence the previous Friday. I find a driver willing to take me – it’s not clear whether the roads are open, although I am in touch with Channel 4′s Lindsey Hilsum who made the journey the previous day without hitch. I call the hotel where Lindsey and other journalists are staying. “Are you a reporter?” the guy on reception asks. When I say yes, he refuses me a room, saying there has been trouble at the hotel over journalists staying there. I make a reservation elsewhere. The three-hour trip is uneventful, though there are army checkpoints and roadblocks on the way into Alex. I check into my eerily locked and deserted hotel and head out immediately, despite the hotel security guys trying to stop me. Today is the “million man march” day and I’m not going to watch from my hotel balcony. The area around the Ibrahim mosque fills up quickly. It’s a carnival atmosphere, people are cheerful and happy to talk – this is easy reporting. There are incredible sights and sounds: people praying on the pavement; a man in army fatigues being carried shoulder-high through the cheering crowd; tens of thousands of people singing the national anthem. Then the crowd moves off, and I go with it. No one seems to know the destination. All the side streets are guarded by citizen-vigilantes bearing sticks, iron bars and even knives. There was a lot of looting and violence last week. Eventually I peel off, needing to go back to the hotel to write a story. It’s about 5pm and getting dark, and I realise the only way back is to walk. Despite – or because of – the citizen-vigilantes, it’s not frightening; at least, not until I realise I’m lost in a city under curfew. I try to flag down the occasional passing taxi but they are all completely full. At the next citizen-checkpoint, I ask for directions. It’s not safe for you to be on the streets, they say, we will find someone to take to your hotel. They are stopping all cars anyway to check the occupants. When they find one with a spare seat, they tell the driver to take me. Later someone asked me if it had been wise to get into a car with an unknown person in a city on the brink of revolution. I didn’t really have much choice. Wednesday February 2 I need to change hotels; I want to be with other journalists. I go to the hotel I tried to get into 24 hours previously and they give me a room, but plead with me to be discreet and not take pictures or use recording equipment in or near the hotel. Time for the streets again. I go the mosque, and immediately it feels different. There were reports overnight of violence in Alex; 12 people have been injured in clashes I’m told. Today there is a smaller number of anti-regime protesters, but there is a fightback by Mubarak supporters. Furious arguments, complete with finger-jabbing and shoving, break out everywhere; the mood is ugly. Anti-regime protesters repeatedly tell me that the pro-Mubarak people are paid agents of the state. Then people begin to question me – who am I? Where am I from? What news organisation do I represent? Every time I try to interview someone, an angry crowd forms around me. Ramy, a tall and friendly student, appoints himself my protector but nevertheless I feel the need to move out of the thick crowd. This is not like the previous days; I begin to feel uncomfortable about being alone. Confrontations between supporters and opponents of the regime continue through the day; and although the threat of violence is palpable, it never seems to be quite realised. It’s only later, back at the hotel, that I learn the full extent of the street battles and bloodshed in Cairo. The internet comes back to life later in the evening. I want to kiss my laptop screen. Thursday February 4 I’m keen to try to get back to Cairo – that’s where the main action is and I’d rather be with the Guardian team there. But I have no idea whether the roads are open, and my editors want me to stay; it’s good to have a perspective from outside the capital, they say, and we have enough people in Cairo. I hook up with a local fixer and we head off to speak to people for a piece my editors have asked for on the mood among students, traditionally the forefront of any uprising. All the universities in Alex have been closed – locked and guarded – for more than a week, so we go first to coffee shops in quiet back streets. It’s a mixed picture; away from the protests, most of the students I speak to are worried and frightened and to varying degrees feel it’s time to scale back or halt the protests. All say their economic prospects are dim and this is the reason for the protests. But in the square in front of the mosque, students are adamant they must keep going until Mubarak is toppled. It’s even harder today to speak to anyone without being surrounded by angry people. They are now saying journalists are Israeli spies, and that my fixer is also a Zionist. I am shoved in the shoulder by a man yelling in my face. My fixer tells me the Egyptian state tv has told viewers to beware of Israeli spies masquerading as western journalists. I become acutely conscious that I have an Israeli work permit in my passport, and business cards identifying me as the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent. This is not good; we retreat to the hotel. There we meet up with the Channel 4 team again, who have just had a very threatening situation in a residential street. They feel the hotel is now a target – it has been mobbed by protesters several times, looking for western journalists. Two NPR reporters were surrounded on the street by an angry crowd who then followed them back to the hotel. The security guys are getting very, very twitchy. The Channel 4 team are decamping to an apartment which they are using as their bureau. They invite me to go with them, and I gratefully accept. But the apartment’s owner vetoes this plan; he knows his property could also become a target. Reports filter through from Cairo of journalists being intimidated, detained and beaten up. I call my editors for advice; they feel it’s time to get out and book me on a flight from Alex to Amman the following day. Friday February 4 The “Day of Departure” turns out to be mine, not Mubarak’s. I meet two Danish tv guys in the hotel lobby. They arrived in Alex the previous evening. Coming into the city, their car was surrounded by 60-70 people brandishing knives and sticks and trying to drag them out of the car. They got away, but are very shaken up and have also decided to leave. We go to the airport together. My trip home – Alex to Amman, then Amman to Tel Aviv – takes 10 hours despite being in the air for only around 120 minutes. I feel very ambivalent about leaving. It had become almost impossible to do any proper reporting and in any case the focus, rightly, was on Cairo. But I now have a huge attachment to the story, and I keep thinking about the extraordinary people I met and the amazing things I saw, both in Cairo and Alexandria. It’s hard to know how this is going to pan out, but it’s impossible to be indifferent. • Comments on this article are set to remain open for 12 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight Egypt Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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This film tells the story of five days in January 2011 when the people of Egypt broke through a barrier of fear they had known for a generation and rose in revolt against their president. Anger had long been brewing in Egypt – strikes, unemployment and sectarian tension were on the rise. Small networks of activists had been agitating against Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule for years. But it was only when another Arab country, Tunisia, rose up against its tyrant that the Egyptian activists attracted mass support. People took to the streets across Egypt demanding political freedoms, an end to state corruption and a better quality of life for the impoverished population. Egypt Burning captures those critical moments as history unfolded through interviews with Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground.
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Torrential rains have caused widespread flooding in Sri Lanka and at least one million people have been affected by the latest spate of flooding in this south Asian country. Thousands have been forced to flee their homes and shift to temporary shelters while the country’s disaster management centre is struggling to cope with the disaster.
Continue reading …When the uprising there began nearly two weeks ago, there was a near-total internet blackout. But exactly how was access cut off? An American advocacy group called Free Press says it’s uncovered a link to a California-based technology company which allegedly sold the Egyptian government equipment allowing it to track online activity. Rob Reynolds reports.
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With the protests against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian president, showing no sign of abating, many observers are looking to the United Nations to step in. But at the UN Security Council, the issue is not even up for discussion. So what to make of the fact that the world body doesn’t seem inclined to address the historic and urgent events unfolding in Egypt? Scott Heidler has the story from New York.
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Omar Sulieman’s call for orderly reform wins backing of Hillary Clinton on day senior members of ruling NDP resign America yesterday swung its support behind Egypt’s vice-president, Omar Suleiman, and the political transition he is leading, calling for a process of orderly reform. The policy, made clear by Hillary Clinton at the Munich Security Conference, was the latest sign of steps by the US and senior members of the Egyptian military to nudge President Hosni Mubarak aside and contain the potential for street violence. The move came as senior members of the leadership of the ruling National Democratic party resigned from the party in response to the protests. They included Mubarak’s powerful son, Gamal, long expected to succeed his father. A relative liberal, Hossam Badrawi, was appointed the party’s new secretary general. The mass , announced yesterday afternoon, resignation is likely to be seen as a further sign of Mubarak’s weakness and will only strengthen the demands of protesters determined to topple him. It appeared to be part of a strategy agreed with the US to manage the transition, with or without Mubarak, as power shifts to Egypt’s vice-president, who is backed by the Americans to head the political transition. “There are forces in any society, particularly one facing these kind of challenges, that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own agenda, which is why I think it’s important to follow the transition process announced by the Egyptian government, actually headed by vice-president Omar Suleiman,” Clinton told western politicians, diplomats and business leaders at the annual conference. She added that the transition should be transparent and inclusive, and the process should set out “concrete steps” towards orderly elections in September. David Cameron and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel,, speaking at the same conference, echoed the call for an orderly transition and cautioned against early elections. Frank Wisner, the White House envoy sent to Cairo last Monday to press Mubarak to agree to democratic reforms, said yesterday that he believed the president should remain in office through the transition period. “You need to get a national consensus around the preconditions of the next step forward, and the president must stay in office to steer those changes through,” he told the conference. “I therefore believe that President Mubarak’s continued leadership is critical; it’s his opportunity to write his own legacy.” Last night the US state department appeared to distance itself from Wisner’s remarks, claiming that the comments were “his own”. US backing for Suleiman and its failure to press for Mubarak’s immediate resignation will dismay many anti-government protesters who have failed to force the president out despite mass demonstrations across the country on Friday. Some protesters are suspicious of the American backing for Suleiman overseeing the political transition because of his role as Mubarak’s intelligence chief. “We won’t accept this American plan if it does not cut off the head of the snake,” said Ahmed Mora, a university lecturer among the demonstrators. “America has not been good for us in Egypt. It supported Mubarak for 30 years. If he’s still there, or other people from the system are still there, we will not accept it.” Anti-Mubarak protesters have called for another mass rally in Tahrir Square today after Friday’s protest. Yesterday the mood was calm, but many demonstrators said that Mubarak’s evident weakness had only reinforced their determination to continue the campaign. His resignation from the party leadership came after he said he would not run for president at the next election, scheduled for September. Mubarak said he would remain in office until then. Clinton’s and Cameron’s statements may be crucial in allowing him to stand down according to his own timetable in the summer. Cameron denied there was a trade-off between the speed of reform and stability: “There is no stability in Egypt. We need change, reform and transition to get stability. The longer that is put off, the more likely we are to get an Egypt that we wouldn’t welcome.” British officials said they were encouraged by the developments of the past 24 hours, pointing to the role of the army in preventing attacks on the demonstrators and the opening of a dialogue between Suleiman and opposition groups. Clinton listed with approval the steps the Egyptian government had taken so far. “President Mubarak has announced he will not stand for re-election, nor will his son. He has given a clear message to his government to lead and support this process of transition,” she said.”That is what the government has said it is trying to do, that is what we are supporting, and hope to see it move as orderly but as expeditiously as possible under the circumstances.” Egypt Hosni Mubarak Protest Middle East US foreign policy Chris McGreal Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
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Traditional political assumptions cannot be applied to an opposition movement going through a chaotic – and joyful – birth There was a moment last week in Cairo that gave me pause for thought. I was talking to Mohamed Negahid, a 30-year-old quality manager, at a pro-Mubarak demonstration outside the state television station. Egypt, he told me, was not like Tunisia, where I had been barely two weeks before, covering the Jasmine Revolution that deposed Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Nor is Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, like Ben Ali. He was right, of course. All revolutions have their own trajectories and fault lines. But something else struck me. Used to a certain kind of politics in our own countries, we have been looking to find the same in these upheavals in the Arab world. And not finding it, we have declared the process unfocused or unsatisfactory. The truth is that what we have been witnessing in this past month has been as much about the psychological processes involved in the birth of opposition movements in two autocratic states as it has been about the actual politics of them, which are still in the process of being defined. I saw it in the little groups outside the Casbah in Tunis who had gathered to debate, and in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, among people engaging in confrontations sometimes intense, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes even aggressive. They were engaged in a conversation that is still being thrashed out, whose resolution is hampered by the sheer novelty of open debate. Many have struggled to interpret what is happening. In Tunisia and Egypt, the media and others have tried to impose their own simplistic narrative by promoting opposition figures who are easy to identify – like Rachid Ghannouchi and Mohamed ElBaradei – and by proposing scenarios that only partly reflect reality. Ironically, many commentators frame their questions around assumptions that for decades have been put forward by both Mubarak and Ben Ali to rationalise their grip on power – promoting the threat posed by Islamist politics in the shape of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ennahdha movement in Tunisia. In other words, we are still asking questions defined by tyrants. The reality is that we do not know what will be the role of Islamist parties or of the figures only now emerging as a new generation of leaders. We cannot even know the terms of the negotiations between the different actors – and what will arise from them. So we have tended to ignore what should be obvious. That is that whatever happens, either in Tunisia or Egypt, a barrier has been broken. A threshold of fear has been crossed. For what has happened in both countries is that the structures of a police state have been challenged and found, to the surprise of many, to be weaker than imagined. In Egypt, President Mubarak on three occasions in the last fortnight attempted to break the burgeoning new opposition. His riot police were beaten back and defeated on the Friday that was called the Day of Fury. His army, which tried, subtly and not so subtly, to squeeze the opposition has been found out. Tanks and soldiers not prepared to fire on civilians have a limited utility for a police state. And when Mubarak unleashed his gangs of thugs on Wednesday to attack the square, they, too, were defeated. Which has left him ever more powerless. And even if Mubarak continues to hang on, what is clear is that a transition of power is already under way. It is not, however, one defined by negotiations between parties or the behind-the-scenes diplomacy at the behest of the US and the EU. Instead the shift taking place is a leaching of power from existing elites in both states’ authoritarian centres. They have been forced, in Tunis, into the effective purging of Ben Ali loyalists, and in Cairo Mubarak’s state has had to offer ever more concessions. And suddenly the small, brave worlds of activists in both countries have been embraced by a wider population no longer afraid to speak or to assemble. I was struck by this in Tahrir Square last week, a place with the energy of a rock festival, where there were no speeches or events, no real agenda, simply the thrilling fact of the thing itself: a celebration of assembly and freedom of expression. Where it was possible at last for Egyptians to stand side by side and say what was previously unsayable. It is this that has changed in the Arab world in these few weeks, a contagion of bravery and optimism that cannot, I hope, be easily undone. Egypt Hosni Mubarak Tunisia Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali Middle East Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk
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