This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
The Guardian reports that 38 Morsi supporters are dead with many more wounded after demonstrations turned violent in the early hours this morning. The hospitals are overwhelmed with the dead and the wounded. Those on the ground believe the death toll is likely to increase.
Meanwhile the New York Times reports that the accusations leveled by the governing powers in Egypt against former President Morsi could carry the death penalty. The combination of mass demonstrations and the military’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is recipe for more and more violence in the coming days.
Whoever is advising the military should know where this is leading. Where are the civilian leaders in the new government? Don’t they see that their blind support for the military is driving Egypt into a dark alley?
There’s no turning back now. The violence will accelerate. The military’s gamble is that they can force the Muslim Brotherhood to their knees. So far, it isn’t working.
The US response is tepid and contradictory. On the one hand, the US doesn’t want to seem anti-Muslim, hence the holding back on shipping F-16’s announced yesterday. But the bulk of US aid to Egypt’s military is untouched and the rumblings in Congress about American law, coups and aid won’t get very far. For all practical purposes the US is all in with the Egyptian military.
Why shouldn’t America be all in? Obama’s iron fist, Susan Rice, was on the phone reading Morsi his political last rites. Did she realize the coup might also mean his ultimate personal death?
Imagine Morsi being tried in an Egyptian court and condemned to death. Imagine the death watch and the execution. Imagine Morsi’s hanging being televised like the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
The Hamas link that the military is applying to Morsi’s prison break is important. The Egyptian military has placed Hamas and Gaza front and center from the beginning as the locus of Morsi – and the Muslim Brotherhood’s – betrayal of Egypt’s national security.
To characterize support for Palestinians as treasonous behavior is upping the ante. It’s a Middle East game changer. If the Palestinians are seen as outside the bounds of national security or, more, as threats to national security, Palestine will fall off the priority list for Arab governments. As well, Palestinian populations within the Arab world, already suspect, will come under renewed scrutiny.
This is already happening and dovetails with John Kerry’s Washington negotiations scheduled to begin next week. On Kerry’s last trip to the Middle East he avoided Israel and met with Palestinian leadership in Jordan. This was curious. Why meet with Palestinian leadership in Amman rather than in Ramallah?
As Nicola Nasser points out in Al Ahram, Kerry’s tactics were calculated. With the help of the Arab League, the Palestinians are being boxed in:
A new tactic by US Secretary of State John Kerry is causing a split within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) ranks regarding further talks with Israel. Kerry is apparently using the Arab League’s Follow-Up Committee on the Arab Peace Initiative (FCAPI) to bully the Palestinians into accepting new ground rules for the talks to which they had objected in the past.
In his sixth tour of the region as secretary of state, Kerry did something unusual. Instead of visiting Israel, as he always does, he left it out of his itinerary, deciding instead to hold most of the talks in the Jordanian capital Amman. While there, he conferred with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as well as members of the FCAPI. As the talks progressed, it became clear that Kerry was no longer focusing on Israel, the country that has torpedoed all previous attempts at peace, but on the PLO. His aim is to get the latter to offer more concessions than any they have accepted in the past.
In order to do this, Kerry wanted to get the FCAPI to accept these concessions on behalf of the Palestinians, a new tactic that may or may not be working but that so far has succeeded in causing divisions and widespread consternation in Palestinian circles. The tactic is not totally new, for it resonates with the manner in which US diplomats have used the Arab League to justify foreign intervention for the sake of regime change in countries such as Iraq and Libya in the past.
Nasser doesn’t mention how Syria fits in his analysis. Even so, he raises the question as to whether Egypt’s unfolding “revolution” is yet another example of regime change.
The debate in Washington was whether a coup is a coup when national security is at stake. Perhaps the debate should have been about whether a revolution is really regime change.
If Morsi goes to trial, the Palestinians will be on trial, too. Or will that trial begin in Washington next week?
“…the Palestinians will be on tial too.”
That sounds exactly right. The Kerry-Obama “peace plan” is all about “Palestinian surrender”, as you indicated recently. A bury my heart at wounded knee summing up.
What an unholy cluster. The Egyptian military is acting on its own behalf– not for justice or the average Egyptian. They are despotic to the core. The end of a nascent democracy.
Vilifying the Palestinians serves who?
Yep, that’s right.
“The debate in Washington was whether a coup is a coup when national security is at stake. Perhaps the debate should have been about whether a revolution is really regime change.”
Exactly, Professor.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/08/how-egypt-killed-political-islam/
Joseph Massad had perhaps the best analysis to date, although a bit too Marxists. The differences on the place of religion and related subjects have key importance to many people. But economic forces are usually most powerful. In this case, each side has at its core a group of capitalists with opposite interests, and then the ideological chips are divided among them almost accidentally.
Massad’s groups are: mostly self-made men whose fortunes were created mostly in the Gulf state and kleptocrats whose fortunes were created under military rule by having intimate connections with the rulers. As Muslim Brotherhood is obviously close to Hamas (but not THAT close), Hamas became the symbol of treason for the kleptocrats. Of course, Administration is against Hamas, but not in the same way. Crushing the “resistance spirit” among Palestinians is the dream of Zionist right (and center), but I think that cooler heads see limits of this approach. If you swing a pendulum too much you get a wrecking ball.
One nightmare scenario is that the Egyptian junta will attempt to crush the Brotherhood in Pinochet style, or imitating recent precedents from Syria (one of the chief offenses of Morsi, cited by the official press, was “breaking our brotherhood with the people of Syria” as he broke the diplomatic relations with al-Assad etc.). But now Brotherhood is controlled by rather staid rich old men who are pretty cautious, and after “decapitation” it will become a myriad of militant radicalized groups and the results can be again similar as in Syria. Egypt has vast deserts separating the populated areas from other countries and other advantages, but another disastrous civil war may result: it happened in Iraq, Syria (both continuing) and Algeria (mostly over).
Right now, whatever disaster will happen, it will be perceived as American creation. My private opinion is that the Administration was instrumental in fomenting the civil war in Syria but the events in Egypt are less related, more like “sorcerer’s apprentice”: we cannot stop the dancing brooms.
”As Nicola Nasser points out in Al Ahram, Kerry’s tactics were calculated. With the help of the Arab League, the Palestinians are being boxed in:”
Palestine, Hamas, Gaza as ‘enemies’ of Egypt was obvious right away, the Egyptian media putting out that meme–closing tunnels, refusing to allow Palestines to enter thru Egypt, cutting off Gaza fisherman.
This may be part of Kerry’s tactics but I think what happened in Egypt is bigger than that.
Looks to me there is a joint effort between US, Saudi, some Gulf states and likely Isr to “shore up’ the old ‘balance of power’ of US hegemony that the Arab Spring and the Shiite revolts threatened. I think Saudi is the hidden hand behind much of this …their thrones and their US ‘umbrella’ of protection comes ahead of Palestine for them. Obama adm, that has never actually had a policy of it’s own, is being led or following along with old US-ME status quo, maybe by certain ‘Arab whispers’ in it’s ear of the dire consequences in lost of US control in the ME. I’ m not at all sure that the US is ‘in the lead’ as much as it is ‘in collusion’ with certain other Gulf states.
The Arab league [no don’t laugh] has shown itself to be a beaten docket, the Saudis and the other GCC countries are all in America’s pocket and are willing to destroy other members of the club [Libya and Syria] to ensure their own survival and geopolitical interests, to this end they have just given Egypt billions to ensure the right outcome there. The Palestinians have a right to be concerned, the Arab League’s committee has just agreed on a land for peace deal with the US which exceeds the 2002 Arab League plan, and in breach of its mandate, in my opinion Abbas is making many political mistakes, but if these satraps in the Arab League have their way Israel will not need to concede anything, they will have received everything in the form of concessions before negotiations even begin. Trying to end the occupation through political negotiations will prove futile the United Nations is the only place it can be solved and only with the implementation of International law.