Ayoon Wa Azan (“People Are the Enemies of What They Don’t Know”)

Lebanon is my country by fact, and Egypt is my country by fancy. By virtue of age, I know Egypt before three-quarters of its people have known it, and by virtue of my job, I know it better than three-quarters of its people do. I have been closely following the Egyptian presidential election campaigns, while having in mind the saying “people are the enemies of what they don’t know”, or of those whom they don’t know, with respect to my topic today. As if Egypt does not have enough of almost intractable problems. For instance, the recent violence that erupted during the protest at the Ministry of Defense and what followed is unjustifiable, and those who fired on the demonstrators should be punished as well as those who incited the protests and demonstrations. Egypt cannot tolerate this kind of painful and harmful shocks. The members of the Parliament are determined to see through the ‘political isolation law’, which would proscribe the symbols of the Mubarak regime from politics for ten years. There are certain symbols of the former regime who cannot be defended. Some deserve to be tried and not just isolated. Yet there are some whom I know to be among the finest people in terms of both competence and patriotism. I only talk about whom and of what I know, to say that some newcomers in politics, some and not all, are even worse than the undesirable ‘symbols’. General Omar Suleiman came under fierce and unfair attacks when he threw his name into the ring for the presidency. As he has now been barred, I talk about him beyond any personal interests of mine or his, and only to set the record straight with regard to his history. I had many meetings with General Omar at the intelligence HQ. Because of limited space, I chose excerpts from one session: The Egyptian government was threatening to install metallic barriers along the border with Gaza to prevent arms smuggling, and Palestinian and Islamist groups were attacking the Mubarak regime and accusing it of collusion with Israel against the Palestinians. At the time, General Omar told me that Egypt was concerned about preventing the entry of rockets to Gaza because they were being fired at Israel without any results, except giving Israel an excuse to respond with air raids and kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He took out a paper and read it out to me. The bottom line was that Egyptian intelligence knew where every tunnel was located, and where it came out in El-Arish, and in Gaza, as well as the names of the companies operating the tunnels, and the fees for transporting goods per hour - which were cheapest for foodstuffs, followed by hardware and equipment, and then weapons. I hope that the General will excuse me for divulging information that was supposed to remain confidential, since the Egyptian authorities used to claim that they did not know where the tunnels were. I asked General Omar for a copy of the list of tunnels and their owners and he smiled, promising that he would give me a copy of the list in a future meeting. I say that Omar Suleiman is a true Arab and Egyptian patriot, and I have no ulterior motives in saying this because he is now out of the race. On the other hand, our brother Amr Moussa is at the heart of the battle. He is the most popular candidate according to the polls, and he will remain so, if the Islamists do not unite behind one candidate. Amr Moussa was attacked on the grounds that he is a holdover of the former regime, and the Islamist candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh opposed his nomination on this basis; but is this true? Moussa has been in public service since the sixties. However, his star in politics rose quickly in the eighties when he represented Egypt at the UN in New York, where he was a one-man organization against Israel and all its represents. I was with him year after year, taking part in the UN General Assembly. He attacked settlement building, and demanded that Israel join the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which earned him the animosity of the supporters of Israel in the United States, and the ensuing attacks they orchestrated against him. However, this also earned him large popularity in Egypt and the Arab countries, and President Mubarak soon appointed him as his foreign minister, a post he retained all throughout the nineties. At the foreign ministry, Amr Moussa pursued the same policy, and perhaps even went further in standing up to Israel. I read many times in the Israeli press, of which I receive a digest in English every morning, personal attacks against the Egyptian minister, who was often accused of being a ‘closeted Nasserist’[…]. It is no secret that many of the real symbols of the regime were annoyed by the popularity of Amr Moussa, and some tried to persuade Mubarak that his foreign minister is a rival. Then came the song by Shaaban Abd Al-Rahim, who announced his love for Amr Moussa and his hatred for Israel, bolstering the argument of those symbols. As a result, the Minister was transferred to the Arab League, in the capacity of Secretary General. Finally, there is unemployment in the world. Before the revolution in Egypt, there was underemployment. Now, there is ‘million-strong’ unemployment. I will continue tomorrow.