A Palestinian friend told me the Egyptian stance on Gaza was shameful. But then he corrected himself: “The stance of the authorities is shameful but there is certainly a big difference between the people and the government.”
A Palestinian friend told me the Egyptian stance on Gaza was shameful. But then he corrected himself: “The stance of the authorities is shameful but there is certainly a big difference between the people and the government.”
After watching some video clips and reading the comments written by Egyptians, and their support for the war, my friend changed his mind again. “Some of the commenters have written that the war is a good opportunity to get rid of the headache caused by Hamas,” he said. “Some have even gone a step further, calling on the Egyptian army to participate in this war and eliminate the presence of Islamists in Gaza—they claim this will protect the country’s eastern borders!”
How did this happen? Why did the peoples’ mood change? Since when did the Egyptian citizen become isolated and caught up in his narrow world and in the small details of its events?
Persistent legends
For a long time, Egyptians have been hearing stories about tunnels bringing their country all kinds of evil and wreaking havoc in Egypt. They have been told stories that the Rafah border crossing and Hamas have become demons— most of these stories flourished during the days of Morsi. The legend continued to get bigger and in the conscience of the people, the Palestinian Gaza Strip, besieged since 2007, has become the cause and source of all evils and problems from June 2012 until today.
It all started with the fuel shortage problem and rumors began to spread that the cause of the shortage was the smuggling of fuel to the Gaza Strip. Then rumors about stolen cars started to spread—those with cars often say: “Our cars are roaming the tiled roads of Gaza.” Whenever there is a power outage, which has become a daily occurrence, people might say “In Gaza they have electricity.”
Some would even say that “Morsi’s administration failed because it was more engaged and cared more about Gaza than Egypt.” This is how the Egyptian media formulated its devilish scenario and the Gaza Strip has become, according to this media discourse, merely the shelter of Hamas, which is accused of storming jails during the Egyptian revolution and which then became, according to the same media, the defender of Morsi and his rule.
A while back, “On TV” showed a three-minute video of a bulldozer moving across sand inside a big tunnel and pulling a car. The broadcaster commented in a confident tone that this was a smuggling operation and it represented a threat to Egypt’s national security.
The presenter, however, forgot to mention that this is the only available means for Palestinians to bring cars inside the Gaza Strip and that there is a real need for all kinds of goods on the other side of these tunnels. She also conveniently forgot to mention that smuggling is not only carried out by Palestinians but also by Egyptians.
The desire to demonize the people on the other side of the tunnels was much stronger than the urge to provide the audience with balanced rhetoric.
Media stuck in a tunnel
When the war began on July 8, the approach did not change and the Egyptian media hasn’t been able to deal with it in a mature manner.
There was no interest in stating the reasons behind the Israeli war on Gaza, and there was no critique or analysis of the mysterious kidnapping of the three young Israelis, whose corpses were found south of Hebron in the West Bank.
The story of Muhammad Abu Khudair, the young man from Jerusalem who was burnt by Israelis as a response to the kidnapping has not been well told.
In addition, Israeli’s accusation of Hamas and holding it responsible for this incident and its recapture of Palestinians who were freed in the Gilad Shalit’s release deal were not well analyzed.
Thus, there was no consideration of the causes and complexities and their impact on the Palestinian reconciliation government, which was announced in June and the impact of all this on the two-state solution to the conflict, the oldest in the Middle East.
The media attack on Palestinians escalated when the Palestinian factions, particularly Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, rejected the Egyptian cease-fire initiative. Generalizations started to surface again and media comments were unreasonably indicating that Palestinians in Gaza accepted the truce when it was requested by Mohamed Morsi in 2012 yet refused it when it was initiated by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2014.
Yet there was no mention of the many new demands raised by the Palestinians for cease-fire, such as the end of the siege on the Gaza Strip, or the Palestinian factions’ attempts to prosecute Israeli war crimes as a new path in the development of the Palestinian cause. It is important to note that Egypt is currently considering the amendment of its initiative.
Egyptian orientalism
People of the Middle East have criticized orientalism for many reasons— the first of which is being dealt with as a group of people living in a museum. Many criticize orientalists of ignoring the larger historical context of that explains why societies are the way they are.
The official and popular Egyptian stance was very close to this oriental understanding. The existence of Gaza on the eastern borders of Egypt, the stories of tunnels and terrorists’ attacks in Sinai were all used to justify the official as well as the popular stance regarding Gaza.
The arrival of a popular Egyptian convoy to Gaza and allowing the treatment of some patients in Egypt give us some hope that not all of Egypt or Egyptians have been fooled by a legend, which Egypt has created about itself. A good percentage of Egyptian journalists have tended to simplify the current war fought by Israel against Gaza and to eliminate Hamas, so as reflect it as a security crackdown on a drug dealer’s house!
This simplification has tended to ignore that there are factions other than Hamas fighting this war and that the “Operation Protective Edge” as a whole has nothing to do with the conflict between the Egyptian administration and Hamas on the one hand and the relationship between the latter and the Muslim Brotherhood on the other. It has tended to ignore that the continued siege of Gaza is not an acceptable situation, nor is it a normal condition and that the closure of Israeli crossing points as well as the only Egyptian border crossing should be rethought.
It tended to ignore that victims of this war cannot be considered as an acceptable price for myths promoted in Egypt, since 2011, about Hamas’s actions. Unfortunately, those who are using this simplification consider it an acceptable argument rather than a breach. They consider that simplification is normal, and that our story with the Muslim Brotherhood can serve as an indicator for us to understand the world and determine our positions regarding any possible conflict. Yet this argument is not true at all.
