I just read that Kifaya has started to work towards collecting a million signatures for a petition calling for the cancellation of the Camp David peace treaty. Can anyone confirm this?
I’ll have more to say about this soon, but want to confirm it first.
Yes, the campaign has started few days ago. You can find the petition here: http://harakamasria.org/node/7269
Yes, it’s true. I’ve spoken about it with Ishaq and he confirmed, almost a week ago.
Yes, that’s a brilliant idea! Let’s cancel camp david. That;ll show those god damn zionist bastards! They’ll regret being god damn zionist bastards and beating on palestinians! Who cares if we lose USD 2 billion annually, and go to war with Israel using an army that probably couldnt stand up to a Tuvalese invasion? Sign me up!
Do these people think before they open their mouths? Do they really think it’s a good idea to suddenly drop such an international agreement without first preparing for it? Where is the replacement source of funding? How are you going to stand up to Israel after giving the US the shaft on the treaty? With what friggin army? Procure arms from Russia? Or maybe Iran?
Oh wait! maybe that’s it. Maybe, Kifaya has enough members to send volunteer corps to the front line. Of course they do. That would explain why no one shows up to protests. All the best activists are busy in training camps learning to manipulate sophisticated weapons systems, fly jets and man tanks. Now it all makes sense. Long live the George Ishaq! Long live the Revolution! Long live…
sigh
Sometimes i wonder if maybe we’re better off just accepting our eventual fate of a kingdom. I’m not so sure i’d prefer Uncle George over Jimmy.
My sentiments exactly Cairene. There would be no Egyptian defence budget left once the US Aid is gone. People don’t understand this. It’s not like the government press actually even does anything to help correct the ignorance of ordinary Egyptians, in fact they play to this ignorance to divert attention from crises at home.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm
I am reminded of an interesting conversation a few weeks ago with a young Egyptian doctor. He does major volunteering with a youth service group that is mobilizing thousands. Says he has regular debates with his Kefaya activist friends in which they rail about everything they are against.
My friend believes they will never get traction because they don’t have a clue about what they are FOR. This down-with-Camp-David thing is just further evidence of the lack of forward vision.
…bravo egyptian “reformers”….what about starting to use the brain finally, rather than crying on your traumas? try to imagine u live in the 21st century..how should it be…?
Would cutting that $2 billion per year to the Mubarak government not undermine the regime? Why does such a call, or a lifting of the treaty and the patronage it supports, suggest a return to hostilities with Israel?
cutting US aid would a most positive thing, it is mainly used to prop the regime or totally wasted on corruption, thank you we are not interested.
and canceling the treaty does not mean we go to war. it could mean many things.
but it is true that if Kefaya want’s this campaign to succeed they’ll have to work on explaining what is their plan exactly.
How is US Aid wasted on corruption if the aid never actually comes into the hands of the government but is simply awared as contracts to US defence/arms manufacturers?
I can imagine being willing to give up 2 billion in aid if it helped precipitate large scale change in a government I hate. But being against a peace treaty seems like a non-obvious way to fight for democracy/change. Like a commenter above said, it seems like it’s just being against something, more than being for something.
I guess my question is, and what I hope Issandr covers later, is: are the people starting this petition against the peace treaty because they are against peace with Israel, or because they feel the treaty is part of the mechanism keeping Mubarak in power?
Dan – I would think that is because they no longer want peace with Israel.
Are Egyptians more sick of Israel or Muburak? 72 million Egyptian, I would guess the “hate Israel” camp would win…by a tiny margin.
IMO, ending Camp David would do enormous damage to Egypt…in many ways.
Who the heck are the Tuvalese?
they’ve published a couple of articles articulating why they’re against the treaty. you should check them.
if I’m to grossly summerize, 1st the peace is unpopular, while most people would agree on a long term or permenant cease fire with Israel, most people don’t want no peace treaty, no economical ties or normalization or any of that stuff.
the peace treaty forces certain economical and diplomatic conditions on Egypt for instance.
even if you accept a peace treaty the terms of the current treaty are not what anyone considers fair, the story of how they where cooked up by sadat in a fashion that lead the foreign minister who was specifically chosen to help with the process resign is quite well known.
the peace treaty makes it impossible to aid another country when it is at war (meaning under attack) with Israel.
selling Oil is a good example, Egypt is selling Oil to Israel at low prices and we are told that that’s part of the treaty package (no idea if that’s true really, I need to reread the whole thing).
finally believe it or not many egyptians would accept a non democratic government and would even argue arguments against democracy if the government wasn’t working for the Americans and kissing the Israelis asses all the time. and hence why it is important for something like kefaya to promote democracy as a means to move from an agent government to an independant patriotic government (it’s in their bloody manifesto).
live with it, a huge percentage of arabs wants Israel to cease to exist (with a bit of variation on what cease to exist means), any democracy anything in the region is bound to bring forward a discussion of war with Israel.
It is interesting how Kefaya operates. I have been intrigued by its internal politics and strategies since it began getting popular and gaining support. It clear to me that there are several deluded factors within the Kefaya hierarchy whose visions are not to improve the situation in the country, as much as it is to just bash heads with the government and its allies, such as the US and Israel.
Clearly the cancelling of the peace treaty sends out extremely obvious messages to the rest of the world, which goes a little something like this:
“with all the tension thats going on in the region and all the countries being invaded, the Egyptian people have decided that they shall not sit around and do nothing, but will act and mobilize, as it will never accept a similar fate to befall upon it, thus, they are cancelling the peace treaty in order to get ready to take action (namely go to war) if action is necessary against Israel. So we shall tear apart this treaty that stops us from fighting Israel, since that has become part of our agenda”
You know what this reminds me of, and it should remind a lot of the Kefaya people of as well; the 1967 war. Nasser took the brave but deluded decision to attempt to bluff the Israelis to gain more popular support on the internal and regional scopes. Thus, he ordered the removal of the UN peacekeepers that were situated in the no-man’s-land between Israel and Egypt, in an attempt to scare Israel of an Egyptian invasion. This resulted in the full scale military attack of the IDF on Egyptian land, causing the destruction of a great portion of the Egyptian Army that was situated in the country and the loss of Sinai. Maybe this time, when we cancel the peace treaty, we could allow them to go a bit further, since some people in this country seem a bit too daft to learn from their previous mistakes because they are blinded by either a lust for power or struggle.
Onwards Kefaya! Forward towards the path of total annihilation.
Now that my shock at the stupidity of the Kifaya petition has subsided, i’ll try another post.
So kifaya think the camp david accords compromise egypt’s interests. great. And the 2 billion prop up the regime and fund the us defense industry. brilliant. And people dont want peace with Israel. excellent. Then why the fuck not come up with an ALTERNATIVE!
Tearing up Camp David is an act of war. It is abbrogating on a peace treaty. As someone mentioned it would be just like 1967. It would offer Israel a pretext to take preemptive/preventive military action on a silver platter. And unless all those angry beduins blowing up tourist locations on national holidays are an organized guerilla force we dont have a hizbullah which would mean we would get out asses handed to us in minimal time.
Unlike some, i see absolutely nothig wrong with Kifaya not having a positive agenda. They never claimed to have that and i dont think they need it. They are against the current regime and for a democratic sytem that would allow their members and others to run freely for public office. That is more than enough in my opinion. Agendas are for the parties. HOWEVER, i dont think that gives Kifaya an excuse to go out and say stupid shit like that. If you think that it is to Egypt’s benefit to withdraw from the treaty, then you should also provide suggestions for an alternate path. I havent read their papers, to be honest, so maybe they have. I am skeptical.
All i’m saying is that my biggest problem with Kifaya is that it has to date been unable to advance beyond the level of chants. It can – and this is quite arguable – run protests. But is competent with little else.
PS Tuvalese Invasion seemed to cause some confusion: Tuvalu is some random-ass country that is actually a member of the UN. It consists of a 8 inhabited islands and a bunch of other islands. I think it’s roughly north of New Zealand or something. As for their invading egypt, they probably only have a coast guard or maybe just lifeguards on the beaches. So, yes, preposterous.
Cairene I totally agree on the if you want to talk about canceling Camp David you must come up with an alternative.
if you guys want to follow kefaya you must follow the website closely.
it seems that the usual b0rked up internal politics @ kefaya are screwing them again, the first time the peace treaty was mentioned within kefaya was after everyone agreed that the main demand kefaya should push is to stop selling energy to Israel.
someone made an argument that selling oil is somehow tied to the peace treaty and so papers discussing how the “peace” treaty is actually cripling started popping up, the most recent example is http://harakamasria.org/node/7287“ rel=”nofollow”>Mohammed Seif Al Dawla’s article
http://harakamasria.org/node/7281“ rel=”nofollow”>George Ishaq wrote a self critical article talking about the failure of the opposition to present a unified front and saying that presenting an alternative to camp david is a good challange for the opposition, he invited all groups to embark on a debate and come up with a concrete alternative and a concrete plan for how to pressure the government in accepting it, his theory is if the opposition succeeds in such a task it would instantly become much stronger and the exercise is bound to help in later coordination and cooperation oppertunities.
now this looked like the begining of an interesting cnversation, it did have the usual kefaya optimism about the 100,000s joining a big mass protest and all that jazz but it was IMO the right approach.
but then all of sudden there is a petition and they’re collecting signatures, and claiming that they can collect 1 million signatures.
who made that decision? why didn’t it wait until that dialog Ishaq talked about started? well that’s typical kefaya.
but being an optimist myself, there is nothing wrong with collecting signatures that show that on principle people want to cancel Camp david, their might be many different alternatives, each with it’s own fans so it makes sense to collect signatures on the generic question while people are discussing the alternatives, the only mistake is they started collecting singatures before the conversation started.
oh and this really is standard kefaya fare, back @ the time of presedential elections kefaya announced that they’ll propose a presedential candidate and in less than 24 hours they removed the announcement from the website and pretended it never happened. fun eh?
but if you’re Egyptian you should be used to living in قعر الØلة by now, whatever you get is the scrappings at the bottom of the pot, our government sucks, our terrorists are incompetent, our islamists pale in comparison to other islamists our left is a joke, our pro democracy movement is well… is kefaya, the best selling opposition weekly is el esbou3 our opposition leadership are people like mahdi 3akef and george ishaq and I’m supposed to be a hotshot blogger
that’s Egypt folks why should you expect better, هنجيبه منين
I am shocked, and appalled, by the ignorance here. Ignorance about Tuvalu. It’s not nice to call it some random ass island. :o) Yes, it is a series of islands and atolls in the Pacific. Its peeps are Polynesian. IT gained its independence from Britain in the 70s. Perhaps the most interesting thing about them, to outsiders, is that, I think, their government sued the US for global warming, because Tuvalu is under threat of disappearing (if water levels rise). I believe they are discussing an en masse migration to Australia or New Zealand, should their islands become uninhabitable due to rising water levels. So. There you have it. A bit more about Tuvalu.
Now. About this Kefaya mumbo jumbo. I was not aware Egypt sold Israel oil. This is *all* the treaty says about it, specifically: “it is agreed that such relations will include normal commercial sales of oil by Egypt to Israel, and that Israel shall be fully entitled to make bids for Egyptian-origin oil not needed for Egyptian domestic oil consumption, and Egypt and its oil concessionaires will entertain bids made by Israel, on the same basis and terms as apply to other bidders for such oil.”
Now, that doesn’t sound unfair or harmful to Egyptian interests. But, also, I don’t know how it plays out in real life. As far as I can tell from a pretty cursory internet search, Israel does not get a majority (or even much?) of its oil from Egypt:
According to the US Department of Energy: “Israel produces almost no oil and imports nearly all its oil needs (around 274,000 bbl/d in 2004). Traditionally, major oil import sources have included Egypt, the North Sea, West Africa, and Mexico. In recent years, however, Israel has stepped up its imports from Russia and the Caspian region (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, etc.) and now reportedly gets a majority of its oil from the former Soviet Union. Israel’s Oil Refineries Ltd. (ORL) also reportedly has negotiated with Mexico for annual supplies of around 3.7 million barrels (10,000 bbl/d), and in late November 2002, ORL signed a deal to purchase around 10,000 bbl/d from Angola at a cost of $100 million per year.”
This was from 2006 in some American newpaper: “Israel produces only a few thousand barrels a month itself, so 99 percent of its crude oil is imported. Most of it comes from Russia and the “-stans,” and a little from Egypt. Azerbaijan, a landlocked Caspian Sea country, provides about 20 percent of Israel’s oil. That may increase with use of the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, built to get oil from the Caspian Sea area to the Mediterranean Sea.”
So there you have it. Anyway all this talk of cancellation of peace treaties STINKS. I might be naive and operating from my biased ISraeli-American standpoint but it seems to me the less reformers concentrate on Israel and the more they concnetrate on reform, the better everyone’ll be. This sort of talk will also enable right wingers in Israel, which is a shame.
every single reformer has been talking about Israel, even Ayman Nour, hell it’s the 1st point in Kefaya’s manifesto.
it just happens to be a very high priority topic for people here. and surprise surprise the current “reform movement” was spawned out of anti war protests in 2003 and the current fragile unity of all opposition forces was started with the pro intifada protest of 2001.
that’s just how it gets done here.