Word: egyptian
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...across the Middle East. The Gaza attack has strengthened Arab radicals while silencing the voices of moderate states once willing to improve ties with Israel. Egypt is in an especially tight spot: having brokered the old cease-fire and sealed its border with Gaza to lock in Hamas, the Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak is now being accused - by his own people and the larger Arab world - of looking the other way while Gaza burns. (Mubarak has responded by allowing some of Gaza's wounded to be brought to Egypt for treatment...
Egypt, of course, shares Abbas' hostility toward Hamas, originally a creation of the banned but widely popular Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Earlier this year, Hamas created a crisis for the Egyptian regime by blowing a hole in the wall at Rafah, allowing Palestinians to pour into Egypt to buy up basic supplies. Embarrassed and facing domestic and Arab pressure, President Hosni Mubarak left the breach open for the best part of a week before sealing it and renewing Egypt's insistence that it would open the border crossing only to Abbas' men. Now, in the midst of a new political firestorm...
...black pillars of smoke rise over Gaza as a wave of 64 Israeli jet fighters struck again and again. It meant that Israel's leaders were hitting back at the Gaza militants who had rained rockets on the communities of southern Israel even weeks before Dec. 19, when an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas officially ended. (See pictures of Israel's deadly assault on Gaza...
...support is not quite universal. The Israeli strikes have revealed, once again, the stark differences between pro-Western Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and more radical Arab groups like Hizballah in Lebanon. Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has slammed the Egyptian government for suggesting that Hamas brought the attack upon itself. In an angry televised speech Sunday, Nasrallah said Cairo was cooperating with Israel and was selling out not only Palestinians but all Arabs. "There are some who speak of Arab silence, but this is wrong," he said. "There is full Arab cooperation, especially by those who have signed...
Indeed, even as the Israelis said the operation was continuing, Egypt was among the diplomatic casualties. Cairo played host to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Dec. 25. She took the opportunity to criticize Hamas for its rocket attacks. The silence of her Egyptian hosts is now being seen by Palestinians as indirect collusion with Israel, damaging Cairo's ability to play mediator. Furthermore, in the contest for primacy between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas - as the "victim" of this episode - emerges as the victor in the eyes of Arabs and Palestinians. Already, elements of Abbas' Fatah Party...