Egyptian press blames Copts for their clashes with police

Bloody clashes in Cairo between Coptic protesters and Egyptian security forces which left 24 dead and nearly 300 wounded topped the Arab news on Monday. The clashes began after some 10,000 Copts came to Cairo to protest the demolition of a church in the southern province of Aswan, demanding to sack the governor.

The establishment daily Al-Ahram put the blame for the violence on the protesters, claiming they had blocked the road to the Radio and Television Building (Maspiro) in downtown Cairo and fired live ammunition at the security forces guarding the building. Al-Ahram’s reporting focused on the protesters’ actions; according to its eye-witnesses they had hurled Molotov Cocktails and stones at army jeeps, shouting that this was “the Coptic Million man march”. The paper blamed unnamed armed groups from within the initially peaceful Coptic demonstration for initiating the violence.

The pro-government daily Al-Masryoon went further, claiming that incitement by Coptic clerics caused “Coptic extremists” to resort to violence.

In what has become an almost automatic response to sectarian clashes in Egypt since the ouster of President Husni Mubarak in February, Media Minister Usama Haikal told Egyptian television that “foreign hands” were behind the violence. He added that this time Egypt is in real danger, and that Sunday’s events were “more than regular civil strife.”

Prime Minister Isam Sharaf went on television Monday morning and delivered an appeal which the independent news site Youm 7 termed “week and feeble”. Stammering and looking away from the camera at his pre-written speech, Sharaf dubbed the violence “sad events” and said Egypt was the victim of “a malicious plot”. He downplayed the sectarian character of the violence, saying that one could not call it sectarian strife. In his speech, Sharaf not once mention the word “Copt” and said the prevailing atmosphere in Egypt allowed “the enemies of the nation to harm its security and spread disunity.”

Coptic Egyptians have long bemoaned the absence of a law facilitating the building of churches, but rather than speak of the government’s roll in solving the tension through legislation and tighter security presence around churches, Sharaf called on members of civil society – clerics, journalists and intellectuals – to “fill the gaps in Egypt’s social fabric.”

“Egypt’s PM Offers sympathy but no solutions to night’s violence,” read the headline of Youm 7’s coverage.

Egypt’s leading independent daily, Al-Masry Al-Youm, provided gruesome photos and video clips of victims, focusing on the military’s violence. The daily claimed that armored personnel carriers intentionally ran over peaceful protesters. The daily profiled two casualties, Mina Daniel and Michael Masad, who were reportedly run over by police vehicles. “I am to blame for Michael’s death,” wrote his fiancé Viviane on her Facebook page. “I was weak and unable to protect him from the army.”

Palestinians have prisoners on their minds

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has declared October 12 as a “national day in support of prisoners in the occupation prisons.” Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails began a hunger strike 13 days ago, protesting harsh imprisonment conditions, including a ban on Palestinian and Arab television, a ban on long-distance university education, and limited serving of meat at meals. But Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqi told the London-based Arab daily Al-Hayat that the prisoners’ fundamental demand was to end the practice of solitary confinement.

Palestinian grassroots movements in Gaza, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front (DFLP) called on Palestinians in the West Bank and within Israel to go on general strike Wednesday.

Minister Qaraqi told the independent Palestinian News Agency Ma’an that the prisoners’ health condition was rapidly deteriorating, but they nevertheless planned to escalate their hunger strike and stop drinking water “just like the Irish hunger strike”.

Meanwhile, the PLO has requested the Palestinian ambassador at the UN Riyadh Mansour to file an official complaint to the Security Council against Israel for its treatment of the Palestinian prisoners, the PA’s mouthpiece Al-Ayyam reported on Monday.

In its letter to the UN, the PA also claimed that prisoners were deprived of medical treatment and medicine, and were not allowed to receive dental care.

“These measures are part of the daily policy of harassment which the Israeli government implements against the various strata of Palestinian society,” the PLO wrote to the UN. According to Al-Ayyam, 6000 Palestinians are serving time in Israeli prisons, 20 of whom are held in solitary confinement.

Israel recently tightened its measures against Hamas prisoners in response to the Islamic movement’s continued refusal to allow the International Red Cross to visit Gilad Shalit, held captive in Gaza since 2006.

But whereas the PA put the blame for the plight of Palestinian prisoners squarely on Israel, the Hamas government in Gaza accused the PA for continuing to arrest Hamas members in the West Bank. The Palestinian Information Center, a Hamas-affiliated news website, reported that six Hamas members were arrested by Abbas’ forces across the West Bank Sunday, including a schoolteacher from the town of Sa’ir near Hebron who was reportedly beaten violently in front of his pupils. The site also accused PA security forces in Nablus of re-arresting 15 Hamas prisoners recently freed from Israeli prisons.

In a press statement issued Monday, Hamas parliament members in the West Bank said that Palestinian demands regarding prisoners held by Israel lacked credibility as long as the PA itself continued to arrest Palestinians for political reasons.

“Political arrests in the West Bank must stop so that solidarity activities with prisoners in the occupation prisons will be effective and carry the proper weight,” the statement read.

Hamas warns PA against resuming negotiations with Israel

Hamas government spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told the Palestinian Information Center that Palestinian compliance with calls by the international quartet to resume negotiations with Israel would have dangerous consequences for the Palestinian cause.

“It is time for Abbas to re-read the situation […] and not bind the Palestinian cause to methods that have proven to fail. This is a waste of time and a danger to our principles,” Barhoum said.

He accused the quartet of bias towards the “Zionist enemy.” Earlier, PA government spokesman Nabil Abu-Rudeinah, told the Palestinian official daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah that Abbas was willing to “immediately” resume talks with Israel if it recognized the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiations and froze new construction in the settlements.

Media focuses on Tunisian Islamists

The main Arab news outlets focused Monday on the arrest of 100 Tunisian Islamists who attacked a private TV station which aired the French-Iranian film Persepolis, dealing with religious extremism in Iran. Some 300 Salafists, or fundamentalist Islamists, stormed Nasama TV on Sunday but were dispersed by police.

“300 people attacked our offices and tried to burn them down,” Nabil Al-Qarawi, the station’s president told the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat. “After Persepolis was aired on Friday, people called on Facebook for the burning of Nasama and the killing of reporters.”

An anonymous official in the TV station told the daily that they intended to re-air the film on Tuesday, calling on Tunisian citizens to participate in the general elections scheduled for October 23, “because the fundamentalist danger is real.”

The London-based Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat dubbed the arrest campaign “the first real test of Tunisia’s capacity to deal with extremist Islamist movements, who try to impose their opinion by force.”

This was not the first such attack in post-revolutionary Tunisia. In June, some 100 men stormed Cinema Afrique and disrupted the airing of the film Neither God nor Master by Tunisian director Nadia Feni, which advocated a secular Tunisia.