Al-Jazeera is reticent, but PA dailies blame Israel for killing Arafat
Editorials say Western, Arab leaders knew of Israel's intentions to knock off Palestinian leader
The efforts of Syria’s opposition to overpower the Syrian army still loyal to Bashar Assad top Arab news on Thursday.
London-based daily Al-Hayat focuses on the exiled Syrian opposition. It notes the closing statement issued by participants of the opposition meeting in Cairo this week, prioritizing the toppling of Assad before political reform can go forward. This statement comes in stark contrast to the superpower conference held in Geneva earlier in the week, which envisioned a unity government in Syria and did not mention regime change.
Saudi-owned A-Sharq Al-Awsat leads its coverage of Syria by highlighting the rising numbers of defectors in the Syrian army. Citing “high-ranking Syrian military sources,” the daily claims that hundreds of soldiers are breaking ranks with the army on a daily basis. A defecting Syrian general, Fayez Amr, tells the daily that 15 Syrian generals have fled to Turkey, four to Jordan, and an unknown number arestill inside Syria.
‘The stern Russian language remains; the wishful American language continues and the language of illusion-salesman Kofi Annan did not change’
Al-Hayat columnist Abd Al-Wahhab Badrakhan writes that the day after Assad was discussed both in Geneva (by the superpowers) and in Cairo (by exiled Syrian oppositionists), nothing has changed.
“The stern Russian language remains; the wishful American language continues and the language of illusion-salesman Kofi Annan did not change, but only got worse with his claim that the ‘process’ will take a year,” writes Badrakhan.
A-Sharq Al-Awsat editor-in-chief Tareq Homayed comments Thursday on Bashar Assad’s recent interview with Turkish and Iranian media, in which the Syrian president apologized for downing the Turkish jet.
“Assad’s latest interview with the Turkish daily shows us that he is entrenched, and is continuing to dig. The fire has already reached the edges of his clothes, increasing the likelihood of a sudden collapse in Syria, as the British foreign minister warned yesterday,” writes Homayed.
Arafat mystery captures Arab audiences
A decision by the Palestinian Authority to investigate the 2004 death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat following an Al-Jazeera documentary claiming that he was poisoned by polonium features high in Arab media Thursday.
The website of Al-Jazeera continues to highlight the story in an unusually large feature box at the top of the page and three separate articles: one focusing on the PA decision, one focusing on his widow Suha Arafat, and a third reporting that Tunisia is calling on the Arab League to investigate Arafat’s death.
Tunisian foreign minister Rafiq Abd A-Salam urged the Arab League to establish an international inquiry commission to examine Arafat’s death, modeled after the UN commission tasked with investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005.
The comparison to the Hariri assassination is also mentioned in an editorial published in PA mouthpiece Al-Ayyam Thursday. Unlike Al-Jazeera, which refrained from explicitly accusing Israel for assassinating Arafat, Palestinian editorials do not shy away from placing the blame squarely on Israel.
“Only time, and a serious investigation of the crime, will reveal the complete circumstances of this crime, which can be added to the list of heinous crimes perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people,” reads an editorial in Al-Ayyam by Talal Okal. Okal also blames Western and Arab leaders of colluding in the assassination of Arafat, or at least having knowledge of it.
‘No one doubted that national leader and martyr Yasser Arafat died of poisoning’
Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, another PA mouthpiece, follows in the same vein with an editorial by Adli Sadeq titled “Arafat was bombed by a nuclear reactor.”
“No one doubted that national leader and martyr Yasser Arafat died of poisoning. There are dozens of indications in the form of statements, conversations and positions that revealed to us, ahead of time, that the occupiers decided to kill him after his colleagues in the club of Arab ‘legitimate’ leaders had forsaken him,” writes Sadeq.
Morsi allowed to touch the army, but only a bit
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi will attend the graduation ceremony of two military academies Thursday, that of the navy and of the air defense.
Al-Hayat reports that this will be Morsi’s first involvement in military affairs. He will read out the text of the cadets’ pledge of allegiance to the republic, to be repeated by them.
Featuring a large photo of Morsi meeting with two army generals, Hussein Tantawi and Sami Anan, Al-Quds Al-Arabi leads its news with reports of a challenge to Morsi’s leadership from the religious right. The Salafis in Egypt are refusing the nomination of a Christian or a woman as vice president, the daily reports.
The story comes on the backdrop of reports that Salafi extremists calling themselves “the commission for the prevention of vice,” an extra-legal modesty police, killed a student in the city of Suez for walking the streets with his fiancee.