Arab commentators dismayed by French election results

International envoy to Syria Kofi Annan is at the focus of Arab reporting on Wednesday. Annan has admitted that Bashar Assad has not ceased the use of heavy weaponry against civilians as he committed to, and is expected to deliver a report to the UN Security Council criticizing the Syrian regime.

“Annan asserts that Damascus did not withdraw its forces and heavy weapons from the cities,” reads the headline of London-based liberal daily Al-Hayat. The article displays a video grab of tanks and soldiers in the city of Damascus Tuesday.

“Syria: Summary executions and the ceasefire tally is 685 victims,” reads the bleak headline of Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat. The daily reports opposition claims that pro-regime forces executed nine human rights activists interviewed by the UN monitor team in Hama on Sunday as an act of revenge.

A-Sharq Al-Awsat editor Tariq Homayed attacks the claim that Assad is the protector of minorities in his country by reporting that the regime has arrested a 21-year-old Christian woman, Yara Michelle Shammas, and accused her of belonging to a Salafist Jihadist movement.

“Is there anything more ridiculous than that?” asks Homayed. “Can anyone believe such a regime which has specialized in lying and falsification of facts in such a blatant way? It is completely unbelievable!”

Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an Arab nationalist London-based daily, consistently arguing that violence exists on both sides of the Syrian conflict, reports a car explosion in Damascus which has injured three men across from an Iranian cultural center and the assassination of three army officers in the capital.

Editorials outraged at French election results

Many editorials Wednesday deal with the results of the first round of the French presidential elections and their ramifications on France’s sizable Muslim population.

The lead editorial in Al-Quds Al-Arabi deals with the relative success of Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National. In an article titled “against the French right and the racism toward North Africans,” the editor writes that Le Pen gaining some 18% of the vote is “a clear indication of the rise of the extreme right not only in France but in the entire European continent.”

“In light of the harsh economic crisis, European societies seek a scapegoat on which to blame symptoms of this crisis, such as unemployment and a decreased standard of living. The foreign immigrants, and particularly members of the North African Union, become a hanger on which they hang their governments’ mistakes.”

Al-Hayat columnist Abdullah Iskandar points to the relative success of the political extremes, both on the right and the left, noting that the two candidates — Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande — will now campaign to the public which voted for the radical parties. In an editorial titled “European concern towards France,” Iskandar argues that both extremes worry Europe for different reasons.

“Both candidates realize they are under the European microscope,” writes Iskandar. “Therefore, they have limited themselves in the first round to dealing with European foreign policy issues. As far as they did deal with another issue, it had to do with the arrival of immigrants from abroad to France, not with the international relations with those countries.”

Al-Hayat columnist Randa Taqi A-Din writes in an editorial titled “The rise of the French extreme right,” that Marine Le Pen will surely become a political force to be reckoned with, regardless of whether Sarkozy or Hollande wins the elections on May 6.

Taqi A-Din outlines Le Pen’s anti-European economic policies, adding that “no doubt, Le Pen’s popularity also stems from all those who fear the Islamic customs of five million Muslims in France.”

Egyptian-Saudi crisis over arrest of Egyptian lawyer

The arrest of Egyptian lawyer Ahmad Gizawi in the Saudi city of Jeddah,  accused of smuggling drugs into the country, has quickly morphed into a diplomatic crisis between the two states, reported widely on Arab and Egyptian media Wednesday.

Al-Gizawi, who had filed a lawsuit against the Saudi King Abdullah for Saudi Arabia’s mistreatment of Egyptian prisoners in the Kingdom, was arrested at the airport and charged with smuggling nearly 22,000 Xanax pills into the country, stashed in milk bottles with a cover of the Quran.

Saudi ambassador to Egypt Ahmad Qattan revealed the details of the arrest to Arab media Tuesday, denying rumors circulated in Egyptian media whereby Gizawi was sentenced to lashes. The Egyptian ambassador to Saudi Arabia confirmed the Saudi allegations, claiming in a TV interview that Gizawi signed a statement confirming the allegations, Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported.

All this did not prevent hundreds of Egyptians from protesting Tuesday across from the Saudi embassy for Gizawi’s release, invoking allegations of mistreatment and discrimination of Egyptians living in Saudi Arabia. Demonstrators carried posters denouncing King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as an American lackey.