Russia backs away from Syria and Morsi stands up to the army
Everyone is fighting, especially over a new film depicting the Prophet’s successor
Elhanan Miller is the former Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
A Russian decision to stop exporting weapons to Syria features high in Arab news Tuesday.
“Moscow stops exporting weapons and calls on the opposition to adopt a political solution,” reads the headline of London-based daily Al-Hayat. The daily reports Russian talks with Syrian opposition members in exile, who are trying to convince the Putin administration to impose sanctions on Syria through the UN Security Council. One opposition member, Michel Kilo, tells Al-Hayat that he warned the Russians that Syria may slip into civil war, “the only winners of which will be Israel and the United States.”
Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat reports that Saudi Arabia is demanding international sanctions on Syria within the framework of a UN Security Council decision under Chapter 7. The daily features smiling Syrian oppositionists in Homs wearing T-shirts and baseball caps and brandishing AK-47s while they make the victory sign to the camera.
London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi focuses in its reporting on Syria on a military maneuver that included “new weapons introduced into its arsenal.” The weapons used in the coastal exercise were mostly offensive, reports the daily, including land-to-sea and land-to-air missiles, as well as amphibious vehicles.
One opposition member, Michel Kilo, tells Al-Hayat that he warned the Russians that Syria may slip into civil war, ‘the only winners of which will be Israel and the United States’
A-Sharq Al-Awsat columnist Abd Al-Rahman Rashed writes that Assad’s regime will inevitably fall, likely by the end of the year, but at that point the people of the region will be disgusted with the weak positions of their governments.
“Bashar Assad’s regime is being eroded from within, and proof of that abounds. But until we reach the point of collapse… official Arab positions will have eroded to the point of public hatred. These official positions of bystanders will find themselves besieged tomorrow by Jihadist movements which will ride the wave of popular rage and criticism against the regimes,” writes Rashed.
Morsi raises the ante
A day after Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi raised the ante in his standoff with the military and the Constitutional Court by reconvening the parliament disbanded by the court, his opponents react.
“The Constitutional Court answers Morsi: Our decisions are binding,” reads the headline of A-Sharq Al-Awsat. The daily, which never favored Morsi, interviews a senior Egyptian judge, Muhammad Al-Gamal, who says Morsi and parliament speaker Saad Katatni could be imprisoned and sacked for breaking the law. He called on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to intervene immediately “to prevent the onslaught against the constitutional and legal legitimacy.”
Al-Hayat leads with SCAF’s response, calling on Morsi to “respect the constitutional declaration,” noting that SCAF will probably respond to Morsi’s move through a new decision by the Constitutional Court. An unnamed source tells the daily that Morsi’s new government will mostly include technocrats and not political figures.
‘The clash is inevitable. It will begin as a constitutional-legal debate and may develop into fighting between the Islamist and liberal-secular forces’
Meanwhile, Egyptian establishment daily Al-Ahram tries to calm the tension between the Brotherhood and the military by reporting in its headline that “the Brotherhood rules out a clash with SCAF.”
But independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm highlights the clash between the sides, calling it “an unprecedented struggle between the president of the republic and the highest court in the country.”
Al-Quds Al-Arabi editor-in-chief Abd Al-Bari Atwan, always the provocateur, writes that the Egyptian impasse may “deepen the state of division between the secular liberals on the one hand and the Islamic forces on the other.”
“We are facing a major standoff, featuring a state with two heads: the first is the elected president who wants to restore all of the powers vested in him by free and fair elections, and the other is a military establishment which views its role as protecting the state and implementing court decisions,” writes Atwan. “The clash is inevitable. It will begin as a constitutional-legal debate and may develop into fighting between the Islamist and liberal-secular forces.”
New historic series touches Islamic sensibilities
A new historic TV series about Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad and his second successor, is stirring debate in Egypt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23DdGaBCnlc
Saudi-owned news channel Elaph reports that the series, scheduled for broadcast during the month of Ramadan beginning late July, has offended devout Muslims who object to artistic depiction of the prophet and his close circle of family and friends.
An Egyptian lawyer filed a complaint against the series this week, demanding that it be banned from all stations broadcast through the NileSat satellite. Al-Azhar, Egypt’s leading religious academy and its highest authority on Islamic law, had issued an opinion banning the depiction of historic Islamic characters on screen.
