The main government papers led with regional issues on Saturday, tied to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ current visit to Cairo and the recent war of words between Israel and Syria.
Al-Ahram topped its front page with details from a rather gloomy briefing Abbas gave to several local newspaper editors. The beleaguered Palestinian politician naturally credits Egypt’s role in mediating Palestinian reconciliation talks, and said he has faced “pressure and threats” (presumably from Israel) to not sign an Egyptian-proposed reconciliation document with rival Palestinian factionHamas.
Both Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have recently made remarks on the possibility of war with Syria. Al-Gomhuria on Saturday ran a front-page column by Editor-in-Chief Mohammed Ali Ibrahim asking, “Why is Israel threatening Syria now?”
Running down the list of recent Israeli military interventions—from the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in the 1980s to the more recent bombing of an alleged nuclear research facility in Syria, Ibrahim wrote, “Israel is always showing off its military strength.”
Ibrahim speculated that Israel has grown frustrated with how well Syria has weathered several years of diplomatic isolation. Damascus, he wrote, seems to be gradually coming in from the cold, referencing Syria’s “distinguished relations” with French President NicolasSarkozy and recent American moves to return its long-absent ambassador.
“Tel Aviv feels that Damascus, to a certain extent, may be able to escape from these international sanctions,” Ibrahim wrote.
Ad-Doustour continued its ongoing emphasis on Egypt’s sectarian problems with reports that State Security riot police have deployed in force throughout a village in the governorate ofMonufiya—President Mubarak’s home governorate—to quell rising sectarian tensions there.
Al-Wafd put Cairo’s ongoing butane and cooking gas shortage on its front page, with a picture of citizens lining up to buy increasingly rare gas canisters. The front-page headline claimed that the price of a standard butagas canister had reached LE30, and offered up a conspiracy theory behind the sudden shortage.
“Citizens accuse the government of selling (the canisters) to merchants and to Israel,” the headline read.
