My video report on events leading up to the referendum - as well as voting day itself - ran today on Democracy Now! Unfortunately the last 30 seconds were cut off (the perils of live television) so it ends a little abruptly:
I had a brief report today on Democracy Now! on protesters gathered at the presidential palace four days before the scheduled referendum on the constitution.
I have a long report on Democracy Now! today about the latest developments in Egypt that I produced with videographer Hany Massoud.
It includes interviews with: Gehad El-Haddad, senior adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood; Khaled Fahmy, the chair of the history department at the American University in Cairo; Ahmed Shokr and Egyptian writer and activist; Lobna Darwish, a longtime Egyptian protester and Khaled Dawoud, the spokesperson for the National Salvation Front.
My latest for The Nation, unfortunately it was published just a few hours before President Morsi delivered a speech where he offered some concessions which are being criticized by the opposition as being merely cosmetic and a case of too little, too late.
Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi clashed in the streets around the presidential palace Wednesday, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and firing birdshot at each other in the largest outbreak of violence between rival political groups since the revolution began. Seven people were killed and more than 670 injured, according to the Health Ministry, as Cairo’s affluent Heliopolis district was transformed into a scene of chaos and bloodshed.
The clashes spread outside of Cairo, erupting in Alexandria and Mahalla. The offices of the Muslim Brotherhood were set ablaze in Suez and Ismailia.
The street battles marked a major escalation in the crisis that erupted on November 22, when President Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a constitutional declaration that granted him near absolute powers and placed him beyond the review of any court until the ratification of a new constitution.
The decree united Morsi’s fractured non-Islamist opposition and sparked some of the largest street demonstrations in Egypt since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Tens of thousands gathered in Tahrir Square and launched a mass sit-in to oppose Morsi’s seizure of power. Meanwhile, thousands of judges—including the leaders of Egypt’s highest appeals courts—launched a strike in protest.
Morsi and the Brotherhood responded by doubling down on a strategy to force the transition process and hastily called for a final vote by the Constituent Assembly on the draft constitution. Nearly all of the 100-member body’s non-Islamist members, including representatives of the Coptic Christian Church, had already withdrawn from the assembly.
In a marathon, seventeen-hour session broadcast on state television, assembly members—nearly all of them Islamist—passed each of the 234 articles of the constitution in near unanimity, finally ending at 7 am the next day. Critics blasted the process as reminiscent of the Mubarak era, when the regime would ram legislation through the parliament. The text itself has come under criticism for restricting certain freedoms and containing vague language that lawmakers could use to curtail rights.
My interview on Democracy Now! about the clashes outside the presidential palace:
I was interviewed on Democracy Now! today about all the latest developments in Egypt:
My latest in The Nation on Morsi’s constitutional decree and the Muslim Brotherhood’s forcing through a Constituent Assembly vote on the constitution:
Egypt’s turbulent transition is in the midst of one its most chaotic and divisive periods since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The leaders of the assembly drafting Egypt’s new constitution are hurriedly forcing through a final document amid an uproar by the body’s non-Islamist members. A quarter of the assembly has withdrawn in protest and a growing national strike by judges threatens to bring the country’s judicial system to a halt. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, culminating in one of the largest demonstrations in post-Mubarak Egypt. The offices of the Muslim Brotherhood in several governorates have been ransacked and firebombed and protesters have faced off against police amid clouds of tear gas in downtown Cairo.
President Mohammed Morsi ignited the political firestorm on November 22, when he issued a controversial constitutional decree granting himself sweeping and unchecked powers. The declaration stipulated that, until a constitution is approved and an elected parliament in place, all presidential decisions since taking office in July are “final and binding and cannot be appealed by any way or to any entity.”
The decree puts Morsi—who already had executive and legislative authority—beyond the reach of the judicial branch, adding, ominously, that “The President may take the necessary actions and measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution.” The decree also denies judges the power to dissolve either the Constituent Assembly, tasked with writing the country’s constitution, or the Shura Council—Parliament’s largely toothless upper house. Both bodies are dominated by Islamists, with the Muslim Brotherhood holding the most power.
In two moves viewed more favorably, Morsi also replaced the public prosecutor—a longtime revolutionary demand—and established a new court to try those responsible for violence against protesters. (To date, almost no one has been brought to justice for the killing of over 1,000 protesters during the revolution.) But these actions are like a “drop of honey in poison,” as Egyptians say, given the larger power play by the president.
In a joint statement, twenty-two Egyptian human rights organizations condemned the decree, saying Morsi, “who now possesses authorities beyond those enjoyed by any president or monarch in Egypt’s modern history, has dealt a lethal blow to the Egyptian judiciary, thereby declaring the beginning of a new dictatorship.”
My piece for The Nation telling the effect of Israel’s assault on Gaza through the stories of ordinary Palestinians:
The traces of the Israeli drone strike that killed 28-year-old Samaher Qdeih are all around her family home. A large indentation in a sandy courtyard marks the point of impact. Shrapnel is etched in the trunk of a lemon tree and the side of the house it stands next to. Water drips slowly out of a cracked pipe around shards of glass and plastic that litter the floor. A nearby concrete wall is stained with blood.
Samaher died on November 17, day four of Israel’s assault on Gaza, when she rushed home with her brother, Nidal, at 9 pm, after hearing the bombs begin to fall in their neighborhood in the southern town of Khan Yunis. The drone strike hit as the two were crossing the family courtyard to seek shelter indoors. Samaher was killed instantly, her family says. The blood-soaked blanket they covered her with is still piled in a corner. Twenty-seven-year-old Nidal’s leg and arm were badly wounded and he was eventually evacuated across the Rafah border crossing to Egypt for medical help, escorted by his father.
Forty days earlier, Samaher had given birth to her first daughter, Mayar. When the motherless baby is brought out wrapped in a blanket, her great uncle—who had been standing quietly to the side, resting both hands on his cane—begins to sob heavily, kissing Mayar on the forehead before being gently pulled away and consoled by family members.
“We have seen death with our eyes,” says Samaher’s sister.
Samaher is one of more than 160 Palestinians killed during Israel’s eight-day assault on Gaza. Of those who died, more than 100 were civilians, including thirty-four children, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Some 1,000 were wounded, all but thirty of them civilians. Meanwhile, countless others—who do not figure into most casualty figures—are suffering from deep emotional trauma.
I was interviewed on Democracy Now! today about Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s constitutional decree that grants him sweeping and unchecked powers:
In the second part of the interview I discuss the ceasefire in Gaza and its implications:
My piece for The Nation filed from Gaza after the ceasefire agreement ended Israel’s eight-day assault on the territory:
Gaza erupted in celebration Wednesday night, as thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the wake of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Minutes after the agreement was implemented at 9:00pm, the crackle of gunfire, ululations, and cries of Allah Akbar began to ring out from the city’s mosques, drowning out the hum of drones still circling overhead. Dark, deserted and under bombardment for the past eight days, Gaza’s streets sprang back to life, with cars whizzing by honking their horns, fireworks exploding in the sky and thousands of residents pouring into the streets waving flags, and chanting victory over Israel.
“There is an unprecedented mood among the people,” says Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza. “We lost a lot, we are bleeding, but there is this feeling that we made it, that this was a victory.”
The final 24 hours were particularly brutal. Israel unleashed an escalated assault on the strip, continuing the attacks even as the ceasefire was being announced in Cairo by Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, alongside US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At least one Palestinian was killed in the final minutes before the 9pm deadline—a macabre countdown before the assault finally ended.
Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Independent journalist. Democracy Now! correspondent. Fellow at The Nation Institute. Based in Cairo.
