Aib Ya Abu al Ghait

Comment by
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

Instead of taking a firm stand
against Israel’s Nazi-like criminality
in Gaza and other Zionist covert efforts
to destabilize and weaken Egypt, the
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad
Abu al Ghait reportedly lashed out
at the Palestinians recently,
vowing that Egypt would “break the legs
of those who would cross the borders again.”

These harsh remarks, to say the very least, are
unacceptable and shouldn’t have been uttered by
the foreign minister of the largest and most powerful
Arab country. We simply shouldn’t be talking to each
other or about each other in this way. Have we gone mad?

Moreover, the timing of these remarks which are music to
Zionist ears, makes them utterly detestable and injurious
to the feelings of millions of Arabs and Muslim and their
friends around the world who don’t want to see Israeli-Arab
contradictions morphed into inter-Arab contradictions.
To begin with, it is an established fact that the thoroughly-tormented
and thoroughly-starved 1.5 million Gazans don’t and won’t pose any
conceivable threat to the territorial integrity of Egypt, with its 75
million people, nor to Egyptian national security. The real threat
comes from Israel, and Israel alone, whose leaders don’t stop
threatening Egypt.

Gazans, like all Palestinians, love the Egyptian people.
We are one people sharing the same past, present and future.
Our pain is one, our hope is one, and our destiny is one. And
Egypt’s security is our security, and Palestinian freedom and
wellbeing should always be an utmost Egyptian national
interest. Indeed, the presence of 1.5 million Arabs at Sinai’s
eastern tip is an important strategic asset for Egypt,
which ought to be constantly enhanced.

These are axiomatic facts that many Arabs
(who don’t live in the American era)
still take for granted.

However, the ill-conceived statements by the foreign
minister of Egypt, which coincided with a virulent
anti-Palestinian campaign in some quarters of the
Egyptian media, are making us doubt what we
always thought were unquestionable truisms
pertaining to the Arab and Muslim umma (nation).

Egypt is not a banana republic and it should never
ever accept the status of an American-Israeli puppet state.

Hence, the words and acts of Egyptian officials must
never be designed to please and appease the strategic
enemies of Egypt and the Arab-Muslim world. True,
Egypt does receive around $2 billion dollars from the
United States per year.
But this is very much at the expense of vital Egyptian national interests.

Indeed, through this annual aid, the Israeli-controlled
American government has been holding Egypt by the throat,
robbing the biggest Arab country of its free will to
develop its industry and economy.

In fact, one wouldn’t cross into the realm of the unknown by
arguing that had it not been for this scandalous American
blackmail, Egypt would have become the South Korea of the
Arab world. Well, if Iran could do it, why can’t Egypt?

The poisonous bribe has actually seriously debilitated
Egypt’s ability to survive as a viable country. It has also
undermined Egypt’s national security by preventing the
country from developing a strategic deterrent against a
relentlessly bellicose Israel that is drifting menacingly
toward a nationalistic-religious fascism that bears all
the hallmarks of 1938-Germany.

It is lamentable that Egypt is willingly accepting to
castrate itself for the sake of an annual handout of
$2 billion which Egypt effectively pays off in terms of
its national dignity, sovereignty and independence.

Egypt is not poor. Egypt has a huge inventory of
brainpower which if utilized properly can make wonders.
But in order to do that, Egypt needs democracy, an
indispensable prerequisite that can transform Egypt’s
huge potentials into tangible economic achievements...

I know that Egyptians resent any Arab interference in
their internal affairs. And I really respect this
natural concern.

But we are brothers, and we love Egypt, we love it so
much that we can’t keep silent when Egypt is made to
(or duped to) walk on a track that is detrimental to its
interests and wellbeing.

“Aib Ya Abu al-Ghait”!!! Shame on you! Don’t you utter
these words again, because the people whose legs you
would break are your brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.
Do good people treat their family in such a manner?
Does the big brother break the legs of his younger
brothers? Besides, you know who the real bone-broker is.!!

I am saying this because your words were so hurtful, so
painful and so sad. Didn’t the Arab poet say “The oppression
of relatives is more painful than the blow of a sharp sword!”

We Palestinians are not going to relate to your unfortunate
remarks with vindictiveness and malice. Because your
wound is our wound and your sorrow is our sorrow.
And we both know quite well that Israel is the only
beneficiary from an Egyptian-Palestinian misunderstanding.

But, my most dear brother, we must never forget who
the real enemy is. It is Israel, our existential enemy,
not these impoverished and penned-in Gazans who were forced
to break into Egypt to buy flour and food to keep their
children alive as President Mubarak himself testified.

Is this too difficult or too complicated for you to understand?