Free Republic

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- The savage fighting between Israel and Hamas is escalating in Gaza, cease-fire efforts take on elements of farce, and bravado rules the public discourse. But even through the fog of war, a few endgame scenarios can nonetheless be glimpsed. For the moment, the deadlock is well-entrenched: As long as the crippling blockade of Gaza remains in place, Hamas says it will continue firing rockets at Israel - terrifying but mostly ineffectual, thanks to the "Iron Dome" defense system. Israel says the blockade must stay to stop a terrorist government from importing yet more weapons. :snip:...

The Egyptian government continues concerted attempts to dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood’s sources of funding. In Contrast to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s overtures to Muslim Brotherhood members not involved in violence in the post-30 June 2013 period, the government is continuing to follow through on policies aimed at politically eliminating the Islamist organisation and cutting off its sources of funding. Most recently the Teachers and Pharmacists Syndicates, long time political platforms for the Brotherhood, were sequestrated. Earlier this week the assets of Zad and Seoudi supermarket chains, owned by leading Brotherhood members Khairat Al-Shater and Abdel-Rahman Seoudi, were seized. Though it sometimes...

Partial results indicate that Egypt’s former army chief, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, is headed for a big victory. According to Reuters, Sisi’s campaign said Wednesday night that the popular candidate had captured 93.4 percent of the votes with 2,000 polling stations counted. Judicial sources said he had 89 percent with 3,000 polling stations counted. Sisi’s only rival, Hamdeen Sabahi, was on 2.9 percent according to the Sisi campaign, while the judicial sources put Sabahi on 5 percent. The rest of the ballots were deemed void. …

CAIRO--(Reuters) - As the Egyptian state presses its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the man expected to become president has deployed a new weapon in the battle with the Islamists: his own vision of Islam. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who deposed the Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi and is expected to be elected president later this month, has cast himself as a defender of religion and taken aim at the doctrinal foundations of Islamist groups the state is seeking to crush. Striking a pious tone that sets him apart from former president Hosni Mubarak, Sisi also appears to be...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution by referendum, state media reported on Thursday, a widely expected outcome that nudges army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ever closer to a bid for the presidency. The vote advances a transition plan the military-backed government unveiled after deposing Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July following mass unrest over his rule. The constitution won wide support among the many Egyptians who favored Mursi's removal. The Muslim Brotherhood had called for a boycott, saying the vote was part of a coup that deposed an elected leader and revived a brutal police state....

CAIRO - Egyptian voters in a referendum held this week have overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, an Interior Ministry official said on Wednesday, a result that could pave the way for army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to announce his candidacy for president. "Turnout so far may exceed 55 percent and the approval of the constitution is perhaps more than 95 percent," Major General Abdel Fattah Othman, director of public relations for the ministry, told private satellite channel Al-Hayat. He was citing preliminary results of the two-day vote that ended at 9 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) on Wednesday. The...

Recently, only hours after a deadly suicide car bombing that targeted a police headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, Egypt, the Egyptian government blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the attack and declared the group a terrorist organization. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, denied involvement in the bombing, and an al-Qaida-linked group based in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed 16 people. Though the Muslim Brotherhood is not connected to that group and there is no direct evidence regarding the Brotherhood’s alleged involvement, the military- backed government said it...

According to a report by Egyoffline, posted in English by Eman Nabih (h/t BNI), Russia has released a classified U.S. document that details plans by the Obama administration to excite domestic insurrections in Egypt. The reason? To overthrow the government that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi. Does Obama administration fear a "new Nasser"? It is important to emphasize that while there are detailed descriptions of the “confidential report” and that much of it makes sense in the context of the Obama administration’s actions in the Middle East, no link to the report has been provided nor has any information...

U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday urged the White House to lift its suspension of military aid to Egypt, AFP reports. The lawmakers warned that freezing funds and weapons deliveries might unravel decades of cooperation with a key regional ally. Democratic Representative Eliot Engel, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he had initially supported a temporary halt to deliveries of F-16 aircraft to the Egyptian military following its ouster of President Mohammed Morsi in July. “But today I do not believe that suspending the military aid will make the Egyptian government more democratic or make it easier for the...

Addressing graduates of military academies is a standard responsibility for high-ranking military officers all over the world. But last week, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the commander of Egypt’s armed forces, which recently deposed the country’s first freely elected president, went far beyond the conventions of the genre in a speech to graduates of Egypt’s Navy and Air Defense academies. Sisi’s true audience was the wider Egyptian public, and he presented himself less as a general in the armed forces than as a populist strongman. … Sisi’s speech was only the latest suggestion that he will not be content to simply serve...

The upshot of all of this is that when Sisi calls on all Egyptians to rally "in every public square", and when the general characterises these forthcoming rallies as a "mandate" to fight "violence and terrorism" this has to be seen as paving the way for more military action. The end game is not very difficult to see. Sisi has already given the world a taste of what he is willing to do when officers opened fire on peaceful protesters during morning prayers. There were at least 50 dead on the spot, possibly as many as a 100 in total....

CARLISLE — With unrest in Egypt, U.S. military officials looking for insight might test the ties they formed with the Egyptian defense minister, Lt. Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, when he was a student at the Army War College. “In this little historical Pennsylvania town, the most important school in the world operates under the radar,” said retired Col. Stephen Gerras, a professor of behavioral science at the Carlisle Barracks. Al-Sisi was Gerras’ student. In 2006, he watched the Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks, 21-10, in the Super Bowl in Gerras’ home. Gerras remembers him as a warm man, quiet and devout....

Bear breeding ... A giant adult panda, Sisi, is carried to a room for sperm collection at a giant panda breedingand research facility in Chengdu, China. Veterinarians failed to collect his sperm after two attempts. Photo: Reuters