I have been incredibly busy, “uploading” information and impressions from here in Egypt into my brain, renewing old acquaintances here, making new ones, rushing around in general. My daughter– and one-time research assistant– Leila is here for the week, too, taking her one-week midwinter break from teaching first grade in snowbound Brooklyn with us here, which has been a LOT of fun. So yes, on Sunday I did spend a day doing out with her to see some pyramids…
It was good to re-connect with 5,000-plus years of this ancient civilization, with its underpinnings of an incredibly stable state/bureaucratuic structure. Also really interesting to drive through the peri-urban areas– to see the extent to which the hyper-fertile green fields are being eaten up by “informal housing”– that is, dense clumps of four- and five-story concrete and brick buildings that have metastasized out from the older city in many, many directions.
We had a brief discussion along the way about the effects of the Aswan High Dam, built in the 1960s to regulate what used to be the very frequent (and actually, soil-enriching) inundations of the Nile down here at the apex of the agriculturally fabulous Delta. The person who was with us said that since the dam was built, the absence of flooding means the farmers downstream can now get five crops per two-year cycle, where previously it was only one crop per year. But they need a lot of ferilizer to keep the soil productive on such a punishing schedule… Anyway, all the irrigated land we saw as we dove around– to Memphis, to Saqqara, to Giza– was intensely cultivated and very green, and the villages that remained unengulfed by the city’s growth looked bustling and productive.
Monday, Bill and I drove out for lunch with Mohamed Hassanein Heikal and his wife Hedayat at their farm west of town. Getting out of Cairo took– as always– a long time, and then we sped through some agricultural land and some near-desert. When we were about 50 minutes out from the city center– well into a partly agricultural, partly desert-side zone– we passed a massive conglomeration of fantastically futuristic buildings, all of them constructed from acres of sheeny blue glass supported by whitewashed concrete. The effect was somewhere between “Mediterranean Arabic” as in Tunisia’s cute seaside villages, Windows’ “blue screen of death”, and just plain tacky… This was the “Smart Village”, a huge zone of office structures and labs for participants in the country’s booming IT sector. (With reportedly big investment from Bill Gates, hence perhaps the “blue screen of death” effect?)
We sped on… Barely five minutes later as we drove along a broad tree-lined road Bill nudged me: “Look!” Ahead of us was a herd of camels being herded along the other side of the road to, presumably, some camel market nearby. There were about thirty of them, all trotting/galloping fast fast along the road, all keeping to their own side of it, and being herded by (as far as I could see) a single herder mounted on his own camel who brought up the rear and controlled them by, I suppose voice commands. It was a great sight– one I have never seen before. The camels had paint-writing on their flanks and their full, plumped-out humps; it looked like the names of their owners or perhaps the names of butchers who had bought this meat on a futures market.
As we continued driving, we passed a couple of smaller herds, and I saw one large pickup truck with a couple of very recalcitrant-looking camels tied down in the back. Must have been market day somewhere close?
Heikal, for those who don’t know much Egypt, was a key eminence grise of the Nasser regime who often acted as an intermediary between Nasser and western powers in times when Nasser was intent on trying to hew to a neutral position in the Cold War. He became Nasser’s Minister of Information, and kept that job under Sadat after Nasser died of a heart attack in fall 1970. After Sadat undertook his peace diplomacy with Israel Heikal became a vocal critic of that… And then, when Sadat went into his last fatal spiral of paranoia in fall 1981 and started locking up everyone whom he suspected of harboring any independent thoughts at all, Heikal was one of those imprisoned.
(I was working in London at the time– including, doing a little research on Heikal’s behalf in the Public Records Office in Kew into some aspects of Britain’s policy in Egypt in the late 1940s. But as the Egyptian crisis deepened I went to Cairo to do some reporting, and I was able to go visit Hedayet and get some news back to their friends in London about what was going on… I think I have only seen her once since then; so it was good to reconnect with them both this week… )
These days, Heikal, who is 84, is doing a weekly half-hour program on Al-Jazeera in which he is narrating his research and analysis of, I believe, events during his entire time close to power. He has been doing it for about three years now and has reached 1955. It’s an interesting format: he sits behind a desk looking very scholarly, and brings out documents– both the original diplomatic records (maybe some that I had gotten for him from the PRO back in 1981?)– and their Arab translations, and discusses both the documents and the other events around them…
Anyway, we had a good lunch conversation there with the Heikals and their other guests. Heikal said, “Ask me anything!” and I did. One of the things I asked him about was the succession issue here in Egypt. He was adamant that Gamal Mubarak would not be the next president: “Everyone hates him!” he exclaimed at one point. He also talked at length about the extent to which President Mubarak has insulated and isolated himself from ordinary Egyptians and has built an impermeable bubble of courtiers and yes-men around himself.
One of the other lunch guests remarked on the fact that that morning, Mubarak had presented the Egyptian “Order of Merit”, one of the country’s highest honors, on the outgoing head of US Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid. “Outrageous! That just proves how isolated Mubarak has become!” was Heikal’s reaction. (I haven’t seen this significant award mentioned anywhere else. Has anyone else seen any reports of it? Maybe the news of it was fairly tightly held by the Mubarak courtiers so as not to embarrass the ageing Pharaoh?)
More later on the content of those conversations… That evening we were once again generously hosted, this time by Ali Dessouki and his wife Eglal. Ali is a recent Minister for Youth and Sports. He and another of the dinner guests, Muhammad Kamel, are both on the NDP committee that’s working on political reform. We had a very lovely dinner in an incredibly posh new sporting- and social club out to the southeast of the city, and a conversation that was often very lively. Ali grew very impassioned as he explained to me how the regime felt it really had to crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood these days, with an argument along the lines of “We gave them an inch [of liberalization] and they tried to take a mile, so we really had no alternative but to push back against them very hard.” On that basis he was adamant about justifying, for example, the recent re-arrest of some dozens of MB activists immediately after they had just been freed on the orders of a judge…
Yesterday morning I went to the generally pro-establishment Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, where the Director, Dr. Abdel Monem Said Aly had thoughtfully set up a small round-table discussion for me on current strategic developments in the region, with three of his senior colleagues there at the center. The discussion continued for two hours– mainly in Arabic (which I had to record, since I absolutely cannot conduct a conversation in Arabic while taking notes on it at the same time.) Again, more later on that… The main thing that came out of the discussion there was the intense preoccupation that these people all had with the current rise of Iran in the region. Indeed, it was hard to get them to talk about anything else!
Abdel Monem noted that there are a variety of views among Egyptians towards Iran and its nuclear program, with some seeing it as something of a threat, some seeing it as a potentially useful bargaining chip to try to win an agreement on making the whole Middle East into a region free of nuclear weapons, and some seeing it as an actual strategic asset for Egyptians.
And then, on to my afternoon appointment, which was with Dr. Abdel Monem Abul-Futouh, who is both the secretary-general of the Cairo-based Arab Medical Union and a member of the Guidance Council of the MB. Once again, as when I interviewed Dr. el-Arian last week, this meeting was in the downtown headquarters of the Egyptian Medical Society. One of the most notable things he said was to express support for the idea of a secular democratic state in Palestine! (That was, of course, the old proposal of Fateh and the PLO, back in the late 1960s, before they became converted to the idea of a two-state solution.) Dr. Abul-Futouh said something like, “We could see there being either a one-state solution or a two-state solution in Palestine. But I think if there’s a two-state solution they would still be fighting, so from that point of view one state– a secular democratic state– would be better.”
I double-checked with him that he meant to say a secular democratic state, and he said he did. I also probed a little the degree to which he would see the Jewish (Israeli) citizens of present-day Israel being included in this political project, and he said they should be. “Like the South African solution,” he confirmed. He also quoted a saying about the need to give decent treatment to a child born as the result of a rape. “The child should not be punished,” he said. The clear implication was that, though he saw Zionism as a political crime, as he said, the people who had come into being as Israeli citizens as a result of it should not be punished. Or anyway, not all of them. I did not get to complete clarity with him whether only the Jewish Israelis born in Israel or all those currently in Israel should be allowed to stay; though he did say clearly that there should be an end to discriminatory forms of (Jews-only) immigration into the country.
He repeated his and the MB’s respect for Judaism as a religion.
Anyway, more of that later, too.
Later yesterday, a quick meeting with former close presidential confidante Osama al-Baz…
As you can see, I’m having some extremely interesting discussions and experiences here Now, I gotta run and have some more.
20 thoughts on “Notes from Cairo, #3”
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Thanks for this post Helena. Interesting discussions indeed! It is remarkable that, nearly 28 years after the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, there are several Egyptians, even among the intelligentsia, that believe it is somehow acceptable to reject Israel’s existence as a Jewish and Democratic state.
Helena’s interview with Dr. Abdul-Futoh is telling, because it demonstrates that how prevalent the bigotry and intolerance is throughout the Arab world. It certainly belies the idea that all the ills could go away if those nasty little Israelis were dragged to a “peace conference.”
On another note, I didn’t realize that Helena had previously performed research for Heikal, who she describes as, remarkably, being OPPOSED to peace negotiations with Israel. Quite interesting indeed!
Bless your heart, Joshua, you do like to insist on trying to get your “re-framing” comments up here quickly, don’t you.
Of course it would not be remarkable to think that there are Egyptians who continue to reject Israel’s existence as a Volkstaat after the model briefly advocated by a small, militant fringe of the South African Boers (before their project was roundly rejected by the Afrikaaner majority in favor of unitary democratic state of all its citizens; and thank G-d it was.)
However, I don’t believe I provided any evidence of that here, did I?
Joshua, you might want to re-read, a little more carefully, what I quoted Dr. Abul-Futouh as having said on the issue of one state or two states. As a statement made by a member of the Guidance Council of the Muslim Brotherhood it was ground-breaking. Too bad you don’t seem to know or understand enough to recognize that.
Also, re my having done some historical research for someone then writing a work of history– since when does that kind of a relationship imply anything whatsoever about anything? Are we getting into ascribing guilt by association here, perhaps?
Helena,
It’s a well known form of dementia – the madness that comes from being in the grip of a Theory. He’s got the other classic symptom as well: not being able to see the woods for the group identification. Poor boy.
Helena, just to clarify, do you believe that Israel is the equivalent of the South African Volkstaat? Because if you do, you should just explicitly say that you reject Israel’s right to exist as a democratic and Jewish state. Because it puts all your calls for “peace conferences” in proper perspective.
Perhaps Joshua would like to explain how a state can be exclusively Jewish, by jews and for jews, and yet be democratic? The two terms, “Jewish state” and “democratic” seem to be a contradiction? No?
Joshua, for heaven’s sake, only in North Korea does one find in-country one party line comment. A manifested spectrum of thought and opinion, some ignorant, offensive, or pernicious is a healthy sign, and a guidepost to necessary debate in a country still basically a dictatorship.
And the comments in Haaretz, well, there’s nothing like it in the west, but by God some of them (not to mention certain cabinet ministers) are downright fanatically homicidal, just as the hated “other” is often uniformly portrayed; but what a fantastic opportunity and process.
Now, I don’t recall press reports of the South Africans mortaring their black slums; subjecting them to helicopter and jet rocket attack year in year out; kidnapping and murdering thousands upon thousands of people without charge, although many were jailed and murdered; or after creating their Bantustan’s, proceeding to occupy and gobble up the territory which they then “temporarily secure” it behind a multi-billion dollar wall; or repeatedly invading and destroying the infrastructure of neighbouring countries.
Did the the blacks commit murder, mayhem and terrorist acts in their quest to destroy the state to save the nation? You bethcha. Good on them. Justice alone and no wrathful God was on their side. They were at war against an oppressive regime that needed to be changed by whatever means necessary to save the nation.
I do recall press reports of Israeli involvement with South Africa’s nuclear weapons program, wisely voluntarily discarded. Recently come reports that one of at least four of Israel’s submarines is constantly on station armed with nuclear armed cruise missiles; I’ll google the cite if you insist, but the subs and the nukes exist. As do robust covert chemical and biological programs.
So no, its hard to compare Israel with South Africa; Israel’s pathology is much more advanced, acute, and threatening to itself, the regional and the world.
From all appearances, Israel is not a liberal democracy with equality of legal rights for all citizens. Rather, it appears a discriminatory, chauvinistic, expansionist military republic with theocratic elements in government, but many of whom’s members are exempted from the securing of the state, thus avoiding both service and criminality); an international outlaw state in contravention of dozens of U.N resolutions which have the force of law internationally and domestically, unbridled for the present by support of its equally criminal patron, who’s leadership (both countries, now, actually, but I meant Israel) is now regularly reported as awash in corruption, a rogue state with a covert WMD program of long standing, unbridled for the present by support of its equally unbridled criminal patron.
I also recall reports of the voluntary dismantling of the apartheid state after a long an murderous internal conflict, after which the government’s most feared resistance fighter, a pariah exiled to an island prison, is accepted as the leader of the resistance, a legitimate negotiating partner seeking the destruction of the state but not the nation, as it then existed. A terrorist who goes on to become president of a secular state and the toast of the world. Which nation of course has its many problems recovering from its long self-imposed ordeal.
Let us pray and hope Israel’s fate is as fortunate as South Africa’s. Such fortune began with the communications revolution which allowed the atrocities to be seen in the light of day by the world, and led to the long sanctions campaign against it. Today, we sanction the inmates of the prison, but it does seem that the tide of global opinion is turning against Israel. This is particularly troublesome because Israel’s knowledge and resources could contribute so much to the region yet have been squandered on occupation, theft and repression, at a time of critical cleavages boiling up which threaten all players, a pot Israel has perversely contributed much heat to.
kkkassandra:
You seem particularly misinformed about Israel. It is not an “exclusively” Jewish state and minorities have full political rights. Perhaps when you learn a bit more, we can have a real discussion.
The only mideast player who seriously talked about any sort of Volkstaat was Nasser with his pan-arab ideals. Yet in Helena’s bizzaro world, the racists are the ones preaching equality.
There is of course, a secular democratic state in the Middle East. It is called Israel. If the Palestinians would like a secular democratic state as well, then best wishes to them. If they want that state to be pluralistic as well, then they should figure out how to attract 1 million or so Jews to live with them. Let the friendly competition begin!
Charles, perhaps because it thankfully belongs to history rather than the present, you seem to be uninformed about apartheid South Africa’s transgressions against its neighboring states of Mozambique, SouthWest Africa / Namibia and Angola, in addition to those against the majority of its own people, which included violation of UN resolutions and World Court opinions, terrorism, subversion and aggression, invasion and infrastructure destruction which over many years claimed the lives of more than the Arab-Israeli conflict has.
Joshua, you might explain just what “Israel’s right to exist as a democratic and Jewish state” means, especially since you also inform us that it is a secular democratic Jewish state!. Would this right exist if Israel’s population became majority non-Jewish? Do instances of severe discrimination against the non-Jewish population concretely display contradictions between the “democratic” and “Jewish” part, suggested by Kassandra? Do you have any problems with the idea of the USA as a Christian democratic state? If so, why doesn’t the same apply to Israel?
Good points made and good questions posed by you, John R…
However, could we get back to the topic of the main post? I’d love to hear other people weigh in on some of the internal-Egyptian political things I wrote about, what they think of the evolution (or not) of the MB’s thinking, the relevance of that to broader Middle East developments, etc., etc.
I am hoping to write some more about this tomorrow.
Meanwhile, there doesn’t seem much point in trying to engage with someone making the kinds of diversionary (and often counter-factual) arguments that friend Joshua has been trying to make here. I mean, what is it worth to try to speculate further on the cause of the strange animus that J displays here to the idea of a peace conference? Not very much, I think…
So back to the topic here, friends one and all.
Are we getting into ascribing guilt by association here, perhaps?
goodness, no!
Joshua, you might explain just what “Israel’s right to exist as a democratic and Jewish state” means, especially since you also inform us that it is a secular democratic Jewish state!.
Unlike its explicitly Islamic neighbors Israel has no state religion. You’ll find no mention of God in any of its laws. It also ranks significantly higher than all its neighbors on many indices measuring political freedom, eg:
http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_TABLE_2007_v3.pdf
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/press_release/fiw07_charts.pdf
I’d add that (per Avi Chai) significant plurality of Jews (43%)self-identify as ‘secular,’ 35% as atheists!
Do instances of severe discrimination against the non-Jewish population concretely display contradictions between the “democratic” and “Jewish” part
No more than similar discrimination (ethnic, racial, religious, economic) in the US displays contradictions in its democratic character. Certainly none that should call its very existence into question.
Vadim,
You are out of topic, the question isn’t about Israel, it’s about Mubarak and it’s succession in Egypt, about which I’d like to learn more. MiddleEast isn’t limited to Israel and what interests Israel supporters. Sometimes we just want to hear from the other people living in the region.
Helena,
Thanks for sharing your impressions and your interviews with Egyptians. Too bad this discussion has been diverted to other topics.
What forces must come to bear if emergency law is to be lifted in Egypt? Though Gammal Mubarak is being groomed as his father’s successor, do you see other candidates who could supersede him as a presidential candidate? Egypt appears to have lost its role as the leader/conciliator in the Arab world to the Saudis. What are the ramifications?
Though Egyptians are usually mild mannered individuals, I get the feeling that the Egyptian pot of humanity could easily boil over, especially as the Mubarak lid doesn’t allow for adequate venting of or addressing the populace’s demands and concerns. People are definitely struggling and are eager for change.
We were rather taken aback by the degree of security — many guards in the Garden City area and to get into the Orthodox Epiphany midnight services required passing through 2 or 3 security checks. I’ve always felt very safe walking in Cairo and the people have always been very friendly!
Shokran!
Judy
It is more than two centuries since egypt was swept into the maelstrom of the empire: Bonaparte’s invasion, followed by the British, followed in time by Mehemet Ali and his line. All the time Europe, for one reason or another, was the major influence. Not until the Canal crisis had ended with Nasser, badly hurt but triumphant, was Egypt, briefly, a country in which public opinion had any more importance than, eg, the London mob had had in the mid eighteenth century. Nasser was revered very widely in the Arab world, and even beyond as someone who stood up to bullies.
Now Egypt’s government is again insulated from democracy not by institutional arrangements or fiddling with elections but by the US taxpayer which, actively, provides the regime with slush funds and munitions and, equally importantly, gives Egyptian business the benefits of respectability, which is what businesses operating from “on-side” countries get. In other words the US makes Mubarak bulletproof against Egyptians.
The attraction of the Muslim Brotherhood is that it offers people the chance to make their own history. It proffers Islam as armour for their sovereignty, a creed that will see them through the hard times that follow declarations of independence against the hegemon: “blood, sweat, toil and tears.” An attractive package, curiously enough, if the alternative is collaboration.
Bevin
The attraction of the Muslim Brotherhood is that it offers people the chance to make their own history.
Did you know who invented them or who create them?
Please read the history you will find the answer before you come with the above advice about there offers for Muslims.
John R:
As Louis Armstrong once replied in response to the question “What is Jazz?” If you have to ask, you’ll never know.
The specific philosophies behind Zionism are as diverse as the theories behind any development of a national identity. There are many who have written many more words and are more articulate than I. But we need not get into it here. If, nearly 60 years after the creation of the modern state of Israel, and thousands of years of the existence of the Jewish people, you have to ask what it means to have a Jewish and Democratic state, then I think it’s fair to say you have little interest in knowing and more of an interest in denying its right to exist.
And that is the crux of the problem. Not YOUR denial of course, but the refusal of the neighbors to accept its right to exist in peace, even many of those who belong to country with a peace treaty with it. The number of days that this hateful denial is in fact much longer than the occupation (but we can’t mention that, since Helena deletes facts that don’t jibe with her narrative).
Simply put, so long as someone denies Israel’s right to exist, then that person cannot be considered a serious participant in any peacemaking.
Helena:
I’m not sure what I said that was “diversionary” since I directly responded to what was in your initial message and your follow up. You were the one who descended into what appeared to be a hateful little tirade comparing Israel to a South African style Volkstaat. I just asked for clarification with what could have been answered “Yes” or “No.” So I’m even more curious what you meant in your comment, and why you unwilling to answer a simple question.
I have nothing against peacemaking. You were the one that bad mouthed the U.S.’s attempts to hold a summit between the parties. I think the problem is quite simply, you don’t want peace. As mentioned above to John R., anyone who doesn’t accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and Democratic state living in peace with it’s neighbors pretty much disqualifies themselves as a “peace advocate.”
Your claims of “diversion” are even more awkward, because we all know that several commenters here regularly use the comments thread to find any old link that they can to point out something derogatory about Israel or the U.S. Funny how you seem to let those slide.
Heeding Helena’s request to keep on the topic of Egypt, I repeat here a direction to a wonderful survey of Egyptian society.
There’s an excellent book from 2000 – Genveive Abdo’s No God But God; Egypt and the Triumph of Islam – examining the quiet remaking of the Egyptian society and polity under the Mubarak regime. Experienced in the area, fluent, perceptive and sensitive, Abdo conducted many, many interviews with leading institutional, community and religious figures coming away with very candid reviews of state of affairs, notwithstanding the reticence accorded a woman.
The main observation seems to be that after renewed overt suppression of religo-political activities in the 80’s a different, concerted strategy was implemented in the Egyptian ummah. Bit by bit, “unions’, professional associations, local community authorities, boards and the like with some limited kind of electoral self-regulation were not so much infiltrated, but addressed by pious Muslims intent on introducing the concerns of the Ummah into their leadership by legal regulated means. Judges, Universities, other professional pillars of civil society thus became more politically and socially active from below, and more importantly, legitimated by the process. Processess set up of course, as limited democratic “reforms”, institutional control elements or both.
By this means, much of society has been made over by apparently moderate legitmate religiously active stakeholders notwithstanding continued suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and fundamanetalists of any stripe. When the rotten Republic falls, coherence of the Ummah rather than the national state per se will be the organizing principle. It remains to be seen what the Muslim Brotherhood could make of this situation.
Sadly, at present Egyptian Copts are now under attack from all sides.
Now, straying off the reservation again:
John R. Of course you’re right and I thank you for reminding me of what I knew, lost in the pleasurable fervour of working Joshua over. South Africa was a cancer. Thank god I don’t have a weapon! I’m driven here by today’s failures, and whatever the past, South Africa was in the end a remarkable success for all humanity.
I stand by my emotive thesis, though. Today Israel is pathologically destructive force. No terrorist or neighbour poses it the proverbial existential threat it does to the region – yet. Truly though how can there be a just peace without 1967 and the construction of a Palestinian state – admittedly a long way from a stable polity – with a legitmate government with a monopoly on the use of force. Surely the boiling pot will cook everyone’s goose.
However pathetic the arab polities and governments, surely the elephant in the pot is not some refusal mouth preconditional platitudes, but the cancer of the occupation, oppression and land grab. Some pissed off Arab, Iranian or Pakistani nursing various grudges, who never did squat for the Palestinians, will attack with wmd eventually. It didn’t have to be this way. Moshe Dyan spelled it out 40 years ago; creeping annexation. today’s “facts on the ground”
Did you know who invented them or who create them?
OK, Salah, I’ll bite. Who created or invented the Muslim Brotherhood?
Christiane, Israel bashing never seems to be “off-topic” — note Charles colorful remarks on its “pathological” character (language that in other contexts has been deemed ‘hate speech.’). Every other post seems to touch on Israel and its shortcomings and how they should be “fixed” by outsiders like yourself; eg el-Arian’s peculiar urge to further secularize its government, while his own “Muslim Brotherhood” and its HAMAS offshoot are unapologetically steeped in religion.
I’d agree that the crusade to “democratize” and “secularize” Israel, redraw its borders, dictate its immigration policy etc slips too easily into these discussions. Peculiar considering how sensitive we all are to sovereign rights.
Who created or invented the Muslim Brotherhood?
My money’s on the Zionist/crusader axis of evil. “Hassan al-Banna” né Herschel Abramowitz?
مشعل لـ«الراي»: نريد دولة فلسطينية على حدود 1967 القاهرة تساعدنا بديبلوماسية هادئة… والسقف الآن هو «اتفاق مكة»
القاهرة – من عبد الله كمال: في فندق بعيد، في ضاحية القطامية شرق القاهرة، وبترتيب خاص، أجري هذا الحوار مع رئيس المكتب السياسي لـ «حركة المقاومة الاسلامية» (حماس) خالد مشعل، بعد يوم طويل من اللقاءات مع عدد من المسؤولين المصريين، وهو في طريقه إلى كل من السودان وروسيا.
مشعل الذي جاء طالبا دعم مصر، لتثبيت «اتفاق مكة» وتفعيله، وتثبيت حقن الدم الفلسطيني بين الفلسطينيين، تغيرت لغته إلى حد بعيد، وبدا مصرا على التفاؤل، متوقعا تغييرا في المواقف الدولية، لاسيما الأوروبية.
وفي حوار مع «الراي» – ينشر اليوم تزامنا مع مجلة «روزاليوسف» المصرية الأسبوعية، دافع مشعل عن سيطرته على «حماس»، وعن التزام الحركة بالقرار النابع من «اتفاق مكة»، وخضوع كل التوجهات داخل الحركة للاتفاق.
Translation::
Interview with Khalid Mashaal, Chairman, Hamas Political Bureau with Kuwiaty News paper Al-Rai in cairo he siad \We wont Pelstinain State wthin 1967 borders and we working with Macca accord now