MOST PALESTINIANS STILL SUPPORTIVE OF PRESIDENT MURSI
By: Khalid Amayreh*
As tens of thousands of Muslims converged on the Aqsa Mosque to perform the congregational prayers of the first Jumaa (Friday) of the holy month of Ramadan, worshipers displayed prominently portraits of the deposed Egyptian President Muhammed Mursi.
“Muhammed Mursi: you are not only President of Egypt alone, you are the leader of the entire Arab and Muslim world”, read one of the large placards.
Many worshipers marched through the Aqsa esplanade, carrying Mursi’s portrait aloft along with the Egyptian flag.
They saluted hundreds of thousands of Egyptian Islamists rallying in Cairo, demanding the reinstatement of the elected president.
Some people shouted “Sissi is traitor, Sissi is murderer, Sissi is an Israeli agent, death to Sissi,” alluding to the Egyptian Defense Minister Abdul Fattah Sissi, who deposed Mursi, who some critics say did what he did in collusion with Israeli and western intelligence agencies.
It was also noted that numerous Palestinians were comparing between Sissi and Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish terrorist who in 1994 sprayed worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in al-Khalil with bullets, killing 29 and wounding dozens others.
More than 76 people, mostly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, were murdered in cold blood last week when Egyptian soldiers acting on instructions from Sissi opened fire indiscriminately on supporters of Mursi outside the Republican Guard headquarters as they were performing the dawn prayers.
The MB called the shooting a real massacre of innocent people who were performing prayers.
The pro-coup Egyptian media sought to find extenuating circumstances to mitigate the impact of the carnage.
Support for Mursi
The vast majority of Palestinians continue to support Mursi viewing his deposition by the Egyptian army as an Israeli-American conspiracy taking the form of a military coup.
Israeli and other anti-Islamic circles have reacted euphorically to the removal of the legitimate and democratically-elected Egyptian president.
The secular Palestinian Authority (PA) reacted negatively to the pro-Mursi demonstration at one of Islam’s holiest sites.
The PA views the Muslim Brotherhood with a lot of consternation because of strong ties between the MB and Hamas.
Hamas is considered the main political and ideological foe of Fatah, the political backbone of the PA.
PA officials and spokespersons criticized the Palestinian Islamist camp, including Hamas and the leadership of the Islamic movement in Israel, especially Sheikh Raed Salah, for interfering in Arab internal affairs.
“Taking sides in the current Egyptian crisis undermines the Palestinian national cause. Palestinians must refrain from taking sides either in favor or against Mursi,” said Muhammed Assaf, a PA spokesman.
“Zionism stands behind Sissi”
Many Palestinians, intellectuals and ordinary people alike, are viewing last week’s coup against Mursi as a Zionist conspiracy.
Jamal Muhammed, who holds a Ph.D. in Engineering, opines that Gen. Sissi carried out the coup in coordination with the CIA and Israel.
“This is a real multi-party conspiracy. The players include the strong Mason movement, the Coptic Church, the CIA, the Saudis and the so-called Deep State in Egypt .”
The Palestinian professor said he was sure that the conspiracy against the Islamists in Egypt would eventually fail, arguing that most Egyptians would soon find out that the military would take the country into a deeper crisis at all levels.
“The military know how to shoot people. They know how to murder and suppress human rights and civil liberties. But they have no idea how to run an economy that is in the worst possible shape, they don’t know how to feed 90 million Egyptians, they don’t know how to fight corruption since they themselves are the most corrupt elements in society.”
Hamed Abu Hussein, another Palestinian intellectual from the Hebron region, described the removal of President Mursi as “a colossal crime against the people of Egypt and the honor of Egypt .”
“Could it be that the Egyptian people who endured dictatorship and tyranny for so many decades can’t really tolerate a few months of democracy”, asked the Islamic educator.
“Mursi didn’t steal the people’s money, he didn’t suppress human rights and civil liberties, and he was not corrupt by any standards of imagination. Yet we had an ignorant army Gen. who could barely read a single correct Arabic sentence depose a democratically elected President who has a Ph.D. in engineering. Isn’t this strange?”. (T/P02/E1)
* Khalid Amayreh is a journalist living in Palestine. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983. Since the 1990s, Mr. Amayreh has been working and writing for several news outlets among which is Aljazeera.net, Al-Ahram Weekly, and Middle East International. He can be reached through [email protected].
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
