Editorial: Morsi’s Sinai front
BY RANIA AL MALKY Cairo: One day before he took the official oath of office under two months ago, Egypt’s first civilian president, Mohamed Morsi, addressed throngs of cheering Egyptians in Tahrir Square. In what appeared to be a spontaneous show of bravado, he gestured to his bodyguards to step aside and opened his jacket to show that he was not wearing a bulletproof vest. It was clearly the first and last time he would take this risk. But bullets come in all shapes, sizes and formats. While Morsi’s spokesman Yasser Ali has attempted to dodge the bullets of hostile…
Sinai’s tough questions
BY SARAH EL SIRGANY Cairo: Egypt is teeming with answers to the question of who was behind the Sinai attack. In the first reports about the terrorist act that left 16 soldiers dead, media volunteered a culprit: Jihadi groups. Within 24 hours and before an official statement was made, Egyptians were trading theories which starkly reflected the political polarization of the country. In the same fashion that the word “Muslim” is occasionally confused with “Islamist extremist,” “Palestinian” became synonymous with “crazed jihadi”. The ruling was out in the first hours after the tragic attack: The jihadists are Palestinians from Gaza….
