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......

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)......

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.....

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...

“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? "