re: #58 MandyManners

Ynet and Jpost had similar reports over the past few days that Abbas had been getting medical treatment for an undisclosed ailment.

If that isn’t bad enough, there are also hints that the situation in Egypt isn’t all that great either. Mubarak just had surgery for an undisclosed ailment. No one knows whether Mubarak will run again, and who might replace him (he hasn’t named a successor/VP), and when elections are carried out, one of the names being bandied about is ElBaraedi (formerly of the IAEA), and he’s got the support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yes, that’s right - the Muslim Brotherhood. While Mubarak has outlawed the group, it operates under other names and guises (if the Brotherhood didn’t exist, Mubarak would have to create it to maintain his security apparatus).

But most opposition groups are far less threatening. Indeed, the great paradox of the Egyptian police state lies in its long record cultivating a certain level of tame extremism—which it finds useful to justify its police tactics—while it crushes passionate moderation. It’s a clich of Egyptian political commentary that if Mubarak did not have the Muslim Brotherhood to oppose him, he’d have to invent it. And ElBaradei has walked right into the middle of this political twilight zone.

The Mubarak government allows about 90 members of the “outlawed” Brotherhood to serve as “independents” in Parliament, where, with 20 percent of the votes, they make up the single largest opposition group. The Brotherhood, for its part, plays any angle it can, and has glommed onto the strongly secular ElBaradei. “I didn’t know a single Muslim Brother until I came [back] here. But the head of the Brothers’ parliamentary faction, Mohamed Saad el-Katatni, has come to my house a couple of times,” says ElBaradei, who adds that he was reassured when el-Katatni declared, “We are for a civil state, we are for democracy.”

Of course, that’s in contrast with Zawahiri, who was involved in the Sadat assassination and rose to become the number 2 in al Qaeda.