When the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh was terrified by deadly bombing last July, doom and gloom hit the tourism industry, one of Egypt's top foreign earners.
At the time, experts predicted that it would be years before the industry, especially in Sharm el-Sheikh, known as "the city of peace", recovers. Much to many's surprise, the Egyptian tourism recovered from the fallout.
Monday night's attacks in Dahab occurred when the Egyptian tourism was experiencing a boom year. The explosions were carried out after the country unveiled an ambitious plan to increase the numbers of tourist visitors from 6 million to 15 million annually, in five year's time. Last month, Egypt launched a public awareness campaign designed to highlight the importance of tourism and engage the locals in boosting this industry.
Over recent years, the Egyptian tourism has manifested resilience. The industry has overcome the repercussions of regional tensions and re-emerged as robust as ever.
This recovery is not unlikely in the aftermath of the Dahab blasts. All agencies, particularly police, have to look into the situation and address any flaws. Concerted efforts hold the key to speedy recovery for tourism.
..as far as China
By Idris Tawfiq
Visible, according to some astronauts, from outer space, the Great Wall of China is one of the most extraordinary achievements of mankind of the past two thousand years. It is top of the list of must-see sights for any tourist. Even heads of state are taken there when visiting China. For China itself, so proud of such a great monument, the Great Wall is a symbol of the country's past and a monument to the sacrifice and hard work of its people.
Almost 6.700 kilometres in length from east to west, the Great Wall of China is often called the Eighth Wonder of the World. It is a remarkable feat of engineering. Astronauts have even claimed to have seen it with the naked eye from outer space, the only creation of Man thus visible.
The wall is two thousand years old. It began
as a series of independent defensive walls for the different states which would come to make up China. It was the Emperor Qin Shihuang who had the idea of joining the walls together to defend his empire from the Huns in the North. The wall, as we see it today, was greatly strengthened between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, during the Ming dynasty, to protect China from the Mongols and Turkic tribes. Depending on its location within the empire, the wall was made from quarried limestone or granite or fired brick. Now less than thirty per cent of it is in good condition. The parts of the wall nearest to tourist areas are, not surprisingly, in the best repair, whilst the remoter sections have been left to collapse.
There is a very touching legend associated with one section of the wall. During its construction, many young men were conscripted to work on it. One such man, Fan Xiliang, was forced to set off and work on the wall on his wedding day. His young wife, Meng Jiangnu, waited faithfully for him for five years. One night she had a dream that Fan Xiliang was crying out, "Cold! Cold!" She remembered that the clothes he left home in were very thin so she set off, on foot, to take warm, padded clothes to her husband. She walked many miles across mountains and through icy rivers until she finally arrived to find that her husband had died and had been buried beneath the wall. Meng Jiangnu cried and cried for days upon end, until her bitter weeping caused that section of the wall to collapse.
Knowledge, in the right hands, is a great thing. Prophet Mohamed, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, urged the Muslim faithful to "seek knowledge, as far as China." Meng Jiangnu sought her husband through mountains and rivers. The search for truth, and with it the justice and peace which it brings, is so important that we should be prepared to go to the ends of the earth to find it. Without knowledge we are like blind men, wandering aimlessly in the dark. Without knowledge of our world, without knowled
ge of who we are, we begin to depend on ourselves and our own achievements. When we begin to believe our own publicity we are surely heading for a fall.
The Great Wall of China was built with a very sensible aim: to defend China and its people from invading armies. The mistake the emperors made, though, was to think that a wall alone could save them. Muslims read in the Holy Qur'an in Surat Al-Imran:
"If Allah is your helper none can overcome you,
And if He withdraw His help from you,
Who is there who can help you?
In Allah let believers put their trust."
Holy Qur'an 3:160
The wall alone could not hold back the invading armies, who ultimately swept through it into China. Parts of it stand today as a noble testimony to man's achievements. Other parts lie in ruins, mere heaps of rubble, reminding us that there is no strength nor power save in Allah. Knowledge of what is really important in this life is so necessary for us that we should seek it, as far as China.
www.idristawfiq.com
An eye for an eye and a traitor for a hero!
By Emad El-Din Aysha
Something interesting and unexpected, for us at least, to emerge over the last period is the bizarre prisoner swap proposed, even though both sides deny it, by certain officials in Israel and, to a lesser extent, the US. The idea is to exchange Marwan Al-Barghouti for, of all people, Jonathan Pollard! I can understand the Israelis grudgingly agreeing to hand over a Palestinian 'militant' in exchange for one of their goons the Palestinians are holding, but what the hell does an American traitor have to do with Fatah's under-arrest-forever Al-Barghouti? The quick answer is, absolutely nothing. The slightly longer answer is, once again, nothing. But not 'absolutely' nothing.
Trip down memory lane
There's a catch, there always is. The Israelis actually aren't terribly concerned about Pollard. I'll explain below but I'll have to fill in the reader on some missing and/or forgotten (by us) details. Jonathan Pollard, a former American inte
lligence officer, sold out his country Ð its secrets Ð to his Israeli paymasters in the 1980s. He got caught but then pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of "conspiracy to receive embezzled government property". He had to settle for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty, not that he felt he deserved either. (All this is an abject lesson in double standards, mind you. Imagine what would have happened to a Muslim in the same position. For a good article about people like Pollard who got away with it, please see Stephen Green, "Serving Two Flags", counterpunch.org, February 17, 2004).
His wife Esther got nabbed with him, though I think they're in separate cells. Technically, the Israelis used the Jewish angle to recruit him but he certainly did get paid for the wares he procured. (Well, at least he didn't keep his wife in the dark about it. I wonder if she egged him on?) And interestingly the material he got for them had very little to do with the Middle East and the supposed Palestinian terrorist threat to Israel. It was mostly material on US national security. It's still a big mystery why they wanted any of that stuff Ð there are rumours a KGB mole still at large in Israeli intelligence was behind the operation, or, as I think, the Israelis were channelling the material to the Sovs in exchange for something else, perhaps intelligence on the Palestinians. (Please see Stephen Green, "Damage Caused by 'Friendly' Spies", The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 1989).
But the point is that the I-was-doing-this-for-Israeli-security excuse won't work and even if it were true, he doesn't have the right to make that kind of judgment call. And, to add insult to injury, the official in the Israeli Defence Ministry (now there's an oxymoron if ever there were one) was none other than Rafael Eitan, who served as an intelligence and counter-terrorism adviser to both Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres, while he was running Pollard. Despite appearances to the otherwise, the Israeli government kept him in place after Pollard w
as caught, despite the request they got from the US to 'let him go' to avoid further embarrassment.
Fast forwardto the present
And Eitan is still a cause for major embarrassment because Ehud Olmert is thinking of giving him a Cabinet post. (Go for it, dude!) The Pollards are claiming: "Rafi Eitan has in his hands a document that the Americans are insisting that they must receive. They insisted in the past, they are insisting to this day. In fact, in this we see the stance of the government of Israel and of Pollard's handlers." Pollard's Israeli attorney, Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, also sent a letter to Olmert asking him, politely no doubt, not to appoint Eitan as a minister. And if that doesn't work, there's the explicit threat to petition the High Court of Justice against any such appointment. (Please see "Pollard's lawyer: U.S. demanding document held by Rafi Eitan," Haaretz, April 16, 2006).
Here things become a bit more interesting. Just to confirm what I said last week about Bush's unstable condition and how susceptible he is to sweet talking, look what Pollard's wife has to say: "We know Bush. He is a religious man. Through a contact person who is very close to us and who has his ear, he proposed freeing Jonathan for [S]eder night this year." Even more interesting is the real reason why the Israelis want to exchange Al-Barghouti for Pollard. According to Israeli radio, and they actually said it out loud for everyone to hear, is that releasing
Al-Barghouti would weaken the new Palestinian government under Hamas. More specifically, the Israelis hope to convince the Bush administration that this is a good move, provided it is taken at the time of a crisis for the Hamas government in the Palestinian Authority, hoping that such a senior Fatah figure as Al-Barghouti will tip the balance in Hamas' disfavour.
Psychobabble
It figures. Just last week I watched an interview with one of the Arab world's most well-informed journalists, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, in which he revealed that Olmert wasn't too worried abo
ut Hamas because he believed Palestinian infighting, specifically within the PA, will do the job for the Israelis. Not only that, from what Haaretz says the Israelis have been thinking about this for quite some time. The proposal was tabled to the Americans in 2004 when Sharon was still in charge, to Esther's considerable chagrin: "This is all about Barghouti, not Pollard. They want to free Barghouti," as she said. "Barghouti will go free and Jonathan will stay in prison." All she can think about is that her husband is somehow innocent because "it was Israel which spied on the United States, not Pollard, but Israel."
Fine by me, but we've really got to find a way of springing
Al-Barghouti without creating problems for the new Palestinian government. One can't come at the expense of the other. Apart from that, my advice is that it's about time the Arabs wisened up and used the Pollard case in both America and Israel to embarrass the Americans as to the nature of their 'allies' and to make life difficult for Olmert and hopefully foil his plans. Oh yes, and one added bonus of this whole affair is that it will also expose to the US and the world theÉ Madness of King George!!!!
The writer holds a PhD in
International Studies
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