In a recorded interview Al-Jazeera aired, Egyptian General and coup leader al-Sisi is quoted as saying that the military have to be immunised from prosecution in relation to the coup and for 5-10 years to come. This implies some sort of guilt on part of the general due to his role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Morsi. al-Sisi is responsible for the death of hunderds of civilians in the coup and violence has persisted for some time after the over throw. Although this is somewhat unsuprising coming from Sisi its his next comment that is quite suprising.

Sign of things to come

In the same context, Sisi frankly told the interviewer “The army will have a significant role for five to ten years in the future. The institution will play this role regardless of the identity of the next president, be him liberal, religious or leftist.” This is somewhat a suprising comment mainly because the whole justification for the military led “revolution” was to recover from the economic disaster the Muslim-brotherhood caused, and to retract some of the “radical” policies the brotherhood put in place and to restore “order. This comment is reflective of things to expect in the future. The Arab Spring might have ignited the passion for a representative democracy in Egypt but this latest story suggests the return of a military style regime similar to the Mubarak ea only this time around only the man in charge is different but everything else is the same.

Free Speech

In other events, the much anticipated return of satirist and TV show host Bassem Youssef also known as Egypt’s “Jon Stewart” has been suspended due to violation of “editorial policy” which is essentially a guise for restricting free speech. Bassem Youssef, popular media personality has often criticized the Brotherhood led government and Sisi’s military government. The move by the CBC station was widely contested by  Bassem Youssef’s fan base and many politicians as a “restricting freedom of expression” but it’s a move to appease the government from legitimate criticism.

Coup: Ideal for Israel

The Egyptian Coup has been widely been beneficial for Israel so much so that they are partnering on certain military missions to combat “terrorism” along the Sinai region. This new move by Egpyt prompted it to shutdown the Gaza border for a short period. This affected those living in the Egpytian border and mainly the Palestinians who regularly receive aid via this route.

As we learned in the last blog post that the US has suspended aid to Egypt, ;Israel and its Lobby, AIPAC have been stepping up efforts to push the US to reconsider restoring aid to Egypt citing Israel’s “security needs” and this concerted effort was pursued long before the United States stopped the aid to Egypt and Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the same concerns recently  with Presiden Obama.

With the Syrian civil war at a decisive stalemate  and no end in sight and Egypt on a path to dictatorship, Israel has been the sole beneficiary of the turmoil and has maintained that its official position is to remain neutral in terms of the civil war in syria and in terms of the changes in Egypt but  Israel has recently conducted several airstrikes along the Syrian region to “destroy” the transfer of advanced weapons to the  Shiite militant group Hizbollah.