Presidential adviser for foreign affairs, Essam el-Haddad (Egypt’s real FM)  in UAE after arrest of “Brotherhood cell.” courtesy AlArabyia

 

Here is the first episode of my diary. As I wrote last week, ‘Aak’ is an Egyptian term that describes a messy situation.

 Tuesday

• The Muslim Brotherhood’s Saad el-Katatni: “God willing, the year 2013 will be the year of institution-building and establishment of the modern democratic State.”

• A group of ultraconservative Islamists,under the leadership of Emad Abdel Ghafour, announced the formation of a new party, Al-Watan.

• The strong Egypt Party chief, Abouel Fotouh, has accused President Morsi of intransparency and making hasty decisions.

Wednesday

• Egypt’s fact-finding commission says Mubarak watched the January 2011 uprising against him live. It also urges the investigation of the Muslim Brotherhood members accused of killing protesters.

• Egypt’ssatirist, Dr. Bassem Youssef, faces a probe for insulting the president. Another complaint…

It’s very easy to be taken by enticing principles about humanitarian needs to keep allowing Syrian refugees uncontrolled entry to Lebanon.

It’s very easy to get angry at anyone asking that the influx of Syrian refugees into the country be stopped or controlled. How could you? The Syrians helped us in 2006. The Syrians are being murdered by their own regime in the thousands.

As if we don’t know.

This is not about Gebran Bassil’s recent “remarks.” This is about the people.

In the region of Bab el Tebbaneh in Northern Lebanon, a few tens of thousands of Lebanese live in stinking conditions – even worse than the living conditions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’s 12 camps. Are those Lebanese not living in non-humanitarian conditions as well? Shouldn’t those Lebanese be more important to us than anyone else, especially if we were to allocate non-existent resources to better life…