New leader to head Egypt's Jewish community

CAIRO –  Egypt's Jewish community has announced that it has elected the daughter of a well-known leftist and nationalist icon to protect its heritage and care for its dwindling, elderly membership.

Magda Haroun, 60, told The Associated Press Tuesday she aimed to continue the work of her predecessor, Carmen Weinstein, who died Saturday at the age of 82. Weinstein was known for her efforts to preserve synagogues and a Jewish cemetery.

"My new priority is to preserve the Egyptian Jewish heritage ... to give it back to Egypt, because it belongs to Egypt," Haroun said.

Haroun, an Egyptian who is fluent in Arabic, French and English, was born in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city. She attended school in Cairo, and graduated from Cairo University with a degree in Applied Arts. She runs a patents and legal affairs firm with her sister Nadia.

Haroun said she considered herself Egyptian before Jewish, born and raised in the country.

Her father Chehata Haroun was a prominent Egyptian nationalist, one of the founders of the leftist Al Tagammu Party. He was known for his anti-Zionist politics and his defense of Egyptian Jews against accusations of having greater loyalty to Israel than to Egypt, at the peak of the Mideast wars.

Haroun had previously told the AP that only around 40 Egyptian Jews remain in the country, a far-cry from the once-thriving Jewish community that largely left more than 60 years ago at a time of hostilities between Egypt and Israel.

"I will continue taking care of them, socially, medically, gathering them for the holidays, and burying them with dignity," Haroun said.

Haroun was unanimously elected as community president at an extraordinary general assembly meeting held on Monday, following Weinstein's death.

Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, an estimated 65,000 Jews left Egypt — most of them traveling to Europe and the West. Few of them settled in Israel. The remnants of the community are split between Cairo and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria that was also once a thriving multicultural and cosmopolitan hub.

Considerable hostility persists in Egypt, where radical preachers and others regularly denounce both Israel and Jews in general. However, Haroun said that Egyptians were kind-hearted and what ultimately mattered was social interaction. "If you treat others well, you will be treated well," she said.

Haroun dismissed any fears from the rise of Islamists to power in Egypt after the 2011 overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising. "The community size is still the same, and they keep dying one after another, what's the difference?"

But she said that the ensuing political turmoil around the community had made members fearful.

"Don't forget that most of the community is elderly women and housewives, uninvolved in everyday life," she added. "When they see the intolerance around them, they become more anxious."

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Egypt's fuel crisis adds to its economic woes

CAIRO –  At 5:00 am, Egyptian truck driver Allam Mahmoud hurried to a Cairo gas station and joined an already long, snaking line. He says he hopes that by the end of the day, he can get his tank filled with diesel.

For several months, Egyptians have been hit by shortages of diesel, the main fuel that truckers, bus drivers, farmers, bakers and a range of industries rely on to keep their engines running. The diesel crisis is now not only adding to the country's economic problems, it's feeding the turmoil on the streets.

"Haven't seen a crisis like this before," the 46-year-old Mahmoud said, still waiting at noon Monday for a chance to fill up. "People are asleep in their homes and we are here waiting to refuel."

Now for many the long waits at gas stations are becoming unbearable.

On Sunday, hundreds of drivers of trucks and of minibuses used as public transport blocked most of Cairo's vital roads and bridges, as well as highways across the country in an angry protest over the shortages, forcing some students and government employees to even resort to donkey carts to commute. Frequently tempers flared. In Cairo, striking drivers smashed windows of private cars when commuters complained about the road blockages. In Giza, across the Nile, fist-fights broke out and knives were drawn between protesting drivers and other drivers who refused to join their strike. In the southern city of Assiut, striking and non-striking drivers pelted each other with stones.

The drivers' backlash adds to a wave of unrest across the country, with protesters against the Islamist president frequently clashing with police and some police units themselves launching their own strikes and protests in many areas.

Diesel and most other fuels in Egypt are heavily subsidized, provided in allotments to gas stations to keep the price at the pump low. The government insists there is no shortage of fuel, but blames the long lines at stations on corruption, saying that amid the country's lawlessness, a "mafia" is collaborating with station owners to take their allotments of diesel — called "solar" in Egypt — sell them on the black market. Gas stations are supposed to sell 20-liter jerry cans of diesel for 20 Egyptian pounds (57 cents a gallon), but on the black market it sells for more than double that price.

Oil Minister Osama Kamal said almost all the shortages at gas stations are because of "the absence of oversight agencies and the exploitation by some of the current situation ... to trade solar on the black market," according to the state daily Al-Ahram.

Some of the fuel is also being smuggled. In January and February, the military destroyed 15 tanks of fuel it seized from smugglers by the border with the Gaza Strip, part of a campaign to destroy smuggling tunnels from the Sinai peninsula into the Palestinian territory, ruled by the Hamas militant group, according to a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. He said fuel smuggling to Gaza has increased dramatically amid Egypt's lawlessness since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

On Monday, Kamal told Turkey's Anadolu news agency that the government would increase the diesel it supplies to the market each day by 10 percent to 40 million liters (10 million gallons) to try to fill the demand. The fuel would be sold through gas stations owned by the military, from which he insisted it was impossible to divert the supplies to the black market.

The diesel crisis comes as the government is struggling under growing budget deficits and shrinking foreign reserves while it tries to meet its commitments to provide millions of Egyptians with subsidized bread, food and fuel. Potentially explosive public discontent has made President Mohammed Morsi wary of introducing austerity measures to cut back subsidies, a step economists say is unavoidable for reducing deficits and giving assurances to international donors to help the country's battered economy with loans and investment.

Energy subsidies make up the largest chunk of the around $20 billion a year Egypt spends on subsidies, about a third of its budget. Cutting fuel subsidies are believed to be at the top of a government reform plan presented to the International Monetary Fund to secure a much-needed $4.8 billion loan. Talks with the IMF stalled last year when Morsi quickly rescinded tax increases for fear of the public backlash.

To reduce energy subsidies, the government has announced it will start a "smart card" system in May by which vehicles with engines of 1600cc or less — smaller than most SUVs — would be eligible to a certain amount of subsidized fuel, while those with bigger engines will have to buy fuel at market price. The government has already lifted fuel subsidies for industrial companies.

But the London-based consultancy Capital Economics said Monday that Egypt is unlikely to get the loan anytime soon because of IMF reservations over the government's desire to phase in subsidy reforms gradually — apparently to delay the pain of austerity until after parliamentary elections. Parliamentary elections originally set to begin in April have been postponed indefinitely after a court ruled against the law governing the vote.

Since Mubarak's ouster in February 2011, Egypt's unrest has gouged tourism and foreign investment, the most essential sources of foreign currency. In the latest sign of the economic woes, Egypt's annual urban inflation reached 8.2 percent last month, its highest rate since May last year, according to the official Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. Foreign reserves fell to $13.5 billion in February, down about two thirds from two years ago. The currency has fallen in value more than 7 percent against the dollar since late last year.

The government is trying to search for alternative ways to secure revenues. On Monday, the country's interim parliament agreed in principle on a draft law that allows the state to issue Islamic bonds which the government hopes it can raise some $10 billion dollars from bonds, which according to Islamic Shariah don't pay interest.

The country's already stressed agricultural and construction sectors are fearing the impact of diesel shortages.

Alaa Diab, the head of the agriculture committee in Egypt's Businessmen Association, noted that all the motors used in irrigation and harvesting use diesel. Without the fuel, "there will be no wheat, and there will no milling and bread will be affected ... The entire agriculture production is threatened with coming to a halt," he said, according to the state-run Al-Ahram daily.

The Egyptian Union for Construction and Building said in a report that about 64 percent of the 41,500 construction companies registered with the union have gone bankrupt or suspended work. The report, published in Al-Ahram, blamed price hikes in energy and material.

Other sectors at a time other sectors are suffering. The national carrier, EgyptAir, has seen nearly 6 billion pounds ($900 million) in losses, forcing it to reduce the number of flights, Civil Aviation Minister told parliament Monday.

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AP reporter Amir Makar contributed to this report

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Egypt's vote won't calm turbulent streets

CAIRO –  Egypt's streets are turning into a daily forum for airing a range of social discontents from labor conditions to fuel shortages and the casualties of myriad clashes over the past two years.

Parliamentary elections called over the weekend by the Islamist president hold out little hope for plucking the country out of the turmoil. If anything, the race is likely to fuel more unrest and push Egypt closer to economic collapse.

"The street has a life of its own and it has little to do with elections. It is about people wanting to make a living or make ends meet," said Emad Gad, a prominent analyst and a former lawmaker.

Islamist President Mohammed Morsi called for parliamentary elections to start in late April and be held over four stages ending in June. He was obliged under the constitution to set the date for the vote by Saturday.

His decree brought a sharp reaction from Egypt's key opposition leader, Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who said they would be a "recipe for disaster" given the polarization of the country and eroding state authority.

On Saturday, ElBaradei dropped a bombshell when he called for a boycott of the vote. An effective boycott by the opposition or widespread fraud would call the election's legitimacy into question.

But in all likelihood, Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and its ultraconservative Salafi allies will fare well in the vote. The Brotherhood has dominated every election in the two years since the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The mostly secular and liberal opposition will likely trail as they did in the last election for parliament's lawmaking, lower house in late 2011 and early 2012 — a pattern consistent with every nationwide election post-Mubarak.

President Morsi's Brotherhood-dominated administration has been unable to curb the street protests, strikes and crime that have defined Egypt in the two years since the uprising.

In fact, the unrest has only grown more intense, more effective and has spread around the country in the nearly eight months that Morsi has been in office.

On any given day, a diverse variety of protesters across much of the troubled nation press demands of all sorts or voice opposition to Morsi and the Brotherhood.

Sunday was a case in point.

Thousands of brick workers blocked railroad tracks from a city south of Cairo for a second successive day to protest rising prices of industrial fuel oil, crippling transportation around the country of 85 million.

The rise resulted from the government's decision last week to lift subsidies on some fuel prices. It is part of a reform program aimed at securing a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

Meanwhile there are ample signs that Egypt's economy is deteriorating steadily.

Foreign reserves have dropped by nearly two thirds since Mubarak's departure, the key tourism sector is in a deep slump and the local currency has fallen nearly 10 percent against the dollar in the last two months.

Khaled el-Hawari, a marketing executive in one of the brick factories, said industrial fuel oil prices increased by 50 percent, threatening the business and the livelihoods of hundreds of workers who could be laid off.

"No one is listening to us or responding," he said. "We plan to protest outside the Cabinet next."

In the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh, hundreds of quarry workers stormed the local government building, forcing staff to flee. The workers are demanding permanent employment in the factory. They chanted against the recently appointed local governor, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the coastal city of Port Said, a general strike entered its second week on Sunday. The city has practically come to a halt as thousands of workers from the main industrial area joined the strike.

Calls for a civil strike in line with the one in Port Said have spread around Egypt. A group of protesters blocked the entrance to a major administrative building in Cairo's Tahrir Square, stopping citizens from entering and prompting small scuffles.

But Port Said is emerging as a prime example of how the popular discontent is evolving into sustained anti-government action. There are even calls in Port Said for secession which, while not realistic, indicate the depth of anger.

Activists there are demanding retribution for more than 40 residents killed there last month, allegedly by police.

The killings took place amid a wave of anger that swept the city after a Cairo court passed death sentences against 21 people, mostly from Port Said, for their part in Egypt's worst soccer disaster on Feb. 1 2012.

Morsi's supporters say that delaying elections, protesting and boycotting are affecting Egypt's ability to lure foreign investors and tourists again as the economy deteriorates.

Lack of confidence in law enforcement has reached a point where villagers sometimes hunt down alleged killers, lynch them and burn their bodies with police unable or unwilling to intervene.

With violent crime on the rise, rights groups accuse police under Morsi of falling back to the brutal methods and impunity of the Mubarak days.

The opposition, which led the uprising against Mubarak, is showing signs of disarray.

Another emphatic Islamist victory, especially if enough opposition groups do not heed ElBardei's boycott call, is likely to deal a body blow to the National Salvation Front — the main opposition coalition.

In short, there is no end in sight to the growing popular discontent with Morsi's rule and the Brotherhood, who are accused by opponents of monopolizing power.

Already, ElBaradei's call for a boycott has sown divisions with his movement, with some of its leading figures saying the former director of the U.N. nuclear agency spoke prematurely and without sufficient consultation with other leaders. Others said they would heed the boycott call.

Ahmed Maher, the leader of the opposition April 6 youth group, said if the entire opposition does not join the boycott, it would be a "gift" to the Brotherhood and would accord legitimacy to a Brotherhood-dominated parliament. A successful boycott, he added in a statement, must be accompanied with a "parallel" parliament and a shadow government for it to be effective.

Significantly, some activists say that with international monitoring of the upcoming elections to prevent widespread fraud, the Brotherhood and their Salafi allies may not get the comfortable win they are hoping for.

"Entire cities and provinces have turned against the Brotherhood," said activist Ahmed Badawi. "This is a good time to defeat the Brotherhood because the economic crisis is hurting people's lives and they are angry."

But Gad, the former lawmaker, pointed out that staggering the elections over a two-month period would only benefit the Brotherhood, which had gained valuable election expertise when it had for years under Mubarak fielded candidates in parliamentary elections as independents.

"They have their election pros who will now be put to work in all four stages to ensure their supporters go out and vote while orchestrating soft fraud which, if widespread, can alter the results," said Gad.

The Brotherhood has been repeatedly accused of influencing voters at polling centers, campaigning on voting day in violation of the law and taking advantage of the relatively high percentage of illiteracy among voters. Some also accuse the Brotherhood of buying votes, exploiting the country's widespread poverty.

The Brotherhood denies the charges and counters them by boasting of its superior organizational skills. The group said it has the legitimacy of its consistent victories at the ballot box and accuses its opponent of trying to overthrow a democratically elected government.

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Associated Press reporter Mamdouh Thabet contributed to this report from Assiut, Egypt.

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Egypt's Brotherhood still operates secretively

CAIRO –  Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi speaks publicly of firsthand knowledge of a meeting where opponents allegedly plotted against him.

A few months earlier, the most powerful man in his Muslim Brotherhood group, Khairat el-Shater, says he has access to recordings of former military rulers and electoral officials engineering his disqualification from last year's presidential race.

In Egypt, those statements are seen by security officials, former members of the Islamist group and independent media as strong hints that the Brotherhood might be running its own intelligence-gathering network outside of government security agencies and official channels.

Such concerns dovetail the Brotherhood, which has a long history of operating clandestinely, to suspicion that it remains a shadowy group with operations that may overlap with the normal functions of a state.

Brotherhood supporters also demonstrated militia-like capabilities at anti-Morsi protests in December.

Another oft-heard charge comes from the Foreign Ministry, where officials complain that the president relies more on trusted Brotherhood advisers than those inside the ministry in formulating foreign policy.

The Brotherhood emerged from Egypt's 2011 uprising as the country's dominant political group and Morsi was elected president in June of last year as the group's candidate.

The motive for setting up parallel operations could be rooted in the fact that many government bodies, such as security agencies and the judiciary, are still dominated by appointees of the ousted regime of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak or anti-Islamists with long-held suspicions of the Brotherhood.

The perception that such agencies are hostile to the country's new Islamist leaders lends their rule an embattled aspect despite a string of electoral victories.

"The problem with the Brotherhood is that they came to power but are still dealing with the nation as they did when they were in the opposition," said Abdel-Jalil el-Sharnoubi, former editor-in-chief of the group's website who left the Brotherhood in May 2011.

"Because they cannot trust the state, they have created their own," he added.

The notion of a state within a state has precedents elsewhere in the Arab world. In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah is the de facto government in much of the south and east of the country and has its own army and telephone network.

To a lesser extent, followers of Iraq's anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are de facto administrators of Shiite districts in Baghdad and in parts of the mostly Shiite south.

In Egypt, the situation reflects a chasm that has emerged since the uprising over the nation's future. In one camp is the Brotherhood, their Islamist allies and a fairly large segment of the population that is conservative and passively inclined toward the ideas of Islam as a way of life.

Arrayed against them is a bloc of comparable size that includes not only those who served under Mubarak in the state and security structures but also moderate Muslims, liberals, secularists, women and Christians who account for about 10 percent of the population.

The Brotherhood denies that any of its activities are illegal or amount to a state within a state.

"The Brotherhood is targeted by a defamation campaign, but will always protect its reputation and these immoral battles will never change that," said spokesman Ahmed Aref, alluding to claims that the group was running a parallel state.

"There is still an elite in Egypt that remains captive to Mubarak's own view of the Brotherhood," he added.

For most of the 85 years since its inception, the Brotherhood operated secretively as an outlawed group, working underground and often repressed by governments.

But even after its political success, the group is still suspected of secretive operations.

The Brotherhood counters that it has legitimacy on its side, having consistently won at the ballot box since Mubarak's ouster. And they accuse the opposition of conspiring with former regime members in an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected administration.

The two most powerful Brotherhood figures, wealthy businessman el-Shater and spiritual leader Mohamed Badie, are seen by many in Egypt as the real source of power — wielding massive influence over Morsi and his government.

El-Shater, according to the former Brotherhood members and security officials, is suspected of running an information gathering operation capable of eavesdropping on telephones and email.

He was the Brotherhood's first choice for presidential candidate in last year's election but was disqualified over a Mubarak-era conviction.

Following his disqualification, he publicly said last summer that he had access to recordings of telephone conversations between members of the election commission and the military council that ruled Egypt for nearly 17 months after Mubarak's ouster.

The conversations, he claimed, were to engineer throwing him out of the race. He did not say how he knew of the contacts or their contents.

Again in December, he suggested that he had access to information gathered clandestinely.

Addressing Islamists in a televised meeting, he said he has "detected from various sources" that there were meetings of people allegedly plotting to destabilize Morsi's rule.

He did not identify the alleged plotters nor say how he had learned of the meetings.

A spokesman for the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, said at the time when asked for comment that it was to be expected from a group as big as the Brotherhood to have its own "resources." That was taken as virtual confirmation of a parallel intelligence gathering operation.

Morsi was also seen as suggesting that the Brotherhood was spying on critics when he spoke to supporters outside his presidential palace in November. He said he had firsthand knowledge of what transpired in a meeting of several of his critics.

"They think that they can hide away from me," he said.

The words of El-Shater and Morsi were taken as strong hints that the Brotherhood has its own intelligence gathering operation. But in a country fed on a steady diet of conspiracy theories, no hard evidence has come to light, only suspicion and talk.

A former Brotherhood member, Mohammed el-Gebbah, claimed the group had six "mini intelligence centers," including one housed in its headquarters in the Cairo district of Moqqatam.

He did not provide evidence to back his claim and another Brotherhood spokesman, Murad Ali, denied that the group has such capability.

In an off-the-cuff remark, Brotherhood stalwart Essam el-Aryan said last October that Morsi's presidential palace secretly records all "incoming and outgoing communications." The president's spokesman swiftly denied it.

But it only fed the notion of a Brotherhood parallel intelligence gathering operation with Morsi's support and cooperation.

Another concern that has arisen is whether the Brotherhood might be running its own militias outside of government security agencies.

That fear arose from a wave of mass protests that turned violent in December. Protesters for and against Morsi faced off over decrees, since rescinded, that gave the president near absolute powers.

In early December, the Brotherhood posted a "general alert" on its official Facebook page and the next day, groups of armed Brotherhood supporters attacked opposition protesters staging a sit-in outside Morsi's palace.

Thousands of Morsi supporters and opponents poured into the area and street fighting continued well into the night.

Video clips later posted on social networks showed Brotherhood supporters stripping and torturing protesters in makeshift "detention centers" set up just outside the palace gates, partly to extract confessions that they were on the opposition's payroll.

On-camera testimonies by victims to rights groups spoke of police and palace workers standing by and watching as they were being abused by Brotherhood supporters.

At least 10 people were killed and 700 injured in the clashes on Dec. 5.

The next morning, groups of Morsi supporters staged military-style drills in residential areas near the palace.

Ali, the group's spokesman, denied the existence of any kind of militias.

"We have no military or non-military formations. None whatsoever," he said.

Aref, the other spokesman, disputed the version of events outside Morsi's palace on Dec. 5, saying 11 of the group's supporters were killed by thugs and nearly 1,500 injured, including 132 who were shot.

"The facts of that day were turned upside down to mislead public opinion and the victims became the culprit," he said.

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