Agence France-Presse DAMIETTE: A leader of the protest movement Kefaya (enough) is campaigning to gather a million signatures in 100 days in favor of rescinding the country s peace treaty with Israel. I ask you to applaud the master Hassan Nasrallah, called out George Ishaq, 67, during a rally in Darmiette, an industrial port in northern Egypt. And to denounce the one who called him reckless. Around 200 men, three woman and a few children in the dusty street promptly gave an ovation to the Hezbollah leader before chanting down with Israel, down with (Hosni) Mubarak, the Egyptian president. Kefaya, which means enough, and was formed in 2003, is more of a political catch-all that than a political party. Those who come leave their ideology at the door, Ishaq said. The group represents a range of reinvigorated popular movements that oppose Mubarak, who has been president since 1981. Egyptian authorities have not outlawed the movement, but it suffers from internal divisions owing to its role as umbrella group for a wide variety of interests. Kefaya has joined forces with Marxists, Nasserites (Arab nationalists) and Islamists, and is very popular among intellectuals. Critics say it has run out of steam, and is hitching its wagon to the Muslim Brotherhood, now the leading opposition force in parliament, with 20 percent of its seats. But Ishaq said Hezbollah s victory in Lebanon has given new life to the spirit of resistance against Mubarak, adding that the moment had come to link that effort with opposition to the State of Israel. Egyptians are furious with Israel for its atrocities in Lebanon, while the regime supports it. Our experience with Israel has been a disaster. It is time to start over. By the end of November, Ishaq wants to collect one million signatures demanding that the Egyptian parliament annul the 1979 peace treaty that ended 30 years of conflict with the Jewish state. Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. We should send our soldiers into the Sinai [desert], it is agreed in the peace treaties, but we have never been able to do it, he called to the crowd from a podium that used Hezbollah s yellow and green Kalashnikov-adorned flag as a background. Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit said last week that a break with Israel or a freezing of the treaty would represent a declaration of war. While Ishaq does not back the call for Israel s destruction by Nasserite ally Hamdin Sabbahi, he does believe there can be only one state in Palestine that includes both Arabs and Jews. Standing next to Ishaq, a Coptic Christian, senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Ali Abdel Fattah was all smiles. It is Nasrallah, Fattah said, who threw a rock into the Zionist pond. Fattah forecast that the battle will be long in Palestine and will only end with the return of the true owners and the departure of the settlers, regardless of their origin. But he did not rule out an eventual coexistence with Israel. The rally s host, local communist leader Anis Al-Baya, slammed the Egyptian police, saying: They came and stole the chairs we had set up outside in expectation of 4,000 people. On the walls of his headquarters were no posters of Marx, but one of Nasrallah. We are against parties based on religions, like the Muslim Brotherhood, but with the Shiites it is different, Baya said.
Protest figure on campaign against Israel
