Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s health has taken a serious turn for the worse, according to a report that appeared Tuesday in the Arab-language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. The London-based daily reported Tuesday that the 83-year-old Mubarak underwent another round of medical tests during his current visit to Paris. The paper said the Egyptian leader may be suffering from cancer, although the exact nature of the illness remains unclear. Mubarak, who made a surprise visit to the French capital on Monday, held meetings there with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Press photographs from both meetings that were distributed to the media do not show the Egyptian president to have any discernible signs of illness.
Egyptian President Mubarak has cancer of the esophagus
Egyptian President Mubarak has cancer of the esophagus
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak , 83, was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, the muscular tube through which food passes from the mouth to the stomach, eight months ago, although his illness was kept a state secret, The diagnosis was confirmed on March 6, when the president underwent surgery at a hospital in Germany. Since returning home, the president is rarely seen in Cairo and spends most of his time at the Sharm el-Sheikh Sinai resort. There, he enjoys the rest recommended for him and his medical advisers, some from abroad, can come and go unnoticed. Most recently, the doctors told him the cancerous cells are spreading.
Monday, July 5, the Egyptian president arrived in Paris - officially for meetings with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri. But our sources say he traveled for medical tests at the exclusive Percy Military Hospital at Clamart, outside Paris, where senior French politicians and the president's important friends are treated in great privacy. Incidentally, it was there that Yasser Arafat was hospitalized and died in 2004. Mubarak has spent the last two years carefully managing the transition of power so that his passing will not leave a vacuum or cause political earthquakes. The transfer of the presidency to his son Gamal (Jimmy) Mubarak, 52, was set in train in the winter of 2009 with the help of military and political bodies connected with the ruling National Democratic Party-NPD. Gamal was groomed as successor and currently holds the post of General Secretary of the NPD's Policy Committee. Deals were struck with the top Egyptian military and intelligence echelons to support the candidacy of Mubarak Jr. and not put up their own candidates for president. There is no truth therefore in the rumors that intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman is the favored candidate of Egypt's military. The president-in-waiting still faces two tests. One is how he handles the expansion of his executive powers so as to fill his father's shoes as clear frontrunner in advance of the 2011 presidential election. The younger Mubarak will also be watched to see if opens the election to international monitors, thereby giving his country its first comparatively free election - or leave Egyptian supervisory mechanisms in place and assure himself of victory. Many Egyptians are asking if Gamal Mubarak will let partial democracy be introduced after his father's long years of suppressing opposition.
Monday, July 5, the Egyptian president arrived in Paris - officially for meetings with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri. But our sources say he traveled for medical tests at the exclusive Percy Military Hospital at Clamart, outside Paris, where senior French politicians and the president's important friends are treated in great privacy. Incidentally, it was there that Yasser Arafat was hospitalized and died in 2004. Mubarak has spent the last two years carefully managing the transition of power so that his passing will not leave a vacuum or cause political earthquakes. The transfer of the presidency to his son Gamal (Jimmy) Mubarak, 52, was set in train in the winter of 2009 with the help of military and political bodies connected with the ruling National Democratic Party-NPD. Gamal was groomed as successor and currently holds the post of General Secretary of the NPD's Policy Committee. Deals were struck with the top Egyptian military and intelligence echelons to support the candidacy of Mubarak Jr. and not put up their own candidates for president. There is no truth therefore in the rumors that intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman is the favored candidate of Egypt's military. The president-in-waiting still faces two tests. One is how he handles the expansion of his executive powers so as to fill his father's shoes as clear frontrunner in advance of the 2011 presidential election. The younger Mubarak will also be watched to see if opens the election to international monitors, thereby giving his country its first comparatively free election - or leave Egyptian supervisory mechanisms in place and assure himself of victory. Many Egyptians are asking if Gamal Mubarak will let partial democracy be introduced after his father's long years of suppressing opposition.
Gamal Mubarak son of Hosni
Government-run mosques across Egypt offered prayers for President Hosni Mubarak's recovery on Friday.Mr Mubarak, who is 81, is still in Germany recuperating from surgery he underwent nearly two weeks ago.Official media in Egypt report that his recovery is going well, but no date has been set yet for his discharge. The health of Mr Mubarak is a taboo topic in Egypt, and a cause of political and economic uncertainty because he has no obvious successor. A senior official from the ministry of religious endowments told al-Masry al-Youm newspaper that praying for the head of state was the religious duty of all Muslims. On Friday, Egyptian television broadcast new pictures showing Mr Mubarak sitting at a table and going over paperwork with his chief of staff Zakaria Azmi at the Heidelberg University Hospital. According to the BBC, Mubarak has survived six assassination attempts.[2] In June 1995 there was an alleged assassination attempt involving noxious gases and Egyptian Islamic Jihad while he was in Ethiopia for a conference of the Organization of African Unityng assailant.[4] Upon return Mubarak is said to have authorized bombings on Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya which by 1999 saw 20,000 persons placed in detention related to the revolutionary Islamic organizations.[citation needed] Encyclopædia Britannica mentions another assassination attempt in 1999 when he "was slightly wounded after being attacked by a knife-wieldi
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Χάος στην Μέση ανατολή θα ακολουθήσει τον επερχόμενο θάνατο του Μουμπάρακ από καρκίνο. Ο βασικότερος υποστηρικτής των Ισραηλινών στο πόλεμο κατά των Παλαιστηνίων και υποστηρικτής της Αμερικανικής πολιτικής υπήρξε πυλώνας της ΝΑΤΟικής πολιτικής στην Μ Ανατολή. Οι αδελφοί Μουσουλμάνοι περιμένουν ήσυχα (μεχρι στιγμής στην γωνία ) . ο ετοιμοθάνατος Μουμπάρακ προσπαθεί να σώσει την δικτατορική δυναστεία του κληροδοτόντας την θέση του στον Γιό του GEMAL Mubarak
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Can Mubarak weather a perfect storm?
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Can Mubarak weather a perfect storm?
Anger over support for Israel in addition to political stagnation and economic instability could undermine Egypt's president
Holed up under the belle époque domes of his presidential palace this week, ailing Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak would not have heard the crowds chanting his name on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Fayoum and other major cities across the country.Which is just as well, as their words were enough to send a chill down the spine of any Arab autocrat fighting to maintain his grip over a nation increasingly reluctant to afford those at the top of the political tree any kind of credibility. "Ya Mubarak, Ya Sahyoni" ("Mubarak the Zionist") sang the protesters, as anger over Israel's deadly assault on the Gaza aid flotilla gathered momentum. "Down with the siege, down with Mubarak."Only last month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz was describing the relationship between Mubarak and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a "wonderful friendship" and claiming that Bibi felt closer to the 82-year-old Egyptian than to any other world statesman.Well, friends can sometimes cause each other headaches, and Israel's bout of gung-ho piracy on Monday has just handed Mubarak a head-splitting migraine right at the moment when he needed to be at the top of his game.Domestically, Egypt's role as an accomplice in Israel's crippling siege of Gaza has long been Mubarak's biggest political vulnerability. As well as keeping the border at Rafah largely sealed and regularly gassing the underground tunnels that the Palestinian territory relies upon for economic survival (not to mention the construction of a 18m deep underground steel wall intended to cut them off altogether), Egypt has also consistently blocked aid convoys from entering the Gaza Strip and played a hefty part in the failure of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah to reconcile their differences.The rewards reaped by Egypt's ruling elite for facilitating an illegal blockade against a fellow Arab community are two-fold. First, Cairo gets to contain and cripple Hamas, whom it identifies as a threat to its own national and regional hegemony – not least due to the Islamist party's links with the semi-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement back home. Second, it brings Egypt firmly into the fold of the comically titled "moderate" grouping of Middle Eastern autocracies that enjoy American support.Making nice with Israel opens the door to billions of dollars worth of aidfrom Washington, money on which Mubarak's clique depend to fund the security apparatus that sustains them in power. It also helps ensure that the west turns a blind eye to the flagrant transgressions of democratic principles and human rights that emanate out of this volatile corner of North Africa with awkward regularity.But the price the Egyptian government pays for this deal comes in the form of public legitimacy. Egypt may be formally at peace with Israel but the vast majority of the population remain steadfastly opposed to cultural normalisation with the Zionist state, never mind unequivocal political and logistical support for the economic and social strangulation of one-and-a-half million neighbouring Palestinians. The murder of flotilla activists has, predictably, fuelled a surge of anti-Israeli sentiment among many Egyptians. The challenge now for the fragmented anti-Mubarak opposition movement is to channel that sentiment towards condemnation of Egypt's own government as well.Recent history is on their side. Over the past decade regional political crises have twice produced a sharp spike in the number of people demonstrating on the streets in Egypt, firstly at the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in 2000 and subsequently during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when 40,000 people occupied Cairo's central Tahrir Square for a full 24 hours before riot police managed to disperse them.On both occasions, protests relating to events taking place abroad quickly mushroomed into a powerful critique of local tyranny, with linkages drawn between injustices playing out beyond Egypt's borders and the oppression so pervasive within them.The flotilla controversy already appears to be following suit. Egyptian protesters denouncing Israel this week extended their anti-siege slogans to cover their own immediate experience of being kettled-in by baton-wielding riot police; on Tuesday, the day of rigged elections to the upper house of Egypt's parliament, TV cameras filmed one veteran dissidentlikening Israel's actions in Gaza to the Egyptian government's "massacre" of people's votes.Prominent political activist Hossam el-Hamalawy told me:"Unanimously now, whenever protesters get together, you'll find their first chants are against Mubarak. Whenever anything happens with Palestine and Israel, the strongest impact is here in Egypt. It's very ironic: we have the most treacherous regime when it comes to the Palestinian cause – Mubarak is America's most senior thug in the region – and yet the people of Egypt are among the most sympathetic you can find in terms of the Palestinians, because they can understand the correlations between the Palestinian issue and their own situation." It is wise not to exaggerate the potential of such protests; numerically they remain small and, as another long-term dissident, Ahmed Salah, explained to me recently, most Egyptians remain fearful of expressing public opposition to Mubarak for fear of the consequences. "The majority of people, if you ask them about getting on to the streets to show their anger, simply reply 'Mafish fayda' ('It's no use'). They don't want to sacrifice themselves in vain."But that doesn't mean that Mubarak is off the hook. With economic standards declining, political stagnation entrenching and more (highly flawed) elections approaching just at the time when the president is widely perceived to be close to his last breath, Israel's bloodshed in the Mediterranean injects a new element of uncertainty into what amounts to a perfect storm for the octogenarian's regime.Even more worryingly for the Egyptian government, the very leverage it held in the Israel/Palestine arena may itself be draining away. "The situation is explosive and in the upper echelons of the state there's total confusion in terms of how to handle it," el-Hamalawy argues.Caught between his people and his paymasters, tough times lie ahead for one of the Middle East's oldest western stalwarts.
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President Gamal Abed Al NasserGamal Abed Al Nasser was born in Alexandria in 1918. His family came from upper Egyptian small village called Bani Myrra, Assuot. Nasser came from a modest background as a son of a postman. He got his education in the Military Academy in 1938- 39. He participated in the war against Israel in 1948 as a major. In 1949 he joined the Free Officers, who plotted against the non-constitutional British all- pervasive presence, the landowning elite and the weak and morally corrupt king. The Free Officers were responsible for the coup that deposed King Faruk from the throne in 1952 and it was Nasser who was the real leader, yet he still remained on the background. After a long fight over power with president Naguib he ousted him in the second attempt, on November 14, allegedly for having known of the Muslim Brotherhood's attempt on Nasser's life in the month before. Soon after taking power Nasser negotiated an agreement with the British, ending their 72-years presence in Egypt. After being officially elected as a president in 1956, he also promulgated a new constitution, that gave the presidency more power. Nasser's political system was called Arab socialism. With this program he confiscated 243,000 hectares (2,430 km) farm land from a small group of rich landowners. Later on in his presidency he nationalized banks and industries. In 1956 USA and Britain withdrew a promised support for the construction of a new Aswan Dam and Nasser responded with nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, as he wanted to finance the construction of the dam with the income from tolls on the traffic on the canal. The nationalization of the Suez Canal was met by an Israeli invasion of the Sinai peninsula and an Anglo-French invasion of the Canal Zone. But the invading forces were put under pressure from the UN, and had to withdraw. Egypt kept the full ownership of the Suez Canal and managed also to get Soviet support for the construction of the dam, which was completed 14 years later. Following this, Nasser rose to stardom in the Arab world. In 1958 Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic, with Nasser as the head. This was at this time considered as the first step towards Arab unity. When it broke up in 1961, after a coup in Syria, Nasser kept the name United Arab Republic even if it was only Egypt left. This was meant as a symbol for his aspirations of Arab unity (the name was changed the year after his death). Nasser's ideas were laid down in his book of 1959 "The Philosophy of the Revolution". He precipitated the third war with Israel, when he in 1967 both expelled United Nations peace keeping forces from the Gaza Strip and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba for traffic on Israel's port Eilat. But when Israel attacked Egypt on June 5, it was so strongly the first day that Egypt was in reality beaten already. Still the fighting's continued for five more days. The only effective action of the Egyptians was to close the Suez Canal for all ships. The humiliation of Egypt was so deep that Nasser offered to resign, but the people demonstrated in such numbers in his favor, that he continued, and also took the position as prime minister. From this time on Nasser's government became increasingly dependent on military and economic aid from the Soviet Union. Nasser died on September 28, 1970 from heart attack, while still in office.
President Anuar Al SadatPresident of Egypt from 1970 to 1981. Sadat's background was military education. He was arrested twice during the World War 2 for cooperating with the Germans and put to trial for plans to assassinate a politician in 1946, but was acquitted. He was active in the dissident officer's actions of freeing Egypt from British control, together with Gamal Abed Al-Nasser. Sadat was on Nasser's side with the coup in 1952 and later the deposing of Neguib. Sadat was vice-president in two periods, 1964-66 and 1969-1970. With Nasser's death in 1970, Sadat was elected new president. To have been one of Nasser's closest associates, Sadat set a new course surprisingly independent from Nasser. While Nasser had oriented himself away from the West and started cooperation closely with the Soviet Union, Sadat sacked 20,000 Soviet military personnel two year after seizing power. In 1973 Sadat was one of the instigators of the Yom Kippur war against Israel, but this only gave part of the victory he had hoped for (which was regaining control over the Suez Canal, a very important aim for him). But the war demonstrated that the Arab military was now at least as strong as the Israeli (which needed US aid to fight back the Arabs). The Yom Kippur war regarded as a victory for Sadat, especially compared to the falling star of Nasser in his last years at power. Sadat's rising star on the Arab sky, dropped to the ground in 1977, when he surprised the world by visiting Israel. This visit was to a large degree motivated by the economical problems after many wars with Israel. In Israel, Sadat spoke with prime minister Menachim Begin, and gave a speech in the national assembly of Israel, the Knesset. The result of the talks that started here, was the so-called Camp David agreement, officially signed on March 26, 1979. The treaty was in two parts: Israel should give up land taken from Egypt in exchange for peace.The other part, that should secure the establishment of a Palestinian state and no more building of settlements on the occupied territories, was never fulfilled from Israeli side. While the international society rewarded him with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 (together with Menachim Begin), the treaty with Israel isolated Egypt in the Arab world, and strong opposition was expressed from the Islamists. In September 1981, Sadat gave the order to round up 1,600 dissidents, Islamists and Communists. One month later, on October 6, he was shot by three soldiers under a military parade in Cairo.
Holed up under the belle époque domes of his presidential palace this week, ailing Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak would not have heard the crowds chanting his name on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Fayoum and other major cities across the country.Which is just as well, as their words were enough to send a chill down the spine of any Arab autocrat fighting to maintain his grip over a nation increasingly reluctant to afford those at the top of the political tree any kind of credibility. "Ya Mubarak, Ya Sahyoni" ("Mubarak the Zionist") sang the protesters, as anger over Israel's deadly assault on the Gaza aid flotilla gathered momentum. "Down with the siege, down with Mubarak."Only last month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz was describing the relationship between Mubarak and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a "wonderful friendship" and claiming that Bibi felt closer to the 82-year-old Egyptian than to any other world statesman.Well, friends can sometimes cause each other headaches, and Israel's bout of gung-ho piracy on Monday has just handed Mubarak a head-splitting migraine right at the moment when he needed to be at the top of his game.Domestically, Egypt's role as an accomplice in Israel's crippling siege of Gaza has long been Mubarak's biggest political vulnerability. As well as keeping the border at Rafah largely sealed and regularly gassing the underground tunnels that the Palestinian territory relies upon for economic survival (not to mention the construction of a 18m deep underground steel wall intended to cut them off altogether), Egypt has also consistently blocked aid convoys from entering the Gaza Strip and played a hefty part in the failure of rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah to reconcile their differences.The rewards reaped by Egypt's ruling elite for facilitating an illegal blockade against a fellow Arab community are two-fold. First, Cairo gets to contain and cripple Hamas, whom it identifies as a threat to its own national and regional hegemony – not least due to the Islamist party's links with the semi-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement back home. Second, it brings Egypt firmly into the fold of the comically titled "moderate" grouping of Middle Eastern autocracies that enjoy American support.Making nice with Israel opens the door to billions of dollars worth of aidfrom Washington, money on which Mubarak's clique depend to fund the security apparatus that sustains them in power. It also helps ensure that the west turns a blind eye to the flagrant transgressions of democratic principles and human rights that emanate out of this volatile corner of North Africa with awkward regularity.But the price the Egyptian government pays for this deal comes in the form of public legitimacy. Egypt may be formally at peace with Israel but the vast majority of the population remain steadfastly opposed to cultural normalisation with the Zionist state, never mind unequivocal political and logistical support for the economic and social strangulation of one-and-a-half million neighbouring Palestinians. The murder of flotilla activists has, predictably, fuelled a surge of anti-Israeli sentiment among many Egyptians. The challenge now for the fragmented anti-Mubarak opposition movement is to channel that sentiment towards condemnation of Egypt's own government as well.Recent history is on their side. Over the past decade regional political crises have twice produced a sharp spike in the number of people demonstrating on the streets in Egypt, firstly at the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in 2000 and subsequently during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when 40,000 people occupied Cairo's central Tahrir Square for a full 24 hours before riot police managed to disperse them.On both occasions, protests relating to events taking place abroad quickly mushroomed into a powerful critique of local tyranny, with linkages drawn between injustices playing out beyond Egypt's borders and the oppression so pervasive within them.The flotilla controversy already appears to be following suit. Egyptian protesters denouncing Israel this week extended their anti-siege slogans to cover their own immediate experience of being kettled-in by baton-wielding riot police; on Tuesday, the day of rigged elections to the upper house of Egypt's parliament, TV cameras filmed one veteran dissidentlikening Israel's actions in Gaza to the Egyptian government's "massacre" of people's votes.Prominent political activist Hossam el-Hamalawy told me:"Unanimously now, whenever protesters get together, you'll find their first chants are against Mubarak. Whenever anything happens with Palestine and Israel, the strongest impact is here in Egypt. It's very ironic: we have the most treacherous regime when it comes to the Palestinian cause – Mubarak is America's most senior thug in the region – and yet the people of Egypt are among the most sympathetic you can find in terms of the Palestinians, because they can understand the correlations between the Palestinian issue and their own situation." It is wise not to exaggerate the potential of such protests; numerically they remain small and, as another long-term dissident, Ahmed Salah, explained to me recently, most Egyptians remain fearful of expressing public opposition to Mubarak for fear of the consequences. "The majority of people, if you ask them about getting on to the streets to show their anger, simply reply 'Mafish fayda' ('It's no use'). They don't want to sacrifice themselves in vain."But that doesn't mean that Mubarak is off the hook. With economic standards declining, political stagnation entrenching and more (highly flawed) elections approaching just at the time when the president is widely perceived to be close to his last breath, Israel's bloodshed in the Mediterranean injects a new element of uncertainty into what amounts to a perfect storm for the octogenarian's regime.Even more worryingly for the Egyptian government, the very leverage it held in the Israel/Palestine arena may itself be draining away. "The situation is explosive and in the upper echelons of the state there's total confusion in terms of how to handle it," el-Hamalawy argues.Caught between his people and his paymasters, tough times lie ahead for one of the Middle East's oldest western stalwarts.
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President Gamal Abed Al NasserGamal Abed Al Nasser was born in Alexandria in 1918. His family came from upper Egyptian small village called Bani Myrra, Assuot. Nasser came from a modest background as a son of a postman. He got his education in the Military Academy in 1938- 39. He participated in the war against Israel in 1948 as a major. In 1949 he joined the Free Officers, who plotted against the non-constitutional British all- pervasive presence, the landowning elite and the weak and morally corrupt king. The Free Officers were responsible for the coup that deposed King Faruk from the throne in 1952 and it was Nasser who was the real leader, yet he still remained on the background. After a long fight over power with president Naguib he ousted him in the second attempt, on November 14, allegedly for having known of the Muslim Brotherhood's attempt on Nasser's life in the month before. Soon after taking power Nasser negotiated an agreement with the British, ending their 72-years presence in Egypt. After being officially elected as a president in 1956, he also promulgated a new constitution, that gave the presidency more power. Nasser's political system was called Arab socialism. With this program he confiscated 243,000 hectares (2,430 km) farm land from a small group of rich landowners. Later on in his presidency he nationalized banks and industries. In 1956 USA and Britain withdrew a promised support for the construction of a new Aswan Dam and Nasser responded with nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, as he wanted to finance the construction of the dam with the income from tolls on the traffic on the canal. The nationalization of the Suez Canal was met by an Israeli invasion of the Sinai peninsula and an Anglo-French invasion of the Canal Zone. But the invading forces were put under pressure from the UN, and had to withdraw. Egypt kept the full ownership of the Suez Canal and managed also to get Soviet support for the construction of the dam, which was completed 14 years later. Following this, Nasser rose to stardom in the Arab world. In 1958 Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic, with Nasser as the head. This was at this time considered as the first step towards Arab unity. When it broke up in 1961, after a coup in Syria, Nasser kept the name United Arab Republic even if it was only Egypt left. This was meant as a symbol for his aspirations of Arab unity (the name was changed the year after his death). Nasser's ideas were laid down in his book of 1959 "The Philosophy of the Revolution". He precipitated the third war with Israel, when he in 1967 both expelled United Nations peace keeping forces from the Gaza Strip and blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba for traffic on Israel's port Eilat. But when Israel attacked Egypt on June 5, it was so strongly the first day that Egypt was in reality beaten already. Still the fighting's continued for five more days. The only effective action of the Egyptians was to close the Suez Canal for all ships. The humiliation of Egypt was so deep that Nasser offered to resign, but the people demonstrated in such numbers in his favor, that he continued, and also took the position as prime minister. From this time on Nasser's government became increasingly dependent on military and economic aid from the Soviet Union. Nasser died on September 28, 1970 from heart attack, while still in office.
President Anuar Al SadatPresident of Egypt from 1970 to 1981. Sadat's background was military education. He was arrested twice during the World War 2 for cooperating with the Germans and put to trial for plans to assassinate a politician in 1946, but was acquitted. He was active in the dissident officer's actions of freeing Egypt from British control, together with Gamal Abed Al-Nasser. Sadat was on Nasser's side with the coup in 1952 and later the deposing of Neguib. Sadat was vice-president in two periods, 1964-66 and 1969-1970. With Nasser's death in 1970, Sadat was elected new president. To have been one of Nasser's closest associates, Sadat set a new course surprisingly independent from Nasser. While Nasser had oriented himself away from the West and started cooperation closely with the Soviet Union, Sadat sacked 20,000 Soviet military personnel two year after seizing power. In 1973 Sadat was one of the instigators of the Yom Kippur war against Israel, but this only gave part of the victory he had hoped for (which was regaining control over the Suez Canal, a very important aim for him). But the war demonstrated that the Arab military was now at least as strong as the Israeli (which needed US aid to fight back the Arabs). The Yom Kippur war regarded as a victory for Sadat, especially compared to the falling star of Nasser in his last years at power. Sadat's rising star on the Arab sky, dropped to the ground in 1977, when he surprised the world by visiting Israel. This visit was to a large degree motivated by the economical problems after many wars with Israel. In Israel, Sadat spoke with prime minister Menachim Begin, and gave a speech in the national assembly of Israel, the Knesset. The result of the talks that started here, was the so-called Camp David agreement, officially signed on March 26, 1979. The treaty was in two parts: Israel should give up land taken from Egypt in exchange for peace.The other part, that should secure the establishment of a Palestinian state and no more building of settlements on the occupied territories, was never fulfilled from Israeli side. While the international society rewarded him with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 (together with Menachim Begin), the treaty with Israel isolated Egypt in the Arab world, and strong opposition was expressed from the Islamists. In September 1981, Sadat gave the order to round up 1,600 dissidents, Islamists and Communists. One month later, on October 6, he was shot by three soldiers under a military parade in Cairo.
President Hosny Mubarak
He was born in Kafer Musilha, Monufya, Egypt 1928. Egyptian president and military leader since 1981. Mubarak was born in a higher middle class family and his education was military, from both Egypt (National Military Academy and Air Force Academy) and Soviet Union (Frunze General Staff Academy). He joined the air force in 1950, and became air force chief of staff in 1969, and commander in chief in 1972. He had several military positions under president Sadat, like deputy minister of war, he is the planner of the aerial attack in 1973, and was one of Sadat's closest advisors.In 1975 he was appointed vice president. Mubarak was elected new president October 13, 1981, one week after Sadat had been assassinated. Mubarak declared on his inauguration that he would follow up the political line of Sadat, which had been one of reconciliation with the West and peace with Israel inside internationally recognized borders. Mubarak's program since 1981 has been one of economic reforms, more political freedom, like letting the Muslim Brotherhood into the parliament and he gave more freedom for the press. Internationally, he has focused on neutrality between the great powers and put his efforts into improving relations with other Arab states. In October 1987 Mubarak was re-elected with 97,1% of the votes in an election without opposing candidates.The greatest challenge for Mubarak have been the militant Islamists, which not only represent an ideology that has resulted in the deaths of dozens of foreign tourists, but which is also motivated by the difficult economical conditions that most Egyptians face. Mubarak has only managed to bring noticeable growth in the economy in recent years, and has used milder measures to suppress the militant Islamists, than what has been the case in other Arab countries, like Syria and Tunisia.Mubarak supported the UN sanctions against Iraq, after their occupation of Kuwait in 1990, and Egypt participated in the Gulf War with 38,500 troops, and has been part of the post-war efforts to stabilize the Gulf region. Mubarak's government advised the Palestinians during the talks in Norway in 1993, leading to the Oslo Agreement of the same year. Mubarak was re-elected in 1993, 1999 and 2005
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