It has been an uncomfortable few days for President Husni Mubarak, watching anxiously as the crisis in Gaza spilled over onto his territory, focusing intense and unwelcome attention - both at home and abroad - on Egypt’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In Egypt, as elsewhere, all politics is ultimately local, and one serious problem for Mubarak is the link between the Brotherhood and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that won the 2006 elections and has been running Gaza since last summer’s coup, while keeping up (or failing to stop) daily salvoes of Qassam rockets being fired across the border into Israel.
Khaled Mishal, the influential Hamas leader in Damascus, has reportedly been on the phone to Mahdi Akef, the Brotherhood leader, to coordinate protests and maintain pressure. Both know this episode has been good for Hamas, bad for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader who is committed to talks with Israel, as well as for Mubarak - and that it plays well with the Arab “street.”