Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Rejects Draft Constitution

The Muslim Brotherhood has rejected a new draft constitution approved by Egypt’s 50-member constituent assembly on Sunday. The draft constitution allows for a presidential election before parliamentary elections, contrary to the roadmap established by the military following its July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. However, it leaves the final decision up to interim President Adly Mansour. Additionally, the draft says that "election procedures" must begin within six months of the constitution’s ratification. Amr Moussa, chairman of the constituent assembly, said the draft would be sent to Mansour on Tuesday. It must then be approved in a referendum within the next two months. While on paper, the draft appears to offer greater rights to Egyptian citizens — criminalizing torture and requiring the government to protect women from violence — it is criticized for privileging the police and other institutions. Meanwhile, on Sunday Egyptian security forces stormed Cairo’s Tahrir Square and fired tear gas in efforts to disperse around 2,000 Islamist protesters. It was the first demonstration held by supporters of Morsi in Tahrir in over a month, and came after the government issued a law requiring advanced authorization for protests.

Syria

The United States has agreed to destroy most of "Syria’s priority chemicals" aboard a U.S. Navy ship in international waters. The United States has encountered difficulty in finding a country willing to permit the destruction of Syria’s chemical arsenal on its soil. However, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it is evaluating expressions of interest from 35 firms willing to destroy the less-lethal weapons, which make up over half of Syria’s stockpile. The U.S. government has begun equipping the Cape Ray with "field deployable hydrolysis system technology" which will dilute the chemicals to safer levels. According to Caitlin Hayden, National Security Council spokesperson, the United States is "confident that we can meet the milestones for the destruction set out by the OPCW." Meanwhile, the Israeli army said it returned fire into Syria on Monday after a Syrian soldier shot at Israeli troops near the Quneitra border crossing with the occupied Golan Heights.

Headlines

• Two days of clashes between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli have killed at least 12 people.
• Three blasts killed an estimated 12 people at a funeral in northern Iraq on Sunday for Sunni leader Mudher Shalal, killed by a car bomb Saturday.
• U.S. Senators said they would push forward with new Iran sanctions as an "insurance policy" if the interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program fails to produce a long-term deal.
• Bedouins living in the Negev Desert are protesting the Israeli government’s plans to resettle them holding an international "day of rage."
• The Turkish government said it stands by last week’s bilateral oil deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, but is looking for consent from the Iraqi government.

Arguments and Analysis

‘Handshakes in Geneva‘ (MERIP)

"The Israelis, the Saudis and their mouthpieces say over and over again that the biggest danger to ‘stability’ in the Middle East is the Iranian nuclear program. Sometimes the Obama administration appears to share this inflated risk assessment; sometimes it does not. But the course of the Arab revolts has given Obama and Kerry new reason to think, perhaps like the elder Bush, that ‘it wouldn’t be prudent’ to take marching orders from Bibi and Prince Bandar. When measured against the tactical approaches of the last 30 years, the Geneva bargain is indeed a major departure in US policy, but it is not the reckless leap its detractors present it to be. For when measured against the goals of US grand strategy since World War II, the enrichment accord looks like a calculated move to preserve the American upper hand by giving the Islamic Republic, at long last, a reason to define ‘stability’ rather as the US does.

Back in Iran, the regional tumult also pushed the state toward a careful rapprochement with the West. The Islamic Republic is afraid of permanent international isolation if its closest friend, the Syrian regime, is decimated by the civil war and the highly sectarian Sunni militias in the opposition continue to flex their muscles. Saying yes at the nuclear talks in Geneva opens the door — albeit still a crack — to Iranian participation in the upcoming talks, in the same Swiss city, about a political solution that could grant the Syrian regime some respite. Iran sees equal need to be a counterweight to Sunni sectarianism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the overstretched US, solicitous of the Maliki government in Baghdad and annoyed with the Karzai government in Kabul, may come to agree. The back-channel US-Iranian discussions hosted by Oman since March lend credence to the idea that the two states discern a convergence of interests. Notably, these talks began a full three months before Rouhani was elected."

‘The (anti-) protest law: no more public space in Egypt?‘ (Marwa Fikry Abdel Samei, OpenDemocracy)

"People’s reclaim of public space was one of the crucial gains, if not the only gain, of the January 25 Revolution. The success of the revolution was in fact only achieved when the protesters managed to hold their ground at Tahrir Square. With the absence of trusted and deep-rooted political parties and the lack of confidence in most political elites, the streets and squares became the most accessible means for people to express their demands, grievances, and opinions. Public space represented not only a site but also an instrument of revolutionary struggle.

Over the last three years, the deep Egyptian state has been trying t
o restore its control over public space. Meanwhile, political activists and protesters have been persistent in protecting their only visible gain and making it an indispensable permanent, undisputed right. To be sure, at times this right was abused and had become relatively hackneyed since the revolution, but the idea that the state was no longer the master of public space denoted a volte-face in state-society relations.

Since the July 3 coup, it has become increasingly obvious just how adamant the new/old regime is in its attempt to reinstate the old authoritative formula of the state’s relationship with its citizens. It is truly ironic that this regime, which established its legitimacy on a public stage, packed full of protesters (whether supporters or opponents of the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood) is now determined, rather unashamedly, to tighten its grip over public space anew."

–Mary Casey & Joshua Haber