Egypt: Second Tuesday (Updated)

Here's where things are as of now (expect updates on this later):

The mass protests have formed, and they are indeed massive. Cairo protest may be in the hundreds of thousands; Alexandria and Suez are reporting thousands; other demonstrations are reported in the smaller cities and Upper Egypt.

Yesterday's Egypt Update here had news of Frank G. Wisner Jr. getting the call to act as a "representative" for the Obama administration. Just for fairness sake, here is FP's Josh Rogin's take on the choice: "...too close to Mubarak?".

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Related item: It may be that an effort to forestall the growth of protests that have started in Jordan is underway. King Abdullah of Jordan has dismissed his cabinet and appointed a new prime minister amid large street protests. Luck on that. Having Jordan go up at the same time as Egypt, and yet no one in Syria thinking to burn down the House of Assad, is either an ugly coincidence or the best managed Islamist plot in decades. If the protests do continue to spread (Yemen doesn't count; the South hates the Northern government 24/7, they don't need inspiration) we'll have a clue, though. A spread to Syria would plausibly be a self-generated movement; A spread to Saudi Arabia would more likely be something orchestrated (and very short lived, in my opinion. The House of Saud does not tolerate disturbances.) A spread to Libya would be... well, who cares why?... great.

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Update, end of day Tuesday, 'blog time:

Mubarak spoke to his media outlets... said a lot of what would be expected... about the only thing worth taking seriously is the 'promise' not to run as a candidate in the election coming this September and to step down from office after that election.

Note to Kyoudou (Kyodo wire service; Japan) and their AP partners: Getting the story WRONG doesn't help. Mubarak said he IS NOT running again.

Then... there is this. I have no reason to disbelieve Clarice Feldman, nor her now-attributed correspondent, but since the letter is one of opinion there isn't much to trace for authenticity. What I can say is, based on other sources, much of what is said about protest sizes, orchestration, police roles and the sense of how this is being a bit gamed all seem to be true or closely authentic opinion.

So we watch, we wait, and might I suggest keeping a deep suspicion of anyone who claims to be a "leader" of all this... political, regime, or opposition. I'm not sure there is a real leader. In fact, I'd like it better by far if there wasn't.

But there might be one. Look very carefully.

Black August?

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has always had an uncomfortable relationship with the common population of the Jordan River region. Being a foreign line of nobility that was placed atop one part of the partition of the former Ottoman Empire after World War I, and being functionally exiled from Peninsular Arabia by their rivals the House of Saud, it is no wonder that domestic politics in Jordan are still based as much on the fears of insecure rulers as anything else.

How insecure? How about the fact that over 70% of the population of Jordan self-identifies as "Palestinian"? How about the uncomfortable historical fact that the land itself has been promised, and claimed, thrice over in the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman overlords? (Syria certainly hasn't forgotten that, and has acted upon their claim in the recent enough past.) How about the fact that the last time the Palestine Liberation Organization tried to take over the country (in 1970), the result was a war *inside Jordan*... General Information Only, but to explain the full horror of that: Black September.

So when rumors get going, the conspiracy theories circulate, and when those rumors are that Israel is supposedly going to evict all the Palestinians from the West Bank area... panic ensues in the highest reaches of the Jordanian government.

(Israeli) Defense officials said this week that despite Israeli assurances that the Netanyahu government was not planning on evicting Palestinians to Jordan, Amman's anxiety was still high, likely an indication that "the Jordanians are still concerned that Israel is considering Jordan as an alternative for a Palestinian state," one official said. "The visit was aimed at assuaging those fears and ensuring that strategic relations between the countries stay on track."

Reasonable fear, though. The original division of the region into the Palestine Mandate and the Trans-Jordan was in part an intentional effort by the British to make Trans-Jordan (now the Kingdom of Jordan) an Arab-ruled Palestinian nation. No organized forcible relocations happened until the British were out of the picture though (but a lot happened from 1948 on... mostly exiling the Jewish residents of the Arab-ruled states surrounding Israel. There were removals of Palestinians from land in the Mandate as well, and then the massive self-exile of the Arab population from the Mandate at the time of Israeli Independence).

Well, here we go again:

Alarmed by rumors regarding a US-backed scheme to turn Jordan into a homeland for Palestinians, Abdullah is planning a series of steps to foil any attempt to resettle Palestinian refugees in the kingdom.

The rumors were triggered by talks about a plan to establish a decentralized government in Jordan, where local communities would enjoy some form of autonomy.

The Jordanian authorities' decision to revoke the citizenship of Palestinians in Jordan - who make up more than 70 percent of the kingdom's population - added fuel to the fire by giving substance to the rumors.

Not the best move, that. Let's hope it wasn't a fatal mistake.