JERUSALEM (Reuters) - International envoy James Wolfensohn told Middle Eastmediators the Palestinian Authority faces financial collapse within two weeks because of Israel's decision to cut off tax transfers after Hamas's election win.

I just don’t get it. I really don’t understand. Here is a roundup and below is the world’s great idea on how to deal with the new Hamas run government.

Israel:

Israel collects taxes of which more than $50 million a month is supposed to be reimbursed to the Palestinian Authority. (I haven’t been able to find a more in depth source on how this money is taxed. From my understanding, the Israelis collect the taxes from and on behalf of the Palestinians then give them a portion of it to run their governmental facilities; please correct me if I’m wrong on this) In other words this is not some kind of donation, but the rightful money of the Palestinians.

Alright people start with your nominees. Just write the name of the person you believe is 2005’s Egyptian of the Year in the comments section and we’ll start a voting round soon. Who is it? Ayman Nour? Ahmed Zewail? The MB? Kefaya? Let it rip.

Personally, my nominee is Mr. Hawass for his continued enrichment of our beautiful country.

I’ll print out a fancy looking award for the winner and send it to him or her with a prize money of one Egyptian Gundi.

We’ll also start an “Egyptian of the Century” soon.

Zahi Hawass

Chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities

The Pharaohs keep lobbing them over and he just keep knocking them out of the park. Its what he does.

The man just uncovered another ancient Pharaohs temple the size of a small city in downtown Cairo. A Sun Temple; of course you would think the district they found it in, Ain Shams (literally meaning “eye of the sun”), was a hint.

CAIRO, Egypt - Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday.

The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis — the center of pharaonic sun worship — was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press.

Among the artifacts was a pink granite statue weighing 4 to 5 tons whose features "resemble those of Ramses II," said Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Also found was a 5-foot-high statue of a seated figure with hieroglyphics that include three cartouches with the name of Ramses II, and a 3-ton head of royal statue, the council said in a statement.

King Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for 66 years from 1270 to 1213 B.C., had erected monuments up and down the Nile with records of his achievements, as well as building temples — including Abu Simbel, erected near what is now Egypt's southern border.

Also more than noteworthy, he is also the man who coordinated the effort to build a 3D model of what King Tut looked like.

One of my best friends, the man that made the excellent rendering above and runs this company that makes them (primarily for dental and medical purposes), also tells me that Mr. Hawass is also an incredibly delightful man.

Mr. Hawass you are my nominee for the Egyptian of the Year Award!

Now all we need to do is start living up to what our forefathers left us. Maybe even leave our great great grandchildren something to be as proud of. (BTW I am an architect so if anyone needs me….;)

Get up to speed with Hamas coverage on this blog first.

A dilemma over Hamas and its cash

Feb 16th 2006 | JERUSALEM AND RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition

The world is divided over how to deal with the Palestinian Authority under Hamas

AN ARTICLE this week in the New York Times, alleging that the United States and Israel are hatching a plot to destabilize a Hamas-run Palestinian Authority (PA) by starving it of funds, caused a minor furore—and highlighted divisions over what to do about the Islamist party's resounding victory over the secular Fatah in last month's general election. An American diplomat was quoted as saying that the article was planted mischievously by European diplomats, while a European diplomat suggested it was an Israeli attempt to scare Hamas into moderating its stance.

The truth is that the outside world knows what it wants, but cannot agree on how to get what it wants. The Middle East “quartet”—America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations—says Hamas must end violence, sign up to a two-state solution and accept prior agreements made by the PA. What the members of the quartet cannot agree on is whether—or how—to use the lever of money to enforce those demands.

The result is general confusion. While harder-line elements in the American and Israeli administrations may want to turn off the funding taps, others, especially in Europe, just want to reroute the cash to circumvent rules restricting aid to terrorist groups. This week, for instance, the EU proposed paying the PA's utility bills directly to its Israeli suppliers. There is talk of channelling all cash through the office of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president—though that, say most, looks like a particularly flimsy fig leaf. Some infrastructure projects, says an American contractor, could be reclassified as “essential humanitarian assistance” and be provided by the UN. Donors, especially American ones, may use the UN and World Bank, not bound by restrictions, as conduits to sidestep domestic political pressure. Or maybe they will start applying the same pressure to those agencies. Nobody yet knows.

Change of plans concerning my attempt to get the Imam at my mosque to condemn the audacious proclamations of some guy in Pakistan. They apparently have the Imams on some kind of rotation and he just called me telling me he transferred to some Mosque in Chelsea this Friday not MIT. However, he said he will be at the Harvard Prayer Hall next Friday and would make his speech on the Pakistani Imams there. He’s a sweet Moroccan guy. He’s just what a religious guy should be; sweet, gentle, decent, and peaceful. So till next week; Ill keep you posted.

Christian Dissent...good signs in a bad story.

ODAYSSAT, Egypt -- Christians called the flat-top mud and brick building in this little farming community a guest house. But inside, big crucifixes adorned an altar chamber separated from two dozen rows of pews by a wooden screen. A baptismal font was hidden in a side room. Pictures of a resurrected Jesus, saints and patriarchs gazed from the walls.

For 35 years, the congregation and priests labeled the place a guest house to avoid restrictions on church construction in Egypt. But on Jan. 17, a police official, tipped off that the Christians were trying to have the building officially recognized, stopped by to inspect.

"This is not a guest house," he said with surprise. "It's a church."

According to residents and officials who described the incident, the monks, priests and worshipers answered, in effect: That's right. What of it?

The next day, a mob of Muslim rioters invaded the neighborhood, set fires to palm trees and stables and tried to burn down the building. Only a frantic defense by the Christians and heavy smoke from the flaming trees kept the mob at bay. Police officers who had already surrounded the building stood idly by. One Christian man was killed by a blow to the head with a hoe.

The sectarian battle was one of a series that have recently pitted the minority Coptic Christians, an ancient community in Egypt, against the majority Muslims. Repeated instances of violence have brought to light a persistent paradox of Egyptian life: Although officially a secular state, Egypt is in many ways an Islamic entity in which non-Muslims are accommodated but not exactly on an equal footing. The constitution specifies Islam as Egypt's official religion; Copts make up less than 10 percent of the country's population.

If the tensions are not new, the willingness of the Copts of Odayssat to stand up is. In part, their reaction to the police inspection exemplifies an increasingly common byproduct of Egypt's two-year-long wave of openness and dissent. Such ferment is putting the quarter-century leadership of President Hosni Mubarak to a test at a time when he is also under pressure from the United States to democratize.

The Church Permit and Renewal Laws are amongst the most disturbing in our legal system. Though there are some significant improvements (The permit no longer requires a presidential decree and may be authorized by local Governors. There have, also recently, been appointments of Christian Governors.) I am glad to see Christians in Egypt starting to take a more assertive stance for their rights as I am usually unimpressed with the Coptic Pope’s submissiveness.

I feel that Christian Muslim dialogue and cooperation should be at the forefront of our goals as Egyptians. Diversification of opinion always produces a better product.

-Karim Elsahy

I found this deeply interesting and exceedingly intellectual dialogue by following a link to me. I thought I would share. Enjoy.

Evanl:
And by doing that, they are merely reinforcing the stereotype that they are bad people. Counter productive and dangerous.

Noocyte:
Yes, but then there's THIS.

More of this, please. Much more. And faster.

Islam is an Abrahamic religion. Like Judeism and Christianity, it posits an exclusive relationship between the Divine and Absolute Principle of Creation and a "chosen" (essentially tribal) group. At higher levels of abstraction, that chosen group can be extended to include all of humanity, creating the potential beneficial conception of a brotherhood of man (wording intentional; they tend to be rather patriarchal, arising as they did out of primarily nomadic herding groups, and morphing into more agrarian civilizations with a strong emphasis on animal husbandry. Fatherhood/male potency images predominate). On the darker side of things, they can tend to be expansionist/exclusionary...often brutally so (our group has a direct line to the Creator, so all others need to get on board or suffer righteous retribution for their willful ignorance. That sort of thing). ....

Rice starts Mideast trip in Egypt

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who will meet Rice on Wednesday, has argued that the and should give Hamas more time to adapt its political positions.

Unlike Washington and the Israelis, Mubarak also says that Hamas could be the organization best able to reach a peace settlement with the Jewish state.

Egypt, which has a good working relationship with Hamas, also opposes threats to cut off financial support for the Palestinian Authority, saying this would push Palestinians toward what Mubarak called "extremism".

Under this scary look is a human being that is capable of much more than this. Instead of being afraid, lashing out, and encaging him why not genuinely try to win him over. Now try looking at the picture again.

This is how I feel about Hamas’s win. It is imperative that we find opportunity in everything. Withdrawal will serve nothing. A couple of weeks ago I put out this teaser of a project I have been working on almost since Hamas’s win. In collaboration with a few other parties I am going to be setting up a series of interviews with various Hamas members. I am going to combine those interviews with all the info I can dig up on the MP (Bio, stance,…ect.) We are going to podcast the interviews live.

As with the Chomsky interview I am going to give time to the readers to post questions they would like answered by the MP we interview in the comments section of this site.

We don’t know Hamas, few can even name more than a handful of members. I think it is crucial that we try to. I also think it is important that we try a different approach than the one used towards the PLO in the early nineties, (cutting off the money and movement of all the Palestinians. I say this under the argument that unemployment is already almost 80% and more impoverishment would only lead to a further gravitation to ideology. Also it didnt work the first time.) which is exactly what is going on now.

Hypocrisy? Yes.

That said, at least there is a pretence to civilized manor. When the Cartoon debacle started I said that though I was offended I was not moved enough to join any boycotts. I argued that utilizing a consumer based boycott was a legitimate means of voicing opinion and getting something that is important to you done. Most in the West are quick to discount that but no one gets to draw the board on which the world plays. Some things are important to some in a way others can not fathom and it is completely within their rights to pursue means, ends, and limitations to those factors that mean so much to them.

I also stressed that as long as they remain non violent they are completely within their rights. What happened next… well no one I know, or want to know, is going to defend that.

To me it is utterly ridicules that someone be imprisoned, be it for scholarly or malicious intent, under “federal law that makes it a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust.” or any other piece of history. But it was important enough for some Jews, WWII survivors, and descendants of victims to lobby to get these laws instigated. It’s non violent. Sure it’s a very thinly veiled assault on free speech that would never fly in the States but it is not violent. And that satisfies the one unanimous rule you should expect and demand of anyone and most importantly of yourself.

UPDATE:

An interesting and diverse round up of opinions on the matter by various European news outlets conducted by the BBC.