Wed. 26 Jan. 2011

FOREIGN POLICY A troubled engagement ………………………………...……1

INDEPENDENT Robert Fisk: A new truth dawns on the Arab world …...……3

HAARETZ Hezbollah has emerged as Lebanon's real victor ……………5

AL MASRY AL YOUM Former Lebanon President: Syria wants Egypt out of

Lebanese politics……………………………………….……8

WASHINGTON TIMES Uncle Sam has his head in the sand ….By John Bolton…....10

WASHINGTON POST Editorial: Egypt's unstable regime …………………………12 Will Egypt's protests go the way of Tunisia's revolution? ....13

GUARDIAN Egypt protests are breaking new ground ………………...…16 The Palestine papers have broken a taboo. Now the

arguments for peace can be open……………………..……19

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HOME PAGEA troubled engagement The United States has an ambassador in Syria for the first time in nearly six years. Now what? Andrew J. Tabler,Foreign Policy Magazine,Tuesday, January 25, 2011

On Jan. 16, Amb. Robert Ford stepped off a plane in Damascus -- and right into a diplomatic crisis in Lebanon. The news that Hezbollah and its allies, which are supported by Syria and Iran, have secured the votes to elect a friendly Lebanese prime minister will no doubt be on the top of Ford's agenda as Washington struggles to rein in Hezbollah's growing influence.

Ford's arrival marks the first time a U.S. ambassador has set foot in Syria since Washington withdrew its last envoy in February 2005 following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Relations between the two countries, while never friendly, have been dismal ever since.

With the Syrian-Israeli peace track largely moribund, Ford will likely spend much of his time in Damascus delivering démarches about recent discouraging developments in Syria's policies toward its neighbors. The recent Lebanon crisis, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime has worked aggressively to empower the United States' adversaries, is a prime example of the many challenges that Ford will face.

The bill of indictment against Syria is lengthy. In Lebanon, Damascus has helped Hezbollah orchestrate the collapse of Saad Hariri's government and choke off the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which was established in 2006 by the U.N. Security Council to bring rafik Hariri's killers to justice. On Oct. 3, the Assad regime issued arrest warrants for 33 people, including Lebanese figures close to Hariri, and accused them of engineering false evidence implicating Syria. Damascus also failed to convince Hezbollah to compromise during itsultimately fruitless dialogue with Saudi Arabia over the last year.

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Syria has also halted cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) investigation into its nuclear activities. It not only refused IAEA investigators access to the undeclared nuclear reactor in northern Syria destroyed by Israel in September 2007, but has stopped cooperating on inspections at its declared research reactor outside Damascus as well. Foreign fighter have also continued to flow from Syria to Iraq, despite a recent improvement in relations between the two countries. Last, but certainly not least, Syria's draconian crackdown on opposition activists has intensified even as U.S. engagement with the Assad regime has deepened.

Ford's success will ultimately depend on Washington's ability to devise a strategy that deals effectively with Syria's bad behavior while leaving the door open for future peace talks with Israel (hope springs eternal). Thus far, the State Department has been reticent to articulate such a plan, despite a request by Republican senators to do so. Although some have chalked the matter up to partisan bickering, the simple fact is that the United States has really only ever based its policy on "peace processing" or "pressuring" the Assad regime. It has never really done both at the same time.

If any U.S. diplomat can pull this off, it's Ford. As deputy chief of mission in Iraq, he earned a reputation as a skilled diplomat buttressed by a firm command of the Arabic language. His biggest obstacle in Damascus, however, will likely be lack of time. Ford was only able to take up his job due to a recess appointment issued by President Barack Obama; the Senate needs to confirm him before the end of the year if he is to remain at his post. And unless the Assad regime makes major conciliatory gestures, it's hard to imagine Republican senators dropping their opposition.

Making diplomatic progress with Syria is hard work. Unlike during the 1990s, when Washington last actively pursued Syria-Israel talks, U.S.-Syria policy is now a matter of public interest by virtue of the 2003 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty

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Restoration Act. The act not only outlines specific changes in Syrian behavior that must take place before U.S. sanctions on Damascus are lifted -- it also requires that the Obama administration regularly report to Congress on Syrian behavior. This severely constrains the administration's ability to conduct the secret diplomacy that Damascus covets.

Ford will also find a canny adversary in Assad, who has survived international isolation by pursuing a policy of diplomatic engagement even as he has aggressively pressured his adversaries through assassinations, support for terrorism, and nuclear proliferation.

Such ruthless flexibility is the way politics is played in the Levant. Washington has promised repeatedly that a U.S. ambassador in Damascus would be delivering tough messages and outlining negative inducements if Syrian policies didn't change. Now, after two years of unproductive high-level engagement with Damascus, it's time for Washington to think hard about what sticks it can use with Assad and employ them in tandem with increased dialogue. Only when Washington learns to beat Assad at his own game can it hope to make progress in what promises to be a long and complicated engagement with Damascus.

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Robert Fisk: A new truth dawns on the Arab world Leaked Palestinian files have put a region in revolutionary moodIndependent,26 Jan. 2011,

The Palestine Papers are as damning as the Balfour Declaration. The Palestinian "Authority" – one has to put this word in quotation marks – was prepared, and is prepared to give up the "right of return" of perhaps seven million refugees to what is now Israel for a "state" that may be only 10 per cent (at most) of British mandate Palestine.

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And as these dreadful papers are revealed, the Egyptian people are calling for the downfall of President Mubarak, and the Lebanese are appointing a prime minister who will supply the Hezbollah. Rarely has the Arab world seen anything like this.

To start with the Palestine Papers, it is clear that the representatives of the Palestinian people were ready to destroy any hope of the refugees going home.

It will be – and is – an outrage for the Palestinians to learn how their representatives have turned their backs on them. There is no way in which, in the light of the Palestine Papers, these people can believe in their own rights.

They have seen on film and on paper that they will not go back. But across the Arab world – and this does not mean the Muslim world – there is now an understanding of truth that there has not been before.

It is not possible any more, for the people of the Arab world to lie to each other. The lies are finished. The words of their leaders – which are, unfortunately, our own words – have finished. It is we who have led them into this demise. It is we who have told them these lies. And we cannot recreate them any more.

In Egypt, we British loved democracy. We encouraged democracy in Egypt – until the Egyptians decided that they wanted an end to the monarchy. Then we put them in prison. Then we wanted more democracy. It was the same old story. Just as we wanted Palestinians to enjoy democracy, providing they voted for the right people, we wanted the Egyptians to love our democratic life. Now, in Lebanon, it appears that Lebanese "democracy" must take its place. And we don't like it.We want the Lebanese, of course, to support the people who we love, the Sunni Muslim supporters of Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination – we rightly believe – was orchestrated by the Syrians. And now we have, on the streets of Beirut, the burning of cars and the violence against government.

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And so where are we going? Could it be, perhaps, that the Arab world is going to choose its own leaders? Could it be that we are going to see a new Arab world which is not controlled by the West? When Tunisia announced that it was free, Mrs Hillary Clinton was silent. It was the crackpot President of Iran who said that he was happy to see a free country. Why was this?

In Egypt, the future of Hosni Mubarak looks ever more distressing. His son, may well be his chosen successor. But there is only one Caliphate in the Muslim world, and that is Syria. Hosni's son is not the man who Egyptians want. He is a lightweight businessman who may – or may not – be able to rescue Egypt from its own corruption.

Hosni Mubarak's security commander, a certain Mr Suleiman who is very ill, may not be the man. And all the while, across the Middle East, we are waiting to see the downfall of America's friends. In Egypt, Mr Mubarak must be wondering where he flies to. In Lebanon, America's friends are collapsing. This is the end of the Democrats' world in the Arab Middle East. We do not know what comes next. Perhaps only history can answer this question.

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Independent: 'Violence on the streets of Cairo as unrest grows'.. NYTimes: 'Violent Clashes Mark Protests Against Mubarak’s Rule'..

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Hezbollah has emerged as Lebanon's real victor Nasrallah took a significant gamble: winning political power without openly using force.By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel Haaretz,26 Jan. 2011,

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Various protests raged across the Middle East on Tuesday, in what appeared to be an indirect continuation of the recent revolution in Tunisia. In Lebanon, masses took to the streets to protest the decision to have a Hezbollah-backed politician form a new Lebanese government. In Egypt, crowds came in droves to stage the country's largest protests since Hosni Mubarak took over as president in 1981.

As for the Palestinian Authority, tensions still loomed following the release earlier this week of documents leaked by Al Jazeera TV, exposing details of the ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hezbollah scored a major victory on Tuesday when its ally, Najib Mikati, was asked by Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman to form a new government. This move marks another stage in the gradual revolution unfolding in Lebanon, with the assistance of Iran and Syria - even though all sides appear to be interested in avoiding a direct clash that would lead to civil war.

Suleiman announced that Mikati, a 55-year-old Sunni businessman from Tripoli who served as interim prime minister for three months in the past, will be forming the new government of Lebanon. The announcement followed Hezbollah's success in rallying 68 parliamentarians in favor of Mikati, against only 60 who supported the rival March 14 camp - which supported outgoing Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Tuesday's protests in Lebanon were mostly a release of pent up anger, but it soon became apparent to the Lebanese Sunnis and Christians that the Shi'ite Muslim organization had managed to take over the country legally. The thousands who took to the streets burned pictures of Mikati, threw stones at army and police officers and attacked Al Jazeera crews, as they consider the TV station a proxy of Hezbollah.

For his part, Mikati said he would begin work on forming a government tomorrow. Even though he has not been officially

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appointed yet, Mikati is expected to succeed in putting together a government with relative ease considering the majority he is guaranteed in the parliament.

Suleiman's announcement came on a particularly difficult day in Lebanon, with tens of thousands of March 14 alliance supporters taking to the streets of Beirut and Tripoli to protest what they described as the Iranian and Syrian takeover of Lebanon.

Protesters clashed with the Lebanese army forces and nearly 30 people reportedly suffered injuries. The demonstrators called on the international tribunal investigating the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, father of the outgoing premier, to remain steadfast in its task until the truth emerges.

The Hague-based panel's investigation provided the spark for the latest political drama in Lebanon, with Hezbollah fearing the tribunal would finger senior members of its organization for being behind the February 2005 blast that killed Rafik Hariri. The group demanded that Saad Hariri reject the panel's conclusions and end government funding for its work.

The outgoing prime minister refused and mediation efforts launched by Syria and Saudi Arabia failed as well, resulting in the resignation of 11 Hezbollah-backed ministers from the cabinet and bringing the Lebanese government down.

Initially, Saad Hariri had hoped to gain a majority in the parliament so that the Lebanese president would ask him to form a government once again. But when the leader of the country's Druze community, Walid Jumblatt, decided to back the Hezbollah candidate and offered the backing of eight more parliamentarians representing his community, Mikati emerged as the winner in the contest. No direct impact on Israel

At this stage, the assessment in Israel is that the political developments in Lebanon have no direct implications for the

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situation along the tenuous border. Israeli intelligence assessments hold that Hezbollah's priority is domestic issues and that in view of its latest success, the group has no interest in renewed clashes with Israel.

Israeli intelligence has been following developments in Lebanon closely, but there has been no unusual movement of IDF forces to the border.

The new Military Intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, said Tuesday during his first appearance before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, that Hezbollah is still deterred from launching another round of fighting with the Israeli army in light of the results of the Second Lebanon War.

According to Kochavi, Hezbollah will opt not to take over Lebanon completely because it does not want to find itself in a situation similar to that of Hamas after it took over the Gaza Strip in 2007.

The MI chief also noted that Syria has once again become active in influencing political developments inside Lebanon. But the great victor in Lebanon is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who took a significant gamble: winning political power without openly using force.

In a videotaped address to thousands of supporters Tuesday, Nasrallah appeared pleased. Hezbollah opponents could not claim that the Shi'ite militia had used force in removing a political rival.

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HOME PAGEFormer Lebanon President: Syria wants Egypt out of Lebanese politicsRania Badawi Author: Rania BadawiAl Masry Al Youm,26 Jan. 2011,

Syria is working hard to keep Egypt out of the political settlement process in Lebanon after the fall of Lebanon's Saad Hariri's government, former President of Lebanon Amine Gemayel said in an interview with Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Gemayel held Syria responsible for the failure of Syrian-Saudi mediation efforts to resolve the disagreements between Lebanon's opposition and government over the international tribunal probing the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Gemayel said Syria is biased in favor of the opposition since Syria shares interests with Lebanon’s opposition.

He also said armed confrontations in Lebanon will likely follow the withdrawal of Hezbollah's government members and the subsequent collapse of the government, adding that the deployment of Hezbollah's soldiers on 18 January sent a clear message to the people to either choose Hezbollah’s nominee or else risk wide-scale destruction in the country.

In a reference to Hezbollah, Gemayel said, "This is a group that has used arms, pressure and threats to achieve its goals.” He went on, "And this group is supported by foreign powers that supply it with weapons and the capabilities needed to achieve its goals at the expense of the Lebanese regime."

Gemayel said Hezbollah uses its arms to serve political ends, including internal political objectives, and not for resistance.Hezbollah’s arms should have been abandoned following the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Lebanon in 2000 since they only serve to intimidate Lebanon’s people, he added.

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Uncle Sam has his head in the sand U.S. failure means EU must deal with Iran nuclear threatJohn Bolton,Washington Times,26 Jan. 2011,

France's Foreign Minister Michele Alliot-Marie received a rude introduction to Arab-Israeli issues on Friday when irate Hamas supporters attacked her entourage in Gaza. She escaped injury but faced protesters venting disapproval of her support for freeing Hamas' long-held prisoner Israeli Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit. Ms. Alliot-Marie was not even remotely freelancing because Sgt. Shalit is a duel citizen of France and Israel, and her call for his immediate release merely restated Paris' long-held views.

Nonetheless, the Gaza violence should be a wake-up call to both France and Europe more broadly that European Union (EU) policies in the Middle East are failing badly. Unfortunately, there is little prospect anything will change. France and the EU as a whole suffer from contradictory impulses that render their policies impotent and even harmful to their own interests and Middle East stability.

On the same trip, for example, Ms. Alliot-Marie responded to a question from Israel's Haaretz newspaper by saying Syria "is an actor of much importance in the region that can and must play a constructive role on the area's stability." France has a particular blindness because it insists on its historical role in Syria and Lebanon dating to the Crusades; Arabs believe it is a legacy of 19th-century imperialism and the World War I Sykes-Picot agreement with Great Britain.

Yet for all of France's supposed interest, Lebanon verges on losing the Cedar Revolution and falling under the unambiguous control of the Iran-financed terrorist organization Hezbollah. In fact, in the most troubling but entirely likely scenario, all the progress made since 2005 in forcing Syria out and restoring true Lebanese independence is very much at risk.

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Of course, America is far too often complicit in Europe's mistakes. President Obama's decision to send a U.S. ambassador back to Damascus after five years without one is an act of foolishness impossible to distinguish from France's own erroneous accommodation with Syria's authoritarian government. At least Washington can say it did not make the same mistake as French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who two years ago praised the regime of now-deposed Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali for "advancing freedom and human rights."

Even worse, both the EU and the United States remain devoted to the Perm Five-Plus-One talks with Iran, which continued last weekend in Istanbul. Entirely predictably, the talks ended with no progress in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. There is not, and has not been from the outset of these tortuous negotiations, even the slightest chance Iran will renounce its 20-year goal of deliverable nuclear weapons. Nor have successive rounds of economic sanctions against Iran, intended to force it into serious negotiations, succeeded. Instead, the Tehran regime has systematically used the talks to buy time to overcome the many scientific and technological obstacles to achieving its objective.

Ironically, while the EU's infatuation with Iran is led by its "foreign minister," Baroness Catherine Ashton of the United Kingdom, it is the U.K.'s former Prime Minister Tony Blair who has the clearest view of how to handle the Tehran mullahs. Testifying again before the U.K. inquiry into the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Mr. Blair said Iran "has to be confronted and changed. ... I say this to you with all of the passion I possibly can - at some point the West has to get out of what I think is a wretched policy or posture of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing. ... We have to get our head out of the sand. They disagree fundamentally with our way of life and will carry on unless met with determination and, if necessary, force." Mr. Blair's clarity is

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absent from Mr. Obama's view of Iran and even from President George W. Bush's policy in his last years in office.

Unfortunately, every indication is that matters in the Middle East will simply get worse. While the Obama administration clears the decks for its 2012 re-election campaign and makes tactical shifts and feints toward the center of American politics to that end, there is no sign that its foreign policy is shifting to a more realistic assessment of the threats and challenges facing the United States internationally. To the contrary, it is business as usual when the president troubles himself to look beyond his domestic agenda.

Because there is no chance that the United States will regain its foreign-policy bearings before the 2012 election, Europeans concerned for the future of the West as a whole have a special responsibility. They must hold the line until American voters get a chance to reverse the 2008 election at the presidential level as they just largely did in November at the congressional level. In the meantime, conditions in the Middle East will simply continue to deteriorate.

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Editorial: Egypt's unstable regimeWashington Post,Tuesday, January 25, 2011;

TENS OF thousands of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo and other cities Tuesday in an unprecedented outburst of protest against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Inspired by Tunisia's popular uprising, they demanded political concessions that Mr. Mubarak's rotting government should have made long ago: an end to emergency laws, freedom for political activity and a limit on the president's tenure in office. The United States has said that it favors such reforms. But when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked about the demonstrations, she foolishly threw the administration's weight behind the 82-year-old Mr. Mubarak.

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"Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," Ms. Clinton said.

The secretary's words suggested that the administration remains dangerously behind the pace of events in the Middle East. It failed to anticipate Tunisia's revolution; days before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was driven from the country Ms. Clinton said the United States was "not taking sides" between the dictator and his protesting people. Last week President Obama called Mr. Mubarak but said nothing about the political situation in Egypt - including the regime's plan to hold a one-sided presidential "election" this fall that would extend Mr. Mubarak's mandate for another six years.

Tuesday's events suggested that the Cairo government is not at all stable. Three people were killed in the occasionally violent demonstrations, and thousands of protesters remained camped in Cairo's central Tahrir Square overnight. They will not be easily satisfied - because Mr. Mubarak in fact is not trying to "respond to legitimate needs and interests." Instead the government is seeking to perpetuate itself in power by force, and pave the way for an eventual dynastic succession to power by Mr. Mubarak's son.

Egypt has been a vital ally of the United States, and a potential change of regime there is frightening to many in Washington, especially given the strength of the country's Islamist movement. Those concerns are legitimate. But blind U.S. backing for Mr. Mubarak makes a political disaster in Egypt more rather than less likely. Instead of stressing the government's stability, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama need to begin talking about how it must change.

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Will Egypt's protests go the way of Tunisia's revolution? Mona EltahawyWashington Post,Wednesday, January 26, 2011;

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To understand what drove tens of thousands of Egyptians to erupt Tuesday in the largest protests in a generation against President Hosni Mubarak, you only had to see one photo of events in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, a Nile Delta factory city where an estimated 5,000 people turned out.

Some images from Tuesday show Egyptian police beating unarmed protesters and throwing rocks at them (sadly, an increasingly common tactic). But a photo of a man and a woman standing in Mahalla, posted on the citizen journalists' Web site Rassd News Network, instantly conveys why Egyptians have taken to the streets.

The woman holds a loaf of bread and a Tunisian flag. The man next to her holds a loaf of bread and a sign that reads "Yesterday Tunisia. Today Egypt. Jan. 25 the day we began to take our rights back."

It was no accident that the protests coincided with Police Day, as youthful activists sought to focus attention not on a sham holiday but, instead, on the systematic brutality associated with Mubarak's security services. Egyptians in Mahalla in particular have smarted since three people were killed there by police in 2008 during massive protests that followed months of strikes.

The big question now is how loyal the armed forces are to Mubarak and what role, if any, they will play should the protests escalate. Thousands of citizens set up camp in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday and vowed to occupy the space until Mubarak resigns. News reports from journalists and Twitter updates early Wednesday morning indicated that at about 1 a.m., security forces began forcibly emptying the square, spraying tear gas and arresting people. Protesters have promised more demonstrations.

Since a four-week uprising in Tunisia ended the 23-year rule of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali this month, the Arab world has been in a tizzy. Tunisia's revolution marked the first time Arabs

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toppled one of their leaders. While ordinary citizens wondered whether the "Tunisia effect" might spread, long-serving rulers were conspicuously silent or protested (too much) that their country had nothing in common with Ben Ali's mismanaged nation.

For years, Western observers of the Arab world have effectively helped shore up the dictators by stating as fact that Arabs don't revolt. Much to Egyptian pain and chagrin, analysts would point to our country, where protests have been the preserve of a small, dedicated but not always connected group of activists. Mubarak, the longest-serving ruler in modern-day Egypt, would smartly give in to enough of workers' demands as necessary to appease; then his security forces would beat and detain the street activists who persevered.

Whether tensions ran high over rigged elections, food shortages, Internet censoring, media repression or police brutality, the conventional wisdom has held that Mubarak would sleep without worry until thousands of Egyptians took to the streets.

Finally, on Tuesday, feet were on the ground. Thousands turned out in Cairo, Alexandria and across the country as the anti-government fervor fired up not just activists but families, too.

Watching Tunisians make possible what Arabs have always been told was impossible burned away the apathy that bound Egyptians - and revealed decades' worth of smoldering rage. It also destroyed the myth of youth "slactivists" who some alleged were content with organizing on the Internet and speaking out only on social networking sites.

Young Egyptians, like their Tunisian counterparts, are the majority of the country's population. They have known no leadership other than what they see as Mubarak's occupation.

Since becoming president in 1981, Mubarak has kept Egypt under a "state of emergency" that allows him to suspend regular laws.

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He has turned our country into a police state where torture and brutality often go unpunished, and he has jailed an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 political opponents.

Mubarak accused his main political opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, of provoking police violence on Tuesday, but the Islamist movement did not collectively join in. Although many individual members took to the streets, the Brotherhood said it would symbolically support activists' call to protest but would not ask its members to mobilize as a movement. That's a wise step in countering regime accusations but could affect its credibility with youth activists disaffected by politics.

Unlike Tunisia, Egypt is a major U.S. ally. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that the Obama administration's "assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," she showed once again how out of touch she is with popular anger at Mubarak. She also alerted Egyptians that Washington was as concerned about the protests and the potential "Egypt effect" as Mubarak must be.

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Egypt protests are breaking new ground Egyptians have been here before, but the nature of this protest will unsettle a regime for which complacency is a way of lifeSimon Tisdall,Guardian,25 Jan. 2011,

Egypt is not Tunisia. It's much bigger. Eighty million people, compared with 10 million. Geographically, politically, strategically, it's in a different league – the Arab world's natural leader and its most populous nation. But many of the grievances on the street are the same. Tunis and Cairo differ only in size. If Egypt explodes, the explosion will be much bigger, too.

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Egyptians have been here before. The so-called Cairo spring of 2005 briefly lifted hopes of peaceful reform and open elections. Those hopes died, like autumn leaves, blown away by a withering sirocco of regressive measures and reimposed emergency laws. Food and price riots in Mahalla el Kubra in 2008 briefly raised the standard of revolt again. They were quickly suppressed.

But Tuesday's large-scale protests were different in significant ways, sending unsettling signals to a regime that has made complacency a way of life. "Day of Rage" demonstrators in Cairo did not merely stand and shout in small groups, as is usual. They did not remain in one place. They joined together – and they marched. And in some cases, the police could not, or would not, stop them.

This took President Hosni Mubarak and his ministers way out of their comfort zone. Interior minister Habib al-Adli had said earlier he held no objection to stationary protests by small groups. But marching en masse, uncontrolled and officially undirected, along a central Cairo boulevard, heading for the regime heartland of Tahrir Square – this was something new and dangerous.

The protests' organisation was different, too – recalling Tunisia, and Iran in 2009. The biggest opposition grouping, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, for so long a useful Islamist idiot manipulated to bolster western support for the secular regime, declined to take part. Egypt's establishment rebel, the former UN nuclear watchdog chief, Mohammad ElBaradei, also steered clear.

Instead an ad hoc coalition of students, unemployed youths, industrial workers, intellectuals, football fans and women, connected by social media such as Twitter and Facebook, instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence. Egypt's protests already have their martyrs, killed by police or burned to death by their own hands. But Egypt does not yet have a Neda Agha-Soltan. Pray it never does.

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The language and symbolism were different, too. "Enough, enough (kifaya)!" they shouted in 2005, giving a name to the movement for change. Now the message is: "Too much, too far, for too long!"

"Mubarak, Saudi Arabia awaits you," the demonstrators chanted, referring to the refuge of the Tunisian ex-dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. "Out! Out! Revolution until victory," shouted a group of mothers, babes in arms. Across Cairo, Alexandria and beyond, the banners of the Tunisian intifada waved liked semaphore flags, wishfully signalling an end to the ancien regime.

But Egypt is not Tunisia. Egypt is a much more efficient police state, a much harder nut to crack. Its leader is as tough and as canny as an old fox. Its military and ruling elite is in hock to the Americans to the tune of $2bn a year – and the American republic, itself born of revolt, has no love of revolutions. Mubarak, 82, has held power for 30 years. He is his own, and Washington's man. According to WikiLeaks cables, he likely plans to die in office – and then hand over to his son.

There is no revolution in Egypt, yet. But, hypothetically, if Mubarak were to fall, the consequences would be incalculable – for Israel and the peace process, for the ascending power of Iran, for US influence across the Middle East, and for the future rise and spread of militant, anti-western Islam. And not least, for 80 million Egyptians.

"Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people," US secretary of state Hillary Clinton declared on Tuesday night. They thought that about Ben Ali's Tunisia, too. Clinton's hurried words show how worried they are.

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The Palestine papers have broken a taboo. Now the arguments for peace can be openThe papers show how much ground Palestinian negotiators were willing to concede. This isn't craven. It's admirableJonathan Freedland,Guardian,25 Jan. 2011,

Critics of the publication of the Palestine papers by the Guardian and al-Jazeera are aiming their fire in several directions. They have variously claimed that the documents are fake; that they are partial; that they reveal nothing new; that they should never have been published; and that they help Hamas, damage the peace process and threaten to destroy the two-state solution.

Let's start with the silliest first: the claim of forgery, casting these papers as the Hitler Diaries of the Middle East. That was swiftly swept aside today by Nabil Shaath, a former member of the Palestinian negotiation team who, along with several others close to the talks, vouched for the documents' authenticity. Are they partial? Only in the sense that 1,600 pages out of tens of thousands could always be described as incomplete. Some have complained that the documents only provide the view from the Palestinian side of the negotiating table. But they purport to do nothing else. To suggest that makes them unsuitable for publication is to suggest the New York Times should never have published the Pentagon Papers without an equivalent stash of paperwork from the North Vietnamese defence ministry.

But clearly, say the critics, these were leaked by someone with an agenda. I don't know the identity of the source for the Palestine papers, but I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't have a purpose for their actions. That is true of every leak through recorded time. Should the Daily Telegraph not have published Liam Fox's letter protesting over defence cuts last autumn because the leaker of that letter clearly had a political objective? Of course not. Observe that standard and we'd never know anything. Besides, readers can usually put two and two together.

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Still, say some complainers, these papers don't reveal anything we didn't know. Indeed, they are "incredibly boring", according to Noah Pollak of Commentary magazine – so boring that they warrant six separate pieces on the magazine's website.

Joining the "nothing new" chorus is Benny Morris, eager to pour cold water on the revelation that the Palestinians were ready to concede areas of East Jerusalem settled by Jews. Didn't the Guardian remember that those very areas were conceded back in 2000 as part of the "Clinton parameters" that followed the Camp David negotiations? But it's Morris who's suffering memory loss here. Surely he recalls the claim, repeated endlessly, that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians had rejected those 2000 terms. He should remember: after all, Morris was one of the lead disseminators of that message. If Palestinians now accept what they once rejected, that's news.

What of the graver charge that the Guardian had no business publishing papers whose exposure could discredit the Palestinian leadership and thereby damage, even destroy, the peace process? This is not a question confined to the wilder shores of the rightwing blogosphere. In a round of media interviews, I was asked by one mainstream journalist: "How does the Guardian feel about putting a gun to the head of the two-state solution?"

This touches on the argument rehearsed so fiercely during the WikiLeaks furore. It is that once an organisation has been handed information like this, it either publishes it or it suppresses it. Those are the options. Which is why no news organisation worthy of the name would hesitate to release a trove of documents of this kind.

Only in the rarest exceptions – where there is a direct risk to a named individual's life – should journalists withhold such information from their readers or viewers. (Indeed, to protect certain individuals some documents have been redacted by both the Guardian and al-Jazeera.) Of course publication will have political consequences, even awkward ones. But that cannot be for

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journalists and editors to decide: their job is to find out what is happening and report it, as best they can. The consequences are for others to manage. It has to be that way, otherwise newspapers would never publish anything: somebody in power would always be there to argue that it was best to hold off, that now was not the time. And the public would remain in the dark.

This is particularly true for the Middle East, where there is all too little daylight. Take Tunisia. It may be an exaggeration to call the people's revolt there the "first WikiLeaks revolution", but it's clear that revelations about the luxury lifestyle of the ruling family played a crucial role. Yet when those diplomatic cables were first released, Barack Obama slammed the document dump as "deplorable", while Hillary Clinton branded it an attack on America and the international community.

The point here is that journalists shouldn't be expected to weigh all the possible consequences of publication because the most important can – as in the Tunisia case – be unforeseen. Already there are signs of that with the Palestine papers.

The initial assumption of many observers – and perhaps of the leakers themselves – was that the revelation of Palestinian negotiators' willingness to compromise would not just offend Palestinian pride but instantly spark a wave of revulsion, leading to a Tunisia-style revolt against the PA. With the PA gone, the peace process would be over and the two-state solution gone for ever.

That could still happen, especially given the PA's already low standing among its population. But, initially at least, the Palestinian public does not seem to be following the script. One Palestinian insider told me yesterday that some Palestinians suspect a plot against the PA, hatched by al-Jazeera's Qatari paymasters in favour of their Hamas allies. The man in the Ramallah street may have little faith in the PA, but he doesn't relish the Hamas alternative or like outside interference.

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What's more, says that senior Palestinian figure, the leak of these papers could do something the PA had failed to do: prepare Palestinian public opinion for the painful concessions that peace will, one distant day, require. This leak has blown apart any pretence that an agreement could come without a heavy price. Now there can be an argument about what precisely a future deal would look like and what it would be worth – an argument in the open.

A similar process happened in Israel after Camp David in 2000, when a leak revealed the prime minister was countenancing the division of Jerusalem. There was sound and fury, but a taboo was broken. This time round the Palestine papers are already having a useful impact in Israel – prompting a clutch of influential figures to realise there is, after all, a partner on the Palestinian side.

So yes, you might not like every word. For the record, I disagreed with the Guardian editorial that described Palestinian concessions as "craven": I prefer to admire the readiness of the Palestinians to move, urging Israelis to do the same. Still, I cannot join those who wish these texts had stayed in the dark.

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