That, however, may be asking for the impossible: The stability of Egypt, in the midst of deepening economic crisis, depends to a large extent on the lifeline extended by U.S. economic aid and other forms of international economic assistance. These, in turn, are only assured by the fact that President Hosni Mubarak has made Egypt a key moderate player in regional politics and has enforced the spirit of the 1979 Camp David accords with Israel.

In an attempt to appease the growing radical factions, Egyptian minister of information Safwat Al Sherif — known here to opposition groups as “Safwat Goebbels” — announced Wednesday that Cairo would scale down diplomatic contacts with Israel. “The Egyptian government had decided to suspend all contacts with the Israeli government except for diplomatic channels which serve the Palestinian cause,” he said through the official Middle East News Agency.

However, that is seen by some as a smoke screen, since Israeli diplomatic staff in Cairo will remain in place. “What does this mean?” exclaims Hisham Kassem, a human rights activist and an astute observer of Egyptian politics. “That the agricultural attaché will not get his calls answered by the ministry of agriculture unless he wants to talk Palestine?”

This move will likely do little to quell the growing anger toward Mubarak that was on display Monday. While the protests started peacefully and within the boundaries of the controlled demonstrations the state prefers and sometimes encourages, protesters soon broke free of Cairo University’s main gate, taking the protests into the streets. It also then became clear that public anger was directed not only at the Israelis, but also at Mubarak.

“Oh Mubarak, you coward, you are a client of the Americans,” shouted the protesters. Another favorite was “Oh Alaa [Mubarak, the president's notoriously corrupt son], tell your father that millions hate him.” But perhaps the most telling slogan was “Oh Mubarak where are you, the blood of Ramallah separates us.”

These chants, unusually daring for a country where most are apolitical, gave the green light to Central Security forces, a ragtag contingent of riot police clad in black and wielding bamboo batons, to take more serious action. At Cairo University, the center of the protests, police fired tear gas canisters into the crowd and used water cannons to push back protesters. But government forces, perhaps caught off-guard by the size of the protests, were unable to control what had essentially become a riot. Despite the tear gas that made protesters (and journalists covering the events) unable to see or breathe, and despite the blue-dyed water coming out of fire trucks that many suspected contained skin irritants, demonstrators marched toward the nearby Israeli Embassy, stopping just 50 yards from its gates.

On the way to the embassy, protesters wrecked a McDonald’s and a KFC. When I asked one protester why he vandalized the restaurants, he explained that they represented “American imperialism.” Since then, other American franchises (90 percent of whose profits, ironically, go to the Egyptian company that runs them, Americana) have come under attack and a nationwide campaign is underway to boycott American products. Generally, there was a lot of antagonism against America. I was often asked if I was American, but with my fluent French, I was able to get away with saying I was Belgian. Another American journalist who was more candid was roughed up by some of the protesters.

Upon reaching the police cordon that separated them from the embassy, protesters began shouting, “Israeli ambassador, out of the land of the Nile.” The call for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Cairo, Gideon Ben-Ami, has now become a main rallying point for protesters, who still gather every day around Cairo, although in lesser numbers.

Pressure to expel the ambassador is also coming from other fronts. Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian minister of planning and one of Arafat’s closest aides, spoke to Egyptian foreign minister Ahmad Maher on Tuesday, urging him to take “practical steps” rather than issue denunciations at an upcoming meeting of Arab foreign ministers scheduled to take place in Cairo on Saturday.

Speaking at a press conference, Shaath said that Arab states should take a strong stand against Israel’s recent actions and that Egypt and Jordan — the Arab countries with the closest relations with Israel — should cut off relations. Shaath added that the “vast majority” of Arab foreign ministers would come to Cairo for Saturday’s meeting, and urged them to confront Israel with “deeds and acts.”

There have also been protests outside the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, calling for Cairo to end its relationship with Israel, which officially began 23 years ago when then President Anwar Al Sadat signed the Camp David accords, making Egypt the first country to make peace and have normal relations with Israel.

But, according to human-rights activist Kassem, that is unlikely to happen. “It would really damage the regime abroad,” he explains. “It’s survived for 20 years on the grounds that it is one of the two countries with full relations with the Israelis. And it’s not going to appease the demonstrators either — they will just push for more.”

The protests in Cairo and Beirut, and today’s scaling back of Egyptian-Israeli relations, were the latest signs of just how quickly and severely the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated. Just one week ago, the regional situation as seen from Cairo seemed to be taking a turn for the better. Arab heads of state were gathering in Beirut, and, for the first time, the world seemed to care. Never had a gathering of the Arab League — arguably the world’s most inept regional organization — attracted so much international attention. The United States had endorsed Prince Abdullah’s peace proposal, and while it seemed that a few Arab leaders were not too happy about the Saudis putting forward the plan without prior consultation, it looked like too much was at stake to sabotage it.

Yet, a week later — after a sabotage of peace prospects by Palestinian suicide bombers and Ariel Sharon — the situation looks drastically different. Getting back to Prince Abdullah’s proposition seems almost as remote as the all-but-forgotten Oslo peace accords.

For Egyptians, the first sign that the wind was changing direction came when their president decided to stay away from the summit. Everyone I talked to in Cairo was perplexed by Mubarak’s decision. Of course, as is often the case with the Egyptian media, rumors abounded. Was the president jealous that Prince Abdullah had usurped his leading role as regional peacemaker? Had the Americans warned Mubarak ahead of time of Ariel Sharon’s decision to reoccupy the West Bank and raid Yasser Arafat’s headquarters?

While the reasons Mubarak did not attend the summit are likely to remain a mystery, the effect of the decision was instantly felt by most Egyptians. Many felt ashamed that their leader — a key regional figure whose presence would have lent greater weight to the summit’s outcome — had dodged the meeting. As the week went from bad to worse and Israel began the assault on Arafat’s headquarters, that shame sublimated into anger — anger at Israel for its actions and at the United States for its inaction, but also at the sheer helplessness Egypt and the Arab world showed in reaction to the Israeli response and American silence.

That frustration was apparent at a three-day hunger strike organized by the Egyptian Lawyers’ Syndicate, which began on March 27. Since the mid-1970s, one of the few ways civil society in Egypt can organize independently from the government — which otherwise dominates public life — is in professional syndicates. As such, opposition parties and Islamist groups have been able to gain some influence. The government occasionally tries to impose its own people onto the boards of these organizations. The Lawyers’ Syndicate called the strike in solidarity with Palestinians, leading protesters in chants of slogans against Israel, as well as the Mubarak government.

“The strike is a rejection of a humiliated life,” said one of the protesters, drawing parallels between Palestinian and Egyptian impotence. Other demonstrators shouted anti-regime slogans — an extremely rare occasion in a country that has made stability its calling card — accusing the leadership of not supporting the Palestinians and being cowardly. That demonstration last week, however small, was violently repressed by security forces. But it set the tone for the much larger demonstrations that followed Monday.

Like most demonstrations in Egypt, Monday’s protests were centered around university campuses, with the largest taking place at Cairo University. In the past, demonstrations have tended to be organized and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group. Although banned and persecuted by the government, the Brotherhood — a moderate Islamist movement — has vast grass-roots networks that have successfully infiltrated (and in some cases taken over) university departments, professional organizations and other civil society forums.

But the relationship between the Brotherhood and the regime is not straightforward. While the security forces regularly crack down on Brotherhood members, particularly during elections, the government also has accepted that the Brotherhood will not go away. Over the years, the two sides have reached an understanding of sorts that they cannot defeat each other (at least not in the immediate future). As a result, Brotherhood leaders coordinate with security forces when they organize public activities such as demonstrations, drawing clear lines as to what is permissible and what is not. The regime gets controlled unrest that allows people to let off steam, and the Brotherhood gets to maintain a high profile. In many ways, Egyptian security forces have become masters at organizing “protests in a box,” which allows the regime to show the outside world it has a public opinion problem to contend with, but without taking any risks.

Hisham Kassem feels that the most recent protests, unlike previous ones, have no clear leadership. “They’re a monster without a head,” he says, arguing that this will make them all the more difficult for the government to control.

“One thing that is beginning to backfire is the lack of populist leadership. Those kids out there don’t really have any leaders — so there is no way to turn the protests off,” Kassem says. In the 1970s, when protests were more frequent, the government could always deal with party leaders and others who held sway over the demonstrators, he explained. The successful depoliticization of the country in the past 20 years has however left no one to mediate between the regime and the masses.

There were also signs that the government was encouraging demonstrators. From last Friday, when Israel began its offensive against Arafat’s headquarters, Egyptian TV’s normally tame programming — a tepid diet of soap operas, soccer matches and epic historical dramas — was replaced by virtually nonstop coverage of the Palestinians’ plight. Melodramatic music videos featuring footage of the shooting of Muhammad Al Durra, the child killed by crossfire between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers at the beginning of the intifada, were suddenly played between every program. Heartthrob crooner Amr Diab — Egypt’s answer to Ricky Martin — sang “Al Quds” (“Jerusalem”) with a backdrop of crying Palestinian children. On another channel, a star-studded cast of Egypt’s top singers sing “Hilm Al Arabi” (“The Arab Dream”) with very much the same dedication with which Quincy Jones and friends sang “We Are the World” 20 years ago.

News coverage, of course, was completely dominated by Palestine. One 30-minute news show covered it from a Palestinian, Egyptian and Arab perspective. The only non-Palestinian item on the show was a 30-second report on the death of Britain’s queen mother.

But Egyptian television’s most original contribution to the current Egyptian outrage over the situation was the phrase “Zio-nazism,” a term coined by TV talking heads last week and since then repeated during demonstrations to describe Israeli policies. Channel One commentators, with a backdrop image combining a Star of David and a Nazi swastika, said that “to get rid of the Palestinians, Israel has opted for the final solution used by Hitler’s Germany to exterminate the Jews.” Another explained that Zionism stands for “the supremacy of the Jewish people,” much like “Nazism advocates the supremacy of the Aryan race.” While the comparison between the two is not new — newspapers have made it a staple of political cartoons — it is the first time TV has featured such provocative statements.

It is tempting to interpret Egyptian television’s aggressive programming as incitement. After all, Egypt, like other Arab governments, has often used the excuse of public opinion for not supporting U.S. initiatives in the region, as was evident with the reluctance Mubarak showed in helping the United States after Sept. 11. But it may just be that, faced with public outrage on an unprecedented scale, the regime had to follow opinion rather than try to direct it.

The fact that the Sharm Al Sheikh meeting took place on the same day as the Ibrahim appeal verdict led to claims in some diplomatic circles that the two events were linked. Before the verdict came out, a Western diplomat who has followed the case since its beginnings said, “I think they’re going to grant the appeal so that the donors can save face. They can’t get money and then leave him in jail.”

Ibrahim’s successful appeal does not mean that his name is cleared. Observers here believe he has personally offended Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had earlier complained in Washington that “too much fuss” was being made over the issue. A retrial, which should take place in a few weeks, may even bring new charges (such as espionage, which was dropped in the earlier trial) against Ibrahim. Responding to suggestions that his release was the result of pressure by Western donors at Sharm Al Sheikh, he answered, “The Egyptian government does not respond to pressure, especially under President Mubarak.”

Publicly at least, the United States has stopped mentioning sensitive human rights cases like Ibrahim’s that could embarrass Mubarak’s government. When asked recently about Egypt’s lackluster record on human rights, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt David Welch simply said that Egypt was a friend of America’s, and that “friends don’t put pressure on friends.”

Cynics would be right to point out that turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in allied countries is also a longstanding U.S. practice. Egypt, as President Bush and countless official American visitors to Cairo have stressed since Sept. 11, has been a valuable ally in the war against terror. Egyptian officials would hasten to add that it has rallied to America’s side despite very ambivalent feelings on the Arab street, where U.S. support of Israel throughout the new intifada has earned it much resentment.

Mubarak has not been shy about reminding Western powers about the risks he has taken to crack down on Islamic militants. He often mentions publicly that he had originally suggested an international conference to tackle the issue of terrorism as early as 1994, when Egypt still faced a sizable militant Islamic movement in its rural south.

But Mubarak has also been eager to cash in on his cooperation. In 1991, his government began a program to restructure its entire economy. Back then, a collapsing centralized economy was brought to the brink of disaster through corruption and mismanagement. The fact that Egypt was not faced with an Argentina-like crisis was largely due to a $14 billion bailout granted because of its support of the Gulf War coalition.

In exchange for the cash it needed, Egypt promised to embark on economic reforms that would bring its system into line with free-market economic orthodoxy. In 1991, Egypt’s biggest patron and most insistent advocate of economic reforms was the United States, which in the past few years has intensified its focus on liberalization by earmarking the majority of the aid Egypt receives toward growing the private sector — a policy it calls “aid to trade.”

The Egyptian economy was hit hard by al-Qaida’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Within a few weeks, hotels reported an 80 percent drop in occupancy rates. By January, the minister of tourism said that as much as $3 billion had been lost in tourist revenues. As international shipping slowed after the attacks, revenues from the transit tax levied on ships crossing the Suez Canal also declined sharply. Egypt’s overprotected currency took a hit despite government efforts to stabilize it.

Once again, the White House came to the rescue. At any other time, moving a large aid package through the U.S. Congress would have been difficult. Congress had always viewed the reliability (and desirability) of Egypt as an ally with suspicion. Pro-Israel lobbying groups have been critical of Egypt. The Anti-Defamation League caused a minor diplomatic incident earlier in the year when Mubarak visited Washington, taking out full-page ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing Egypt’s virulently anti-Semitic state press. The ads came complete with cartoons depicting Israeli leaders as bloody butchers and Uncle Sams being bossed around by a Shylock figure. Articles translated from the Arabic press brought up again age-old anti-Semitic libels, such as the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a late 19th century czarist Russian fraud that outlined a Jewish master plan to rule the world. Although politically motivated, they got the idea across that Mubarak’s Egypt was not the moderate, progressive ally it said it was.

Pro-Israel lobbies were not the only ones to complain. The Ibrahim trial, arguably Egypt’s best-known human rights scandal, had mobilized over 50 members of Congress, who signed a letter voicing their concern. Human rights groups and gay activists were also up in arms over the fate of defendants in the so-called Queen Boat case. Last May, 52 allegedly homosexual men were arrested at a discotheque-cruise boat moored in the tony Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek. Although Egyptian law does not ban homosexuality, the 52 were charged with various religious and moral offenses and dragged through the mud by the state press, which launched (alongside other media) a virulently homophobic campaign against the Queen Boat defendants.

But those concerns all took a back seat to the importance of keeping Egypt as a coalition partner in the war against terrorism. On Jan. 3, the United States announced nearly $1 billion of funds from USAID’s Egyptian program would be earmarked for “accelerated disbursement” to help Egypt overcome its current malaise. That move, USAID officials in Cairo said, came in recognition of Egypt’s commitment to economic reforms. Then, on Jan. 28, the American ambassador to Cairo, David Welch, delivered a speech on U.S. policy in the Middle East during which he promised that the U.S. would “play its part” in the forthcoming donors meeting — a promise that was interpreted here as a confirmation that America would again contribute generously. It did, committing $1.845 billion over the next three years, according to senior USAID official.

During his speech, Ambassador Welch did not, however, raise the issue of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a rather strange omission considering the American-Egyptian human rights activist was a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, where he was delivering his speech. Not so long ago, the issue was a regular complaint of Welch’s predecessor, Daniel Kurtzer, now ambassador to Israel. Although Kurtzer also focused on issues of economic reform — in particular the implementation of intellectual property, labor and other laws that have been lingering the Egypt’s parliament for years — he also raised the Ibrahim issue regularly, if discreetly, and maintained frequent contacts with Egyptian human rights activists.

While the Ibrahim trial faded from official consciousness after the verdict sentencing the academic to seven years in prison, the Queen Boat case grabbed the spotlight and caused protests outside Egyptian embassies in several European capitals. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., along with 31 other Democrats, two Republicans and an independent, wrote a letter to Mubarak urging him to reconsider policies on the treatment of homosexuals.

That was in August 2001. Three months and the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil later, when the Queen Boat verdicts sentenced some of the men to up to five years of hard labor, Congress was noticeably silent. Frank found himself alone in questioning Egypt’s human rights track record on the House floor when a bill to accelerate aid disbursements to Cairo was debated. The same can be said of a string of congressmen who visited Egypt this January during congressional recess. Although some of them had been critical of the country pre-Sept. 11 and signatories to the Ibrahim letter, during their visit they concentrated on Egypt’s support of America over the last few months and its role in the peace process — often praising the regime for its moderation.

For local human rights activists, whose activities have come to a virtual standstill since Ibrahim’s arrest, the West’s increasing willingness to ignore their problems is a depressing development. Hisham Kassem, the president of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, says he’s seen a definite decline in the concern of Western countries about political reform in the country even before Sept. 11.

“In the past they were being dishonest,” he says of the occasional concern voiced — but never backed up with concrete action — by European and American states over human rights issues. “Now at least they’re being honest.”

Kassem says Western countries paid lip service to spreading human rights in the region, but they held the view that the status quo should not be upset and that “Arabs are not ready for democracy.”

“They showed the full extent of how much they cared in the Ibrahim case,” he says. “Although they voiced concern, the government called their bluff. Now they’re all sitting in Sharm Al Sheikh begging Egypt to take their money.”

Ibrahim’s imprisonment brought most politically sensitive activity to a grinding halt in the human rights movement, which has virtually ceased dealing with Egyptian issues in order to focus on less domestically sensitive “Arab” issues, such as the Palestinian intifada or the ongoing U.N. sanctions against Iraq. Indeed, since Ibrahim’s arrest high-profile human rights violations have only intensified. Aside from the Queen Boat case — from which most local rights groups stayed away on the grounds that any connection with homosexuality would discredit them to the conservative Egyptian public — the arrest of Farid Zarhan, another known activist who organized pro-Palestinian (and often anti-U.S.) protests, has been another lightning rod in the human rights community.

While most Western nations expressed concern in these cases, sanctions were never seriously considered against strategically important Egypt. Western diplomats operating in Cairo acknowledge this fact, particularly post-Sept. 11, when in the words of one of them, “security has become the No. 1 priority.”

Egypt’s seemingly untouchable status has now raised concern beyond the offices of local rights activists. Human Rights Watch’s 2002 World Report, released in early January, warns in its introduction that the West’s commitment to human rights in the Middle East is feeble. It specifically focuses on Egypt (along with Saudi Arabia) as a country that restricts the public space for debate, which it says only makes the appeal of the likes of Osama bin Laden all the greater. “As a ‘partner’ for Middle East peace,” the report points out, “Egypt has secured from the U.S. government massive aid and tacit acceptance of its human rights violations.”

Following a similar argument that human rights should be a cornerstone of an anti-terror campaign, Harvard political philosopher Michael Ignatieff wrote in a New York Times editorial on Feb. 5 that the United States should beware of turning a blind eye to Egypt’s fast-shrinking space for political freedom.

“The United States,” Ignatieff wrote, “to encourage the building of secure states that do not harbor or support terror, will have to do more than secure base agreements. It will have to pressure these countries to provide basic rights and due process. As the cold war should have taught us, cozying up to friendly authoritarians is a poor bet in the long term. America is still paying a price for its backing of the shah of Iran. In the Arab world today, the United States looks as if it is on the side of Louis XVI in 1789; come the revolution in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, American influences may be swept away.”

Kassem, the Egyptian rights activist, makes Ignatieff’s point more bluntly. “Jihad went global because you couldn’t oppose from within,” he warns, and reminds us that Egypt played an important part creating the Afghan Arab movement that went on to become al-Qaida in the early 1980s, when it publicly encouraged and helped local Islamists to leave the country to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. “[Ignoring Egypt's repression] is one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes in the region. It’s going to be a case study in stupidity, short-sightedness and lack of strategic vision.”