There we were in Sharm e-Sheikh over the July 23 weekend for our annual family vacation. Asleep in our hotel room, we were awoken by a boom. Although I knew differently, I told my wife it was probably some jet breaking the sound barrier. Then the phone started ringing. Relatives and hotel staff wanted to know if we were all right. As the details of the blasts that struck the nearby Ghazala Gardens Hotel, a coffee house and a mall near the old market came to light, the tranquility of our vacation was shattered.

It was surrealistic. As morning broke on a beautiful day and the family was enjoying the pool, the phones kept ringing. Had it not been for the phones and TV news reports, ours would have been a perfectly normal vacation.

Despite the bombings, we decided to stay. As I told whoever asked me, there was no sense in cutting our vacation short; Sharm e-Sheikh had probably become the safest place on earth.

There was an eerie sense about the hotel and surrounding areas. No one wanted to talk about what happened, but it was clearly on everyone’s mind. The signs would come in various ways. A person on the phone talking to a hospital. An makeshift sign saying "no to terrorism" in English; another in Arabic saying that the brave people of Sharm will not be deterred by terrorism.

Later, when we went to the market, we saw a man with his head bandaged and heard the Egyptian owner of a juice bar talking about four of his best friends having been killed.

We spent all day Saturday by the pool. When we did head out towards the beach which had been bustling the night before, there were only a small group of vacationers to be seen.

One of the main topics of discussion was why the attack netted so many Egyptian casualties.

Reportedly, relatively few foreigners were among the dead. A theory was postulated by a Bir Zeit University professor who was staying at our hotel.

Returning to the hotel just minutes before the explosions, he had been stopped at a checkpoint and recalled that the security people looked very worried, examining everyone in the face as if they were looking for someone.

So perhaps Egyptian security had received a tip minutes before the blast, which explains why they fortified protection outside the main hotels frequented by foreigners. The bomber reportedly drove past one of these checkpoints and detonated his device near the old market, killing many Egyptians.

Another theory which is given credence is that the attack was connected to angry Sinai Beduin. They had it good during the years when Israel controlled the peninsula, so the theory went, and once Egypt regained sovereignty most of the best hotel and resorts jobs went to mainland Egyptians, leaving only menial work for the Bedouins.

Also, following the October 7 attacks that left 34 people dead at Taba, Egyptian security rounded up thousands of Beduin for questioning. Many innocent Beduin felt embittered by the heavy-handedness of the security forces. In fact, when we arrived at Sharm, precisely six hours before the attack, our Bedouin taxi driver from the airport was vocal in his criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

He bluntly said that many people were hoping Mubarak would not rule Egypt much longer, that he has behaved badly toward the Beduin.

That issue was also a major topic on TV talk shows after Taba. In the wake of the latest attack, and perhaps in response to the earlier criticism, few Beduin were arrested and those who were were held only briefly as material witnesses.

After staying near the hotel on the first day

after the bombing, we spent our second day on a boat sailing along shores of the Red Sea and snorkeling in some of the world’s best reefs.

We ate fresh fish almost every day and on the final day bought fish to take back to Amman with us.

All in all it was a pleasant and enjoyable trip – save for those damn phone calls, SMS messages and the people on television talking about bombings at the very resort we had come to in order to enjoy some quality family time.

Our vacation aside, the events in Sharm generated a strong consensus against the senselessness of terrorism that has not previously been felt.

Talking to everyday Egyptians, I got the feeling that everyone felt this global scourge has to end.

It was also exciting to see the various impromptu acts of protests. The presence of some of the Arab world’s finest artists in Sharm also showed that the entire society was unified against this evil.

Egyptian cinema director Yousef Shahin and a host of other Egyptian artists visited the bombed sites and Sharm e-Sheikh Hospital. Actor Hussein Fahmy told an Arab newspaper that it was high time Muslims changed their religious narrative so as to make sure that these killers no longer considered themselves heroes or martyrs for killing innocent civilians. A female artist, Layla Allawi, reportedly fainted when she saw the damage to the Ghazaleh Hotel.

It was also encouraging to see the unprecedented level of openness in the Egyptian media. Democracy and governmental accountability are important factors in creating an environment that would make such ugly acts a thing of the past.

July 22-27, 2005

It was 1.30 at night, we had just returned exhausted from the center of town after we had a fabulous fish dinner. Bishara carried Dina who had gone to sleep shortly after we arrived, and along with two other family members took a taxi from the Neema Bay taxi stand.

It was not surprising that the long-awaited Palestinian-Israeli summit didn’t produce results. Instead of the Sharon-Abbas meeting dealing with the many issues that badly need answers, it appears to have been a one-sided meeting.

Reports coming out of that meeting talk about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon using it to lash out against the Palestinian leader because of the security situation. An Israeli report quoted the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as asking Sharon to help him and Sharon scolding him for that request, telling him that people might actually believe that he is weak.



Those interested in finding a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must recognise the basic lack of symmetry in this protracted conflict. While Israel occupied the land, controls borders (within and without Palestine), has a powerful military, political and financial advantage and has the overwhelming support of the political establishment (from both parties) in the United States, Palestinian’s is mostly a negative power, namely the power to say no.



With such a huge disadvantage, the conflict can’t be solved — as Americans have often suggested — simply by getting the conflicting parties to sit down and talk. If the sides do sit down, as has happened during the recent summit, one side uses the occasion to lecture the other side.



As a result of this asymmetry the choices are simple. The strong side has to voluntarily make compromises, the weak side has to accept dictates of the strong or something must be done to correct this huge lack of symmetry. One other option is simply to wait until the weak side gets stronger.



Palestinians have often debated this particular issue and have come up with a variety of options, but without much success. At one time, Palestinians were hoping that Arab countries can be brought into the equation to help fix the lack of symmetry. But this proved to be useless as it became clear that Arab leaders were unwilling to do anything more than simply give lip service to the Palestinian cause.



Once they gave up on an effective role of fellow Arabs, radical groups opted for a violent solution. Terror, as the weapon of the weak, was seen as a legitimate way to force the strong side to respond. Others have taken the political track. This began with the major compromise made by the PLO and Yasser Arafat after the first Intifada when, in 1998, the Palestinian National Council made a major compromise regarding its historic position by accepting the two-state solution.



The Oslo process, that was supposed to translate this into a political reality, failed, in large part because of the refusal of the strong party to make the needed compromises. Ultimately, this track ended with the assassination by an Israeli Jew of the Israeli prime minister, followed by the election of Benjamin Netanyahu.



Frustrated Palestinian radical groups disappointed with Ehud Barak’s offer, which included substantial Palestinian concessions on the two-state solution (especially on Jerusalem and recognising the refugee problem), decided again to use force. The idea was that the Israeli arrogant offer came from their feeling of superiority and the Palestinian weakness. Radical groups thought that violence would force the Israelis to offer a more reasonable and fair compromise. That also failed, but with the Abbas’ election, the majority of Palestinians voted for a return to the political track to produce the desired results.



Six months after Abu Mazen’s election, very little has happened on the ground. Palestinian lives have not improved, checkpoints have not been reduced, travel restrictions within Palestinian cities has not been eased and the 8,000 prisoners (many of them prisoners of conscience being held without charge or trial) continue to suffer in Israeli jails, in contravention of international humanitarian laws.



The unilateral Israeli decision to withdraw from Gaza is a perfect example of this asymmetry, affecting not only the Palestinians but the entire international community which has been forced to revise its own roadmap to fit this unilateral Israeli decision.



The post-summit frustrations will continue for as long as third parties do not get involved, making an effort to correct this crystal clear asymmetry that has made the chance of a Middle East breakthrough so elusive. Third parties, especially the US, have a strong reason to be involved. Whether they will admit it or not, they have been a source of the conflict by helping create this asymmetry through financial, military and political support to one side at the expense of the other. Now that the US priorities have placed the issue of democracy and human rights in the Arab world, as well as the conflict in Iraq, on top of its priorities, a concerted US effort is essential.