The head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company has said it has terminated its contract to ship gas to Israel because of violations of contractual obligations, a decision Israel said overshadowed the peace agreement between the two countries.

Mohamed Shoeb, the gas company’s top official, said Sunday’s decision was not political. “This has nothing to do with anything outside of the commercial relations,” Shoeb said.

He said Israel had not paid for its gas in four months. Yigal Palmor, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, denied the claim of not paying.

The 2005 Egypt-Israel gas deal has come under strident criticism from leaders of the popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian president, last year.

Critics charge that Israel got bargain prices, and Mubarak cronies skimmed millions of dollars off the proceeds.

The sale of gas to Israel, which signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, has always been controversial in the Arab world’s most populous country. It was the largest trade deal between the two former foes.

Egyptian radicals have blown up the gas pipeline to Israel 14 times since the uprising.

The country’s military ruler was quoted by the MENA news agency as saying that the Egyptian armed forces would defend the borders with Israel if necessary.

Addressing troops in the Sinai Peninsula during annual field exercises on Monday, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi said: ”Our borders, especially the northeast ones, are inflamed. We do not attack neighbouring countries but will defend our territory. We will break the legs of any trying to attack us or come near the borders.”

‘Great concern’

Tantawi’s statement came apparently in response to remarks the previous day by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s finance minister, that the Egyptian announcement was of “great concern” politically and economically.

“This is a dangerous precedent that overshadows the peace agreements and the peaceful atmosphere between Israel and Egypt,” Steinitz said in a statement.

Israel relies on Egyptian natural gas for 40 per cent of its supplies to produce electricity, the chairman of a government holding firm said on Sunday.

The Israeli side said the decision was “unlawful and in bad faith”, accusing the Egyptian side of failing to supply the gas quantities it is owed. The dispute is under international arbitration.

Israel insists it is paying a fair price for the gas.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Cairo, said the row would have major political consequences.

“At the base of it, this is a commercial dispute, which has in reality been under international arbitration since September last year,” he said.

“But when this agreement was reached in 2005, it was subject to government approvals of Israel and Egypt, many believe under pressure from the government of the US.

“So although this maybe a commercial situation at the moment, this is an issue that will have immense political, international fallout in the days to come.”

However, Al Jazeera’s Cal Perry, reporting from Jerusalem, said that the Israeli government had been downplaying the dispute.

“Everyone here is downplaying it. In fact we just heard from the prime minister’s office that the deal is not off, that this is just a commercial issue between the israeli and Egyptian gas companies,” he said.

“It is not surprising that they’re downplaying it if you look at the implications this could have.

“If this deal falls apart the concerns I think many people have is that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which was signed in 1979, could be in jeopardy.”

Mubarak defended

In January, a lawyer defending Mubarak told a Cairo court that there was not a shred of evidence linking the deposed Egyptian president to the controversial gas deal.

Farid al-Deeb said Egypt’s spy agency negotiated the deal in line with international norms.

“There isn’t an ounce of evidence that Mubarak was involved in the deal to import gas to Israel,” costing the state $714m  in losses, Deeb told the court.

Among the shareholders of East Mediterranean, the joint Egyptian-Israeli company that carries the gas to Israel, is Hussein Salem, a close friend of Mubarak.

After the many disruptions to the supply of gas over the past year, Israeli ministers have urged the speedy exploitation of recently discovered gas fields off the country’s northern coast.

Israeli officials believe that exploitation of two major natural gas fields could compensate for the loss of Egyptian gas.

Israel has already moved to begin exploiting the fields, signing a deal with Cyprus to mark out maritime borders, but it faces challenges from Lebanon, which claims that the gas fields lie in its territorial waters.

Al Jazeera’s Perry said that the attacks on the pipeline had become a major problem for Israel in the past 14 months, and as a result the country had to purchase gas supplies from other countries as far away as Mexico.

“The price of electricity has gone up 20 per cent and the cost of living continues to go up as well,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has decided to recall its ambassador to Cairo and close its diplomatic missions in Egypt after protests
outside its embassy over an arrested Egyptian lawyer, state news agency SPA reported.

An official spokesman, quoted by SPA, said on Saturday that the measures were decided in response to demonstrations outside its missions in Egypt and threats following the announcement of the arrest of the Egyptian lawyer in Saudi Arabia.

The protests were “unjustified”, the spokesman said, adding that Saudi and Egyptian employees of its diplomatic missions had been threatened.

“Hostile slogans were shouted out and the immunity of the diplomatic representations was violated, contrary to all international regulations,” the spokesman said.

Hundreds of Egyptians have rallied outside the Saudi embassy this week to demand the release of Ahmed el-Gezawi, who was detained in Saudi Arabia for allegedly insulting the kingdom’s monarch.

Saudi authorities say the lawyer was arrested trying to smuggle anti-anxiety drugs into the kingdom.

Sharp escalation

Saturday’s announcement Saturday is a sharp escalation in the case.

The spokesperson said the violence had led to the suspension of diplomatic and consular services for Egyptian workers and Muslim pilgrims headed for Islam’s holiest sites, located in western Saudi Arabia.

On Tuesday, hundreds of Egyptians protested outside the embassy demanding the release of an Egyptian human rights activist held by Saudi authorities who claim he possessed banned drugs.

The protesters chanted slogans against the Saudi regime as they called for the “immediate” release of Ahmed Mohammed al-Gizawi, who was arrested on arrival at Jeddah airport on April 17.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, an Egyptian organisation, said Gizawi was detained following a sentence of one year in prison and 20 lashes delivered against him in absentia for criticism of the Saudi government.

Gizawi, whose supporters said he travelled to the Gulf state on pilgrimage, was being targeted for his activism in favour of Egyptian detainees in Saudi prisons, it said.

When he did, a day late, the announcement fell to the first vice president Mubarak found the need to appoint in the last 30 years, the indefatigable spymaster Omar Suleiman, a figure who would be right at home on the 1950′s era black-and-white movies that flicker on the television sets in every Cairo coffee shop and kiosk, to the remembered glory of Egyptian cinema. At once terse and lugubrious, the former general delivered his walk-off line like the undertaker he likely thought he had become: “May God help everybody.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2048689,00.html#ixzz1Dn3C8rTs

Mubarak told ABC correspondent Christiane Amanpour that he was troubled by the bloody clashes that broke out Wednesday in Tahrir Square, the center of anti-government demonstrations.

As the United States and other countries condemned increasing attacks on journalists and diplomats, Mubarak rejected the notion that government instigated the violence in the country, instead blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist umbrella group that is banned in Egypt.

“I don’t care what people say about me,” Mubarak told ABC. “Right now I care about my country, I care about Egypt.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition figure, has joined thousands of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in continued demonstrations demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency told the crowd on Sunday night that “what we have begun cannot go back” referring to days of anti-government protests.

The National Coalition for Change, which groups several opposition movements including the Muslim Brotherhood, wants ElBaradei to negotiate with the Mubarak government.

“The people want the regime to fall,” protesters chanted as ElBaradei walked to the centre of the square, holding hands with some demonstrators.

The show of continued defiance by the people came on a day when air force fighter planes flew low over Cairo along with helicopters and extra troop lorries appeared in the central square.

As the protests continue, security is said to be deteriorating and reports have emerged of several prisons across the country being attacked and of fresh protests being staged in cities like Alexandria and Suez.

Read more on Al Jazeera http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011130165636218719.html

Protesters have been pouring out from mosques after noon prayers on Friday and clashing with police who fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

The video below explains the geographic spread of Cairo protests.

View Anger in Egypt in a larger map

View Cairo’s ‘day of wrath’ in a larger map

As the Egyptian government continues to crack down on massive protests calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, all eyes are on the security forces tasked with putting down the demonstrations.

Egypt has one of the largest and most powerful armed forces in the world, with nearly 1 million active and reserve personnel, three quarters of which belong to the army.

The army is widely respected by Egyptians given its role in another revolution: the overthrow of King Farouk I in 1952 and the founding of modern Egypt. Along with military intelligence, the armed forces are overseen by Egypt’s Ministry of Defence.

Under the purview of the Ministry of Interior are the riot police that have been clashing with protesters. Called the Central Security Force or Amn al-Markazi, they number 325,000.

The Interior Ministry also oversees other services, including “the General Directorate for State Security Investigations (also termed SSI, State Security Investigations Sector, or the SSIS, or Mubahath al-Dawla), which has a special counterterrorism role, including interrogations” and the police, according to authors Denis J. Sullivan and Kimberly Jones.

In their reference book on Egypt they write that policing public demonstrations and monitoring curfews are among the Central Security Force’s tasks.

Human rights violations

The security agencies have often been criticised for human rights violations. There were demonstrations following the June 2010 death of Khaled Said by two plain-clothed police officers. The 28-year-old was allegedly tortured to death at the officers’ hands in the city of Alexandria.

Following Said’s death, security forces allegedly pressured the family to drop a case against the police and prevented residents and human rights activists from holding demonstrations in protest.

In the past few days, human rights groups including Amnesty International have “condemned Egyptian security forces’ disproportionate and unnecessary use of live rounds and lethal force against protesters”. The riot police used tear gas and water cannons to dispel the crowds.

The organisation also denounced the arrest of at least 1,200 protesters, some of whom told Amnesty that they were beaten up in detention.

The army was not involved until Friday, when Mubarak ordered it to the streets to quell the protests. It received a warm welcome in some places, as protesters saw it as an intermediary between them and the police.

Peaceful protests

On Saturday, opposition leader Mohamed Elbaradei told Al Jazeera the army’s actions will be key to what happens next.

“The Egyptian people always consider the army a source of pride, as friends, as part of society. I address this message to the Egyptian army: Yesterday’s protests, which I participated in, were 100 per cent peaceful.

The violence came from the security forces. And naturally, in a protest that involves hundreds of thousands of people, there are those who take advantage of this,” he said.

“The army, which I consider part of the people, must understand that if you want to restore peace and security, this regime must get out and they must respond to the wishes of the people – their wish for change now. If this doesn’t happen, I expect the protests will continue and this period will continue.”

Eyewitnesses in Cairo told Al Jazeera on Saturday that in some parts of the capital, including the upscale Maadi diplomatic area, there are no police or soldiers in sight.

They expressed concern that armed looters were threatening residents and stealing from homes.

“Where are the people who were shooting the protesters who weren’t carrying any arms?” asked Muhammad Salah incredulously.

“And now they’re leaving alone these people who do have guns”.

Source: Al Jazeera

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has appointed the country’s head of intelligence to the post of vice-president, in a move said to be a reaction to days of anti-government protests in cities across the country.

Omar Suleiman was sworn in on Saturday, the first time Mubarak appointed a vice-president during his 30-year rule. Ahmad Shafiq, a former aviation minister, was also appointed prime minister.

But Al Jazeera’s correspondents in Egypt have said that many of those on taking to the streets have demanded a total change of guard, as opposed to a reshuffling of figures in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).

Tens of thousands of people in the capital Cairo gathered on Saturday, demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak’s  presidency.

The demonstrations continued in defiance of an extended curfew, where state television reported will be in place from 4pm to 8am local time.

A military presence also remains, and the army warned the crowds in Tahrir Square that if they defy the curfew, they would be in danger.

Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Cairo, said that soldiers deployed to central Cairo are not intervening in the protests.

“Some of the soldiers here have said that the only way for peace to come to the streets of Cairo is for Mubarak to step down,” he said.

Similar crowds were gathering in the cities of Alexandria and Suez, Al Jazeera’s correspondents reported.

Reports have also emerged that at least three people have been killed, as protesters attempted to storm the interior ministry in Cairo.

Fears of looting have also risen, and the army on Saturday warned local residents to “protect their property and possessions”.

In the city of Alexandria, residents called on the army to protect them against looting, as well as organising their own committees in defence.

Cabinet resigns

The Egyptian cabinet meanwhile have formally resigned in response to the protests, and Ahmed Ezz, a businessman and senior figure in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) also resigned from his post as chairman of the Planning and Budget Committee.

Protesters ransacked and burned one of his company’s main offices in Mohandiseen, an area of Cairo.

State media reported on Saturday that some protesters held up posters with a cross marked over the face of Ezz, who is chairman of Ezz Steel.

Meanwhile, overnight protests were also held on Friday in cities across the country, in what has been viewed as unprecedented anger on the part of the Egyptian people.

In Alexandria, Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh reported that scores of marchers were calling on Hosni Mubarak to step down.

“They are calling for regime change, not cabinet change,” Rageh said.

She said that they were blocking traffic and shouting “Illegitimate, illegitimate!”

The Reuters news agency reported that police had fired live ammunition at protesters, but there is no independent confirmation of that report.

In Suez, Al Jazeera’s Jamal ElShayyal reported that 1,000-2,000 protesters had gathered, and that the military was not confronting them.

ElShayyal quoted a military officer as saying that troops would “not fire a single bullet on Egyptians”.

The officer also said the only solution to the current unrest was “for Mubarak to leave”.

ElShayyal said that 1,700 public workers in Suez had gone on an indefinite strike seeking Mubarak’s resignation.

The latest protests reflected popular discontent with Mubarak’s midnight address, where he announced that he was dismissing his government but remaining in power.

The several hundred protesters in Tahrir Square demonstrated in full view of the army, which had been deployed in the city to quell the popular unrest sweeping the Middle East’s most populous Muslim country since January 25.

They repeatedly shouted that their intentions were peaceful.

According to the Associated Press, the road leading from Tahrir Square to the parliament and cabinet buildings has been blocked by the military.

Al Jazeera’s Jane Dutton, reporting from Cairo, said the normally bustling city looked more like a warzone early on Saturday morning.

Tanks have been patrolling the streets of the capital since early in the morning, and a statement from the Egyptian armed forces asked citizens to respect the curfew and to avoid congregating in large groups.

An extended curfew has now been ordered by the military, running from 4pm to 8am local time, in Cairo and other major cities.

State television is also reporting that all school and university exams have been postponed.

Rising death toll

Cities across Egypt witnessed unprecedented protests on Friday, with tens of thousands of protesters taking to the streets after noon prayers calling for an end to Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

The number of people killed in protests is reported to be in the scores, with at least 23 deaths confirmed in Alexandria, and at least 27 confirmed in Suez, with a further 22 deaths in Cairo.

Al Jazeera’s Rageh in Alexandria said that the bodies of 23 protesters had been received at the local morgue, some of them brutally disfigured.

She added that human rights activists had reported that a further 13 bodies were present at the general hospital.

ElShayyal, our correspondent in Suez confirmed 27 bodies were received at the morgue in Suez, while Dan Nolan, our correspondent in Cairo, confirmed that 22 bodies were present at a morgue in Cairo.

More than 1,000 were also wounded in Friday’s violent protests, which occurred in Cairo and Suez, in addition to Alexandria.

Dutton, in Cairo, said the number of the people on the streets “increased after president Hosni Mubarak’s speech shortly after midnight”.

Regarding the situation in the capital on Saturday morning, she said “there is broken glass everywhere … a lot of the burnt out shells of the police cars have been removed but you are aware that there were hours and hours of skirmishes on the streets of the capital city [last night]“.

The ruling NDP headquarters in the capital is still ablaze, more than 12 hours after it was set alight by protesters.

The Egyptian army said it had been able to secure the neighbouring museum of antiquities from the threat of fire and looting, averting the possible loss of thousands of priceless artefacts.

Armoured personnel carriers remain stationed around the British and US embassies, as well as at the state television station.

Some mobile phone networks resumed service in the capital on Saturday, after being shut down by authorities on Friday. Internet services remain cut, and landline usage limited.

Authorities had blocked internet, mobile phone and SMS services in order to disrupt planned demonstrations.

‘Mobs’ and ‘criminals’

Maged Reda Boutros, a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, told Al Jazeera that the political regime in Egypt was “admitting” that it was not meeting the expectations of the people, and that was why the cabinet was resigning.

He alleged that the protests have been taken over by “mobs” from the “lower part of the society”, who are now engaged in “burning, looting and shooting”.

“Now it has turned from a noble cause to a criminal cause,” he said, saying that most of those involved in the protests were criminals.

He said that half of those killed are members of the security forces, who died while acting in self defence.

“People should wait and see what’s going to happen. But if they continue doing protests and letting those criminals loose in a large city of 17 million people … we cannot play with the stability of the country.”

Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition figure, told Al Jazeera that protests would continue until the president steps down. He also stressed that the political “system” will have to change in Egypt before the country can move forward.

He termed president Mubarak’s speech “disappointing”, and called on him to resign. The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also expressed “disappointment” with the US reaction to the protests, though he did stress that any change would have to come from “inside Egypt”.

He said that Mubarak should put in place an interim government that would arrange free and fair elections.

ElBaradei added that he was not aware of his reported house arrest.

Friday’s demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people were the biggest and bloodiest in four consecutive days of protests against Mubarak’s government.

It’s an astonishing move, and one that seems almost unimaginable for a nation that not only has a relatively strong Internet economy but also relies on its connections to the rest of the world.

But how did the government actually do it? Is there a big kill switch inside Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s office? Do physical cables have to be destroyed? Can a lockdown like this work?

Plenty of nations place limitations on communications, sometimes very severe ones. But there are only a few examples of regimes shutting down communications entirely — Burma’s military leaders notably cut connectivity during the protests of 2007, and Nepal did a similar thing after the king took control of the government in 2005 as part of his battle against insurgents. Local Chinese authorities have also conducted similar, short-lived blockades.

The OpenNet Initiative has outlined two methods by which most nations could enact such shutdowns. Essentially, officials can either close down the routers which direct traffic over the border — hermetically sealing the country from outsiders — or go further down the chain and switch off routers at individual ISPs to prevent access for most users inside.

In its report on the Burmese crackdown, ONI suggests the junta used the second option, something made easier because it owns the only two Internet service providers in the country.

The Burmese Autonomous System (AS), which, like any other AS, is composed of several hierarchies of routers and provides the Internet infrastructure in-country. A switch off could therefore be conducted at the top by shutting off the border router(s), or a bottom up approach could be followed by first shutting down routers located a few hops deeper inside the AS.

A high-level traffic analysis of the logs of NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers indicates that the border routers corresponding to the two ISPs were not turned off suddenly. Rather, our analysis indicates that this was a gradual process.

While things aren’t clear yet, this doesn’t look like the pattern seen in Egypt, where the first indications of Internet censorship came earlier this week with the blockades against Twitter and Facebook, but when access disappeared, it disappeared fast, with 90 percent of connections dropping in an instant.

Analysis by Renesys, an Internet monitoring body, indicates the shutdown across the nation’s major Internet service providers was at precisely the same time, 12:34 a.m. EET (22:34 UTC):

Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table … The Egyptian government’s actions tonight have essentially wiped their country from the global map.

Instead, the signs are that the Egyptian authorities have taken a very careful and well-planned method to screen off Internet addresses at every level, from users inside the country trying to get out and from the rest of the world trying to get in.

“It looks like they’re taking action at two levels,” Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro told me. “First at the DNS level, so any attempt to resolve any address in .eg will fail — but also, in case you’re trying to get directly to an address, they are also using the Border Gateway Protocol, the system through which ISPs advertise their Internet protocol addresses to the network. Many ISPs have basically stopped advertising any internet addresses at all.”

Essentially, we’re talking about a system that no longer knows where anything is. Outsiders can’t find Egyptian websites, and insiders can’t find anything at all. It’s as if the postal system suddenly erased every address inside America — and forgot that it was even called America in the first place.

A complete border shutdown might have been easier, but Egypt has made sure that there should be no downstream impact, no loss of traffic in countries further down the cables. That will ease the diplomatic and economic pressure from other nations, and make it harder for protesters inside the country to get information in and out.

Ferguson suggests that, if nothing else, the methods used by the Egyptian government prove how fragile digital communication really is.

“What struck me most is that we’ve been extolling the virtues of the Internet for democracy and free speech, but an incident like this demonstrates how easy it is — particularly in a country where there’s a high level of governmental control — to just switch this access off.”