Various pressing issues engaged the press this week including calls on social media to boycott buying fruit. At the same time, the editorial of the official daily Al-Ahram regarded the US decision to reduce aid to Palestinian hospitals in Jerusalem by $25 million and the decision to end its funding of UNRWA as delivering the wrong message and exposing security and stability in the region to dangerous repercussions. In addition, the edit added, it cast doubt on the credibility of the US role in the peace process and puts more pressure on the Palestinians. “The US decision aims to encroach on the right of return for Palestinians according to UN Security Council Resolution 194. And that, together with the US decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem puts another obstacle in the way of achieving peace in the region. Any formula for achieving peace in the region without establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and guaranteeing the right of return will not succeed,” the edit said. In spite of all the crises and problems that the Arab world faces at present, the Palestinian issue will remain the central issue and the key to security and stability in the region, the edit concluded. In light of social media calls to boycott buying fruit because of their continuously rising prices, Amr Gad focused on the usefulness of boycott campaigns. Gad wrote that these campaigns sometimes do not work because they do not offer an alternative that compensates the people or because they ignore the harm that may be caused to other parties in the production process who have nothing to do with the problem. As such, Gad said, we have never heard about a boycott campaign that succeeded. Boycotters do the least they can to defend their cause while the government watches the matter as if it is a normal dispute between seller and vendor. "We saw that fight clearly in the latest calls to boycott fruit. But neither did the public boycott nor did prices fall. But we discovered that even though prices in wholesale markets are half that by which we buy from vendors, nobody has taken action to deal with this big difference!” Gad wrote in the daily Al-Youm Al-Sabei. Amr Shobki shed light on the Foreign Ministry's objection to the statement issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights denouncing the death sentences handed down by a lower Egyptian court to 75 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Shobki said he believed the objection will not change anything and that we are in need of a comprehensive political approach that should tackle one big issue: how to deal with the external world in this and similar issues. "Responding to UN statements cannot be by rejecting them but by correcting our internal mistakes. We need to acknowledge that we are part of this world and that the picture that we introduce about ourselves should be genuine. Nothing can be hidden in the word that we live in today,” Shobki wrote in the daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. 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The Coptic and Lunar New Year appear consecutively By Ahmed Kaoud, Al-Youm Al-Sabei “Happy New Year to my Egyptian sons.”
