Last week's Taba bombings provoked anger, apprehension and wild speculations. Gihan Shahine gauges the public Dina Hamed shudders whenever she remembers how she could have been one of the victims of last week's bombings in the Egyptian border resort of Taba. "We cancelled our trip to Hilton Taba at the last minute," Hamed said. Her cousin, who ended up going anyway, survived the blasts, but still suffers terrible nightmares as a result. "That's what happens when you are that close to the scene," Hamed said. "When the blasts occurred, my cousin was having dinner with her husband in the hotel restaurant. Suddenly everything around them came smashing down, and as they ran out of the place, they saw a burnt corpse just hanging there in front of them. I could have faced the same horror." Even for those without a close connection to the event, images of the once- luxury hotel, suddenly transformed into a deadly cavern of horrors, have provoked much apprehension, anger and speculation. Whereas everybody seemed to point to "Israeli and US massacres of Palestinian and Iraqi people" as a "primary trigger" for the vicious attacks, people were also angry that the bombings took place in Egypt, thus wreaking havoc, creating a sense of instability, and dealing a potentially lethal blow to tourism. Legitimate resistance, according to the most prevalent logic, should be confined to the conflict zone it is part of, and should certainly not come near innocent civilians. The fact that the attack also claimed many Egyptian victims, along with speculation that it might drag Egypt into "unwanted political problems", also provoked public ire. "They [the Taba bombings] are actually an attack on Egypt," said an angry Khaled Abu Ismail, chairman of the General Union for Business Chambers. "It is meant to slam the Egyptian economy, which has started to pick up only recently." Although the blasts apparently targeted Israeli tourists, Abu Ismail said, "the culprits are actually enemies of Egypt, rather than Israel". The fact that the attacks took place away from Palestine, killing tourists of other nationalities, and leaving many Egyptian victims in their wake, proved that. "This has absolutely nothing to do with the values of Islam or nationalism," Abu Ismail said. Fitness specialist Nesrine Abdel- Latif, whose husband owns a tour company in Taba, was equally despondent. "Everyday, my husband discovers that another of his friends or acquaintances died in the attacks, and all that remains of them are severed hands or legs," Abdel-Latif told Al-Ahram Weekly. "They were all poor people who worked to support big families. The whole place has turned into a ghost city, with many having lost their livelihood. Many will remain jobless. And they say they did this in the name of God. What kind of logic is that?" she asked, branding the bombings as a clear cut "terror attack". Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi also immediately denounced the "killing of civilians under the banner of Islam". The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which also issued a statement regretting the attacks, blamed them on "the international apathy towards the atrocious massacres carried out daily by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people, and the barbaric US assaults on the Iraqi people". Leading brotherhood member Abdel-Moneim Abul-Futouh said, "injustice normally fuels violence, and the US's extreme right-wing policies and Zionist terrorism have wrought unlimited havoc in the region." At the same time, Abul- Futouh said, the brotherhood "rejects the killing of civilians and taking resistance outside legitimate areas of conflict." Prominent Al-Ahram columnist Salama Ahmed Salama predicted that, "violence against the Palestinian and Iraqi people -- having reached an unprecedented peak -- is bound to create even more chaos everywhere." According to Salama, it will be almost impossible for any country to "defuse a potential explosion of public anger," if current US and Israeli atrocities don't stop. On Egyptian university campuses, however, that "public anger" can be easily censored. Many students told the Weekly that while they do not condone violence or the killing of civilians, they have also seen so many images of Palestinian children brutally murdered by Israeli soldiers, that they find little sympathy for the Israeli victims of the Taba bombings. "I just feel Israelis are paying a fair price for what they did to Palestinians just one night earlier," said one student, who wanted to remain anonymous. "Israel has aborted every attempt for peace, and that has caused a vicious circle of violence." Another student quickly countered this "eye-for-an- eye" debate, saying, "although Israelis kill civilians in cold blood, that does not mean we should do the same. Instead, we should stick to our own Islamic values in war." In general, opposition groups were unanimous in their condemnation of the terror attack. Hussein Abdel-Razeq, deputy chairman of the leftist Tagammu Party, was especially concerned about the possible "recurrence of terrorism, which Egypt suffered from in the early 1990s". The attacks, according to Abdel-Razeq, have also uncovered "a serious drawback" in the Egyptian-Israeli treaty: the fact that Israelis do not need a visa to enter eastern Sinai has turned the Peninsula into an Israeli tourist haven. That, some analysts speculated, may have inspired radical Islamists into thinking that attacking the Peninsula was a means of showing solidarity with the Palestinians, and straining Israeli-Egyptian relations at the same time. As a result of the ambiguity still shrouding the attacks, many resorted to conspiracy theories regarding both the alleged perpetrators, as well as possible future scenarios. One very popular theory was that, "Israel planned the attack to put political pressure on Egypt, clobber its economy, and blur its peace process efforts." In any case, Salama said the reality was that the attacks would be "used to pressure Egypt away from its role in settling the Palestinian issue".
