Doaa El-Bey and Rasha Saad cover the challenges facing the upcoming Arab summit and Iraq's parliamentary polls which are too close to call The permanent representatives of the Arab League met this week in Libya to prepare the agenda for the three-day summit starting 27 March. They gave their recommendations to the Arab foreign ministers who are to meet prior to the summit to ratify its agenda. Amin Ahmed Amin said there were several outstanding issues awaiting the Arab leaders including laying the foundation of an Arab parliament, the developments in Sudan, Iraq, Somalia and the Comoros in addition to taking tangible steps towards clearing the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction. The president of the summit, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, is expected to ask the participants to espouse the establishment of an Arab union with its previously discussed 18 items; declare the establishment of an Arab unity league and amend the Arab peace initiative to include the establishment of the state of Israel which would include both the Israelis and Palestinians in one state to put an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. All these pressing issues, Amin added, should push Arab leaders towards changing the style of their emergency as well as periodic summit meetings. In this present important and sensitive phase, he elaborated, they are required to give up rhetoric and focus on discussions and dialogue. "Arab states should reform inter-Arab work especially now that they have just two options: to be or not to be," Amin wrote in the official daily Al-Ahram. Ahmed El-Tayeb was chosen as the new grand sheikh of Al-Azhar after the death of his predecessor Mohamed Sayed Tantawi earlier this month. During his first day in office, El-Tayeb vowed to make real changes in Al-Azhar. Al-Akhbar quoted him as saying, "Al-Azhar is keen on national unity and spreading moderate thinking". Nahdet Masr headlined, "His first decision in office: detailed reports on the status of Al-Azhar institutes", while Al-Ahram quoted El-Tayeb as saying that his work would not be affected by any partisan allegiances. Mohamed El-Zorqani said that everybody welcomed the selection of El-Tayeb as grand sheikh of Al-Azhar. The writer recounted his friendship with El-Tayeb when the latter was mufti and then president of Al-Azhar University. In both posts, his office was open to whoever needed him and he never hesitated to return rights to their rightful owners. "Sheikh El-Tayeb deserves to be the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar. He deserves to fill the post occupied by many respectable scholars before him," El-Zorqani wrote in the official weekly Akhbar Al-Yom. The soaring cost of red meat attracted the attention of many writers this week. Alaa Abdel-Wahab wrote that by the end of 2009 the price of one kilogramme of red meat had reached LE40. This month it exceeded LE50. And that meant "the salary of an employee who earns LE1,000 a month equals less than 20 kilos of red meat," Abdel-Wahab wrote in the official daily Al-Akhbar. The writer found the butchers' excuse for raising the price of meat very strange: they claim that the fall in consumption, as a result of consumers buying exported and frozen meat, forced them to raise the price. Abdel-Wahab called on the government to take decisive action against butchers and meat merchants who have exaggerated in upping the costs. The increase in violence in schools was a cause for serious concern. Eman Raslan noted that the phenomenon reached a peak last year when a teacher killed one of her students in a school in Alexandria. She predicted the killing would prompt officials to deal with the crisis with genuine measures rather than words. However, Raslan wrote in the independent daily Nahdet Masr that this week witnessed a noticeable rise in these incidents which left three students dead and three injured. Thus, the Ministry of Education should play an important and much needed role. Why shouldn't the ministry admit that what it is currently studying is a dangerous phenomenon? Why shouldn't the ministry's centre for educational research start studying the situation? Studying it should go hand in hand with legal procedures against those who commit violent acts in schools, Raslan added. Mustafa Shafiq believed that bringing back beating in schools would control the situation. He wrote that although he differed with Minister of Education Ahmed Zaki Badr when Badr was president of Ain Shams University, he agreed with his decision to reapply beatings as a form of punishment for school children. He wondered why many journalists and writers were against such a step to the extent that they extensively publish incidents about students being attacked by their teachers to prove their point. Beating in schools is not supposed to cause bodily harm but a paternal way for a teacher to correct any deficiency in his students, Shafiq explained in the daily Al-Wafd, the mouthpiece of the opposition Wafd Party. "Ahmed Zuweil, Magdi Yaqoub, Umm Kolthoum and other luminaries graduated from schools that used beating as a form of punishment," he added. Shafiq also found that the attack on Badr following experimental exams held for thanaweya amma -- or high school certificate -- students were unfounded. It was an experiment for the student to test his knowledge, for the Ministry of Education to test the new system and for teachers to test their teaching abilities. Many writers wrote emotional stories about their mothers this week when Egypt celebrated Mother's Day. Sherif Riad wrote that the idea of Mother's Day was first suggested by the late journalist Ali Amin. Then, many readers sent Amin letters hailing his suggestion and participated in choosing a suitable day. 21 March was chosen because it is the first day of spring; the first Mother's Day was on 21 March 1956. Ever since, Egypt celebrates Mother's Day every year by honouring mothers who struggle to bring up their children. "Although Ali Amin died, his idea did not and we celebrate Mother's Day on the day he chose, every year. It is every mother's right to be happy on that day when her children tell her how grateful they are," Riad wrote in Al-Akhbar. In Nahdet Masr Ayyat El-Muwafi raised the question of when Egypt should celebrate Father's Day. She interviewed a number of readers who seemed to agree that fathers deserve to be honoured like mothers for their role in bringing up children.
