Doaa El-Bey shared Egypt's joy after the country won the Africa Cup of Nations. There was, though, no pleasure reaped from the deteriorating situation in Yemen The assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai represented another Israeli encroachment on Arab land. The editorial of the independent political daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi which regarded the assassination as one of security infiltration, predicted that Hamas's revenge for the assassination would be tumultuous because of the status of Al-Mabhouh within the group. However, the editorial suggested, priority should be given to how the infiltration took place, how the information about the stay of Al-Mabhouh in Dubai reached the Mossad and how Israel managed to increasingly and repeatedly infiltrate security in Syria which is supposed to provide protection to resistance groups residing on its land. The edit added that a top UAE security official was right when he said Hamas had not contacted Dubai beforehand to inform it that a top official would visit so that enough security could have been provided him. Nevertheless, that could not hold the emirate responsible for not discovering the assassination except after the accused had left the UAE. But now, thanks to advanced security measures of Dubai, it has full information about the perpetrators, and it should officially ask they be handed over for trial. However, until then, the edit added, we expect the UAE to stop any diplomatic or trade relations with the Israeli government and ban any Israeli official from entering its territory even if it is for the purpose of attending an international conference. Yasser Hilala confirmed the Mossad involvement in killing Al-Mabhouh, the same way Mossad took part in the failed attempt to kill Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman in 1997. "Thus the states that have relations with Israel should keep an eye on the dangerous role played by the Mossad under the cover of their embassies in these states and officials' visits," Hilala wrote in the Jordanian political daily Al-Ghad. Hilala ruled out that Hamas was waiting for anybody to offer condolences for its loss because it chose the road of resistance against Israel and Al-Mabhouh never ruled out that he would be killed by Israeli security one day. In the one interview that he did, with Al-Jazeera, he said that he did not care if Israel categorised him as an enemy whose hands were stained with Israeli blood, and added that he belonged to a resistance movement and was waiting for martyrdom at any time. Hilala added that the Mossad succeeded in assassinating Mabhouh as it did Imad Mogniyah, Abu Jihad and others. But it is a partial success because it will never succeed in silencing the voice of resistance. Israeli practices inside the West Bank and Gaza were also criticised this week. The Saudi daily Al-Jazirah denounced the scene shown by many satellite channels of an elderly Palestinian woman being dragged by two Israeli soldiers because she protested against the Israeli encroachment on her land to plant a tree on Tree Day. On Tree Day, the last day of January every year, the Israelis plant a tree in the West Bank. The tree is a pretext to usurp another piece of Palestinian land. The tactics of the occupation are various: a small kiosk is transformed into a settlement and then a city and a tree into a farm, and then into a backyard, to another patch of Israeli land. All this extension is at the expense of Palestinian land, on which the Palestinian state will be established, the edit read. The old lady who protested at the Israeli policies was mercilessly dragged in front of the media as further proof of Israeli atrocities. The edit concluded by asking what the international community will do in response to these Israeli atrocities. The situation in Yemen is deteriorating, making Gamil Al-Zayabi sound the alarm. Recent statements from high-ranking officials about the difficult situation in Yemen further supported his argument. Al-Zayabi wrote that Yemen was suffering from failure as well as the triangle of danger -- the Houthi rebel group, southern secessionists and Al-Qaeda. "The present situation in Yemen requires quick logistic international intervention and aid to help its people before Al-Qaeda or Houthi set up camps like that of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hizbullah in Lebanon or turn it into another Somalia," Al-Zayabi wrote in the London-based independent political daily Al-Hayat. He listed a series of accumulative challenges facing Yemen: unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, limited resources as well as administrative and financial corruption. Although the 10-point plan concluded at the end of the London donors' conference last week offered the first step in the right direction, Al-Zayabi hoped the meeting would have espoused a project to establish an international committee to monitor the reformation in Yemen. However, he pinned hope on another donors meeting scheduled in Riyadh at the end of this month. It is absolutely necessary to initiate an Arab role, nearly absent up till now, in resolving the Yemeni crisis. Tawfiq Al-Madeini was even less optimistic because he believed the London conference was limited in its vision to resolve the Yemeni problem. Al-Madeini wrote in the United Arab Emirates daily Al-Bayan that Yemen was currently facing four major problems, the first being the legitimacy of the present Yemeni state which was established after the unity of the north and south of Yemen in 1990. Ever since 1994, the state has been facing secessionist calls which were further raised in the recent Saada war. Second comes the conflict between the state and Al-Qaeda which has recently found a safe haven in Yemen. Third, the growing southern secessionist movement led by the former vice-president Ali Salem Al-Beidh and fourth the absence of a clear strategy for development in Yemen in the hope of overcoming the crisis. Al-Madeini said the London conference, mainly supported by the US and Britain, was incapable of coming up with genuine solutions to the Yemeni crisis. "However, the united democratic Yemeni project formed by political, religious and tribal parties is capable of providing rational answers to the challenges facing Yemen on three dimensions: reformation, national reconciliation and achieving economic and social development by combating corruption."
