The People's Assembly [Egypt's lower chamber of Parliament] was the scene yesterday of "a goalless political match" between the National Democratic Party (NDP)'s MPs and the opposition (Muslim Brotherhood members and independent MPs) over the different stances on the Gaza crisis. The match kicked off at 11 a.m., when NDP MPs held a conference in the Assembly lobby about an hour before the opposition started its sit-in in the courtyard outside the building. The opposition MPs waited for the end of their NDP colleagues' initiative to start their press conference. When they became sure that the conference would not end before the opposition itself ended its own one, they started holding their press conference on the Assembly sidewalk. Although both fronts condemned Israel's slaughters in Gaza and expressed their support to the Palestinian resistance, they clearly disagreed over how to estimate Egypt's way of dealing with the crisis. The opposition blamed the Egyptian regime for the current Arab's failure to act and described the Egyptian diplomatic performance as slack. The opposition MPs stuck on their demands, which had already been rejected by the government. They called, among other things, for revoking the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, halting gas exports, cutting diplomatic and trade relations with Israel, and opening the Rafah border crossing. They also called for Arab countries to have nuclear weapons like Israel. For their part, the NDP MPs praised President Mubarak's wisdom in dealing with the crisis and fiercely attacked Syria, Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah and Hamas. "Egypt needs no lesson from anyone" they said, calling for all parties to approve the Egyptian initiative in order to stop the aggression on Gaza.
