CAIRO: It seems we've come full circle - 2009 is winding down on much the same note as its predecessor with a focus on the blighted Gaza Strip. Almost a year ago today, Israel was preparing to launch the deadly operation Cast Lead which killed over 1,400 Palestinians and left thousands homeless. But while the bombing stopped, the blockade continued, leading a group of over 1,000 international delegates from 42 countries to organize a solidarity "Gaza Freedom March, hoping to go through Egypt's Rafah border to later join Palestinians in a non-violent march from Northern Gaza to the Erez/Israeli border. Aiming to end the siege on Gaza, which has led to a crippling humanitarian crisis, the group's request to organize the march was rejected by Egypt's Foreign Ministry, which cited the sensitivity of the situation in the strip and warned against attempts to violate the law and public order. This was the most recent example of a running theme throughout 2009: protecting Egypt's national security. The stand-off with the organizers of the march comes only days after the disclosure that Egypt is building a controversial 20-30 meter deep metal barrier along its Rafah border to stem the underground tunnel smuggling of essential goods as well as weapons into Gaza. An over-zealous focus on security and "Egypt's right to uphold its sovereignty, as officials justified the barrier, was the by-product of an earlier security breach, when security forces arrested and put on trial members of a Hezbollah-affiliated terrorist cell which was allegedly planning to carry out operations on Egyptian soil. Only two months following a terrorist bomb explosion in the tourist-packed Al-Hussein district, Egyptian security were operating on overdrive, with the regular arrests of members of the Muslim Brotherhood group almost passing unnoticed. While security concerns were the focus of Egypt's regional policies, internal political debates were dominated by one topic: succession. Hands-down the debate of the year, the issue of who, in the absence of a vice president, will succeed current President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's ruler for 28 years, has been a fixture on opinion pages in the local press and has also garnered more than its fair share of attention from the international media. As the merits and demerits of the usual suspects - Mubarak's younger son Gamal and Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman - were openly discussed, a new, though short-lived, star appeared on the scene: Nobel Laureate and ex-head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei. In a November interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour who quizzed him on rumors that he may be a candidate for presidential elections, ElBaradei admitted that many voices have called on him to "be an agent for change which Egypt needs politically, economically, socially, but that he will only consider it if he has "built-in guarantees that the elections would be free and fair. Nearly a month later, ElBaradie made more critical comments about the state of democracy in Egypt, outlining the constitutional obstacles that impede any independent candidate from joining the presidential race and pointing out that the only guarantee for full election transparency is through judicial supervision and the presence of international observers from the United Nations. His comments triggered an unscrupulous smear campaign against him by the state-run press, and within days, in a three-part interview with Al-Shorouk newspaper, he crushed the dreams of all those who had rallied behind him, hoping that he could signal real change in 2011, when he announced that he had no intention of running. On the business front, the recession did sink its teeth into the Egyptian economy this year, but not at the disaster rates previously projected. According to analysts, 2009 demonstrated that Egypt can rely on its own domestic market to drive growth and "that its expanding economy and population appeal to investors even in tough financial conditions. But this didn't come about without a little help from our friends in the treasury, with a government stimulus of LE 15 billion playing an instrumental role in achieving a 4.7 percent growth rate, to mitigate the negative effects of declining tourism earnings, Suez Canal revenues and foreign investment. Caught in the drama of the three S's of 2009 - security, succession and stimulus packages - our beloved country has survived another year of hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats, conflicts and reconciliations. As always, the simple Egyptian man who's managed to live through it all, once again emerges as the tragic anti-hero of 2009 - moved to action by none other than a football game in search of a lost identity. Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of DAILY NEWS EGYPT.
