Sorry, Pal

The recent border crisis between Egypt and Gaza has led to a drastic change in the attitude the pro-government Egyptian press takes toward the Palestinians. Noha El-Hennawy, blogging for the Los Angeles Times Web site, describes the shift:

The new content replaces headlines that showed sympathy with the Palestinians, stressing President Hosni Mubarak's statements that Egypt would not let the Palestinians starve. However, 10 days later, a change of heart has become crystal-clear. Rosa-al-Yousef, a state-owned paper known as the most vocal mouthpiece of the regime, has spearheaded the anti-Palestinian campaign. "Egypt is generous and patient but its patience has limits," warned a front-page headline that appeared after skirmishes the Egyptian-Palestinian borders earlier this week.
The paper even questioned whether Gaza had a humanitarian crisis, hinting that Gazans were well-off. "It is not true that the siege imposed on Gaza caused a serious humanitarian crisis that eventually led to the Palestinian flood [into Egypt]," wrote Abdullah Kamal, Rosa-al-Yousef's editor-in-chief and a staunch proponent of Mubarak's regime. "Each [Gazan] comer spent an average of US$260 in three days. . . . The total spending during that period [where the Gazans broke through Egypt] reached US$220 million. These figures raise real questions about the financial situation in the Gaza Strip."

Arabs love Palestinians in the abstract--as a symbol of the putative evil of the hated Jews. But they're not so crazy about Palestinians as actual human beings.