WILL FRIDAY BE EGYPT'S "SAND-LOO"? Toppled by "Leaderless" Protesters?

Watch this timely Viral Video: Egypt’s “Sand-loo”

First there were massive government protests in Egypt and Tunisia, and then Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state with mass protests on Thursday, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions to demand a change in government. And now Egypt again!

The scenes broadcast across the Arab world were reminiscent of demonstrations in Egypt this week and the month of protests that brought down the government in Tunisia. But as they climaxed by midday, the marches appeared to be carefully organized and mostly peaceful, though there were reports of arrests by security forces. Predictably, the protests were most aggressive in the restive south. (see full NY Times article below)

Napoleon had his Waterloo. Will this be Mubarek’s Sand-loo? For decades, Egypt’s authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, played a clever game with his political opponents. He tolerated a tiny and toothless opposition of liberal intellectuals whose vain electoral campaigns created the facade of a democratic process. And he demonized the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as a group of violent extremists who posed a threat that he used to justify his police state. But this enduring and, many here say, all too comfortable relationship was upended this week by the emergence of an unpredictable third force, the leaderless tens of thousands of young Egyptians who turned out to demand an end to Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule. (See New York Times article below for entire story.)

BIG ANTI-GOVERNMENT DEMONSTRATION PLANNED FOR FRIDAY:

Nobel laureate and former International Atomic Energy Head Mohamed ElBaradei, has become a leading opponent of Egypt’s President Mubarak and is opportunistically attempting to galvanize the so-called ‘leaderless’ youth-led street protests.

On an ominous note and raising the protest stakes, the Muslim Brotherhood, for long the country’s largest organized opposition group, intends to leave the sidelines and enter the main playing field of the streets on Friday, saying they would join “with all the national Egyptian forces, the Egyptian people, so that this coming Friday will be the general day of rage for the Egyptian nation.”

Tim will tell if Mr. Mubarak’s police and military forces can keep a tight lid on the ‘leaderless’ protest. (Largely extracted from New York Times article below.)

Conducting Talk Show interviews on this topic are a panel of guests (pick one, some, all or none) including Middle East policy analyst, Avi Lipkin, an Israeli citizen, former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and a former translator inside the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

For years, Lipkin has lectured in hundreds of venues that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be overthrown by militant Muslims. He’s written multiple books on this topic.

Regarding the recent so-called ‘leaderless’ protest in Egypt, Avi Lipkin stated, “There is no doubt that if the Mubarek regime falls, the only group powerful enough and cohesive enough to rule Egypt will be The Muslim Brotherhood.

This would be a repeat of Jimmy Carter’s toppling of the Shaw of Iran and the ushering in of a fanatic government with The Muslim Brotherhood who has promised a war with Israel.”

Lipkin concluded, “They have said that when they come to power, they will maintain correct relations with every country in the world except Israel. They will lead Egypt in another war with Israel because their faith tells them that Israel must be destroyed.”

Also weighing in on this matter is former Shiloh, Israel Mayor David Rubin (See David’s statement below.)

And former terrorist Walid Shoebat, who discusses street protest throught the eyes of a terrorist. He knows up front and personally just what the behind-the-scenes leaders are doing to fan the flames of the so-called leaderless protest.

Al-Rassooli, an Islamic scholar, gives the fine points of Muslim teachings that dictate just what the street protestors must do according to Sharia law.

TALKING POINTS:

1. How might the overthrow of Egypt or Yemen impact the United States?

2. You have predicted for years that militant Muslims might overthrow Saudi Arabia. Tell us about that.

3. Sectarian tensions are rising to a boiling point in Egypt and elsewhere. Do you see any potential for a religious civil war in those countries?

4. Let’s talk about the religion of Islam. Is Islam truly a religion of peace?

5. How far does the political correctness wave extend? In other words, are we fooling ourselves when we iterate that “the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful”? Are they? Are Islamic terrorists and their supporters really an “extremist fringe” within the global religion?

6. How many verses in the Koran draw such a blatant distinction of enmity between Muslims and non-Muslims?

7. In the harsh reality of it, are we at war with Islam?

8. What other points of insight do you have for our audience?

ABOUT YOUR GUESTS:

AVI LIPKIN:

AVI LIPKIN is an author, speaker and cofounder of Israel Today Magazine, who has served 30 years in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Reserves, 16 years in the IDF Artillery Reserves and 14 years as an IDF spokesman.

Avi served two years as senior editor and translator in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office. Since leaving that office, Avi has had the opportunity to be a guest on many popular US talk shows including Sean Hannity and Fox & Friends.

Avi has also been a popular guest on international programs including Israel National TV Channel 1 in Hebrew in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks Islam, on Revelation TV in London, and on Vision Norge Norwegian Television.

Avi has been a keynote speaker in hundreds of churches and synagogues across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, The UK, Switzerland, France, Greece, Norway, Finland, Russia, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Israel. Mr. Lipkin speaks six languages and has received his B. A. from Hebrew University, 1973, majoring in Sovietology/Russian Studies and East European Studies. Between 1991-1994 Avi studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary for three years in the framework of the MA program.

Avi is well versed in the centuries of Islamic wars. Avi was born in the U.S. but immigrated (made Aliyah) to Israel in 1968. Avi has written several books under the pen name Victor Mordecai, including “Is Fanatic Islam a Global Threat?” which in 1997 predicted 9/11-type attacks by Islamic terrorists against the United States.

ABOUT YOUR GUEST, I.Q. AL-RASSOOLI:

I.Q. al-Rassooli was born in Iraq. His mother tongue is Arabic. He was sent by his parents to study engineering at a university in England. But, after graduating, he decided to stay because he discovered that the “programming” he had received at home about other peoples was one-sided and wrong.

Because of the intractable turmoil of the Middle East, al-Rassooli took it upon himself to study the subject matters as thoroughly as humanly possible, spending almost 23 years researching, analyzing, comparing and contrasting as many points of view as possible.

In that process, he had to learn everything he possibly could about Muhammad, the Quran, Hadiths, Arab and Islamic histories, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Zoroasterian religion and pagan Arabian religion.

For the next three years, he put his thoughts together in a thesis that, unfortunately, no publisher wanted to touch because it was so radical and revolutionary.

In response, al-Rassooli had a website created www.inthenameofallah.org, posting more than 780 chapters of his thesis, covering almost every facet of Muhammad’s “depraved cult belief system.”

Eventually, al-Rassooli also put up more than 280 video/audio chapters on YouTube that received more than 590,000 visitors and 2,976 subscribers in two years before the Muhammadans flagged them and YouTube breaking its own guidelines terminated all of them in an instant. With forethought, al-Rassooli had all of them backed up on his blog: www.the-koran.blogspot.com/

In the end, al-Rassooli has also started what he endeavors will be one of the largest movements called Ummat al Kuffar (Nation of Infidels) comprising 80 percent of humanity who are the would-be victims of the followers of Muhammad: That being all Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroasterians, Jews, Atheists, Animists, Agnostics, pagans and so forth.

He says, “My mission is simple: The complete exposure of the obscene facts and reality of what the media calls ‘Islam,’ based entirely on the very Arabic sources themselves.”

ABOUT WALID SHOEBAT…
Born in Bethlehem, Walid’s grandfather was the Muslim Mukhtar (chieftain) of Beit Sahour-Bethlehem (The Shepherd’s Fields) and a friend of Haj-Ameen Al-Husseni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and notorious friend of Adolf Hitler.

As a young man, he became a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and participated in acts of terror and violence against Israel, and was later imprisoned in the Russian Compound, Jerusalem’s central prison for incitement and violence against Israel.

Driven by a deep passion to heal his own soul, and to bring the truth about the Jews, Israel and the threat of fundamentalist Islam to the world, Walid shed his former life and his work as a software engineer and set out to tirelessly bring the cause against the evil of Islamic Fundamentalist to tens of millions of people throughout the world: churches, synagogues, civic groups, government leaders and media.

Walid is the author of several bestselling books including “Why I Left Jihad,” “Why We Want To Kill You” and “God’s War on Terror.”

Walid is an American citizen and lives in the USA with his wife and children, under this assumed name. Walid has spoken all over America and the world including Chile, Mexico, Canada, UK, and South Africa.

He has appeared on national television also all over the world including CNN, CNN International, FOX News, ITN, RTE, NBC, CBS, and ABC and ABC Australia. He has also been featured on BBC radio 4, 5 and the largest radio audience on the BBC World Service reaching 180 million people.

ABOUT YOUR GUEST, DAVID RUBIN:

David Rubin is the former mayor of Shiloh, Israel in the region of Samaria, known to much of the world as the West Bank. He is the founder and president of Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund dedicated to easing the trauma of children who have been victims of terrorist attacks, as well as rebuilding the Biblical heartland of Israel. The Fund was established after Rubin and his three-year-old son were wounded in a vicious terrorist attack while driving home from Jerusalem. He vowed to retaliate not with hatred or anger, but with compassion in order to affect positive change for Israel and its people.

STATEMENT BY DAVID RUBIN:

Turmoil In The Middle East: Ramifications for the Peace Process
By David Rubin, former mayor of Shiloh, Israel

After days of rioting, violence, and turmoil in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and Lebanon, the world has once again been reminded of the fragility and instability of the Islamic nations in the Middle East, where administrations can change abruptly, almost always through violent upheaval. At the same time, former President Bill Clinton, speaking at the Davos Economic Forum, declared that there is no better time for peace between Israel and its neighbors. Clinton spoke for an hour before an adoring audience of global leaders from business, government and academia, who interrupted his words several times with applause – never more loudly than when he said Israel should seize what he described as “the chance for comprehensive peace with the Arab world”. (AP: January 28, 2011)

Former Mayor David Rubin of Shiloh, Israel was dumbfounded after hearing Clinton’s words; pointedly asking “Would You Sign a Business Deal With a Company That’s About to Collapse?” He went on to explain that the very instability in the Islamic world is the most convincing reason not to sign a peace agreement with any of the despotic, so-called moderate Arab nations or with the equally unstable Palestinian Authority. Speaking from the front lines of the Middle East conflict between Israel and its neighbors, Rubin asserts that “we are simply putting our heads in the Middle Eastern sand if we insist that there will be “peace in our time”. He points out that “in other places, such wishful thinking would be folly. In the Middle East, it’s like dancing with death.”

David Rubin provides sharp analysis of the political scene in Israel and sheds light on the intense but fruitless efforts of successive American administrations to achieve results in the peace process. As a former politician and a terror victim, as one who understands firsthand the political landscape of the Middle East, David would be a dynamic guest for your show. He provides sharp analysis of the political scene in Israel and frequently cuts through the preconceived notions of the standard political commentators.

After being wounded in a terrorist attack along with his young son, David Rubin founded the Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund an organization that helps terror victim children. His latest book, The Islamic Tsunami: Israel and America in the Age of Obama, exposes the attempts of the Islamic ideologues to destroy Western civilization and illustrates the complexities in the Israel-United States relationship.

Rubin’s first book, God, Israel, and Shiloh: Returning to the Land, recounts the struggles and the triumphs of Israel’s complex history.

A featured speaker throughout the United States and in Israel, David Rubin has appeared on national and international radio and television programs.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Rubin currently resides in Israel with his wife and children on a hilltop overlooking the historic site of Ancient Shiloh.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES MAY BE HELPFUL WITH SHOW PREP:

THE NEW YORK TIMES/ January 27, 2011

Thousands in Yemen Protest Against the Government
By NADA BAKRI and J. DAVID GOODMAN

BEIRUT, Lebanon Yemen, one of the Middle East’s most impoverished countries and a haven for Al Qaeda militants, became the latest Arab state to witness mass protests on Thursday, as thousands of Yemenis took to the streets in the capital and other regions to demand a change in government.

The scenes broadcast across the Arab world were reminiscent of demonstrations in Egypt this week and the month of protests that brought down the government in Tunisia. But as they climaxed by midday, the marches appeared to be carefully organized and mostly peaceful, though there were reports of arrests by security forces. Predictably, the protests were most aggressive in the restive south.

In Sana, at least 10,000 protesters led by opposition members and youth activists gathered at Sana University and around 6,000 more elsewhere, participants, lawmakers and activists reached by telephone said. Many carried pink banners and wore pink headbands.

While the marches were peaceful, the potential for strife in the country is difficult to overstate. It is beset by a rebellion in the north and a struggle for secession in the south. In recent years, the regional Al Qaeda affiliate has turned parts of the country, a rugged, often lawless swath of southwestern Arabian Peninsula, into a refuge beyond the state’s reach. Added to the mix is a remarkably high proportion of armed citizens.

“I fear Yemen is going to be ripped apart,” said Mohammed Naji Allaw, coordinator of the National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedom, which was one of the organizers of the protests. “The situation in Yemen is a lot more dangerous than in any other Arab country.”

He said a phrase often heard these days is that Yemen faces “tatasawmal” the Somalization of a country that witnessed a civil war in the mid-1990s.

Part of Mr. Allaw’s worries sprung from the inability of the opposition to forge a unified message. Some are calling for secession, he said, while others are looking to oust the president through popular protests. Yet others, he said, simply wanted Mr. Saleh to undertake a series of reforms before elections in April.

Khaled Alanesi, a colleague of Mr. Allaw’s at the human rights group in Sana, said: “The opposition is afraid of what would happen if the regime falls. Afraid of the militant groups, Al Qaeda, the tribes and all the arms here.”

The government responded to the protests by sending a large number of security forces into the streets, said Nasser Arabyee, a Yemeni journalist in Sana reached by phone. “Very strict measures, antiriot forces,” he called them. But the government suggested it had not deployed large numbers of security forces.

“The Government of the Republic of Yemen strongly respects the democratic right for a peaceful assembly,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, in a statement. “We are pleased to announce that no major clashes or arrests occurred, and police presence was minimal.”

A pro-government rally, in another district of Sana, organized by Mr. Saleh’s party, attracted far fewer demonstrators, Mr. Arabyee said.

The demonstrations on Thursday followed several days of smaller protests by students and opposition groups calling for the removal of President Ali Abdallah Saleh, a strongman who has ruled this fractured country for more than 30 years and is a key ally of the United States in the fight against the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda.

In a televised speech on Sunday night, Mr. Saleh tried to defuse calls for his ouster, denying opposition claims that his son would inherit his power as has happened in Syria and, some fear, may occur in Egypt. He said he would raise army salaries, a move that appeared designed to ensure soldiers’ loyalty. Mr. Saleh has also cut income taxes in half and ordered price controls.

The protests were the latest in a wave of unrest touched off by monthlong demonstrations in Tunisia that led to the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the authoritarian leader who ruled for 23 years and fled two weeks ago. The new Tunisian government issued an international warrant for his arrest on corruption charges Wednesday.

The antigovernment gatherings in Yemen also followed three days of violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Egypt, with the country bracing for another round of demonstrations on Friday in defiance of a government ban. Egyptian protesters have called for an end to the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who, like Mr. Saleh, has been an ally of the United States.

Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, relatively stable countries with substantial middle classes and broad access to the Internet, Yemen is among the poorest countries in the Middle East.

“People do have fair grievances everywhere in Yemen, but unfortunately they are being used by politicians from both sides,” the deputy finance minister, Jalal Yaqoub, told Reuters on Thursday, adding that the government “should listen to the people and enact substantial reforms.”

Yemen’s fragile stability has been of increasing concern to the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a visit to Sana earlier this month, urged Mr. Saleh to open a dialogue with the opposition, saying it would help to stabilize the country. His current term expires in two years, but proposed constitutional changes could allow him to hold onto power for longer.

During her visit, Ms. Clinton was asked by a Yemeni lawmaker how the United States could lend support to Mr. Saleh’s authoritarian rule even as his country increasingly becomes a haven for militants.

“We support an inclusive government,” Mrs. Clinton said in response. “We see that Yemen is going through a transition.”

Nada Bakri reported from Beirut, and J. David Goodman from New York.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES/ January 26, 2011

Egypt’s Young Seize Role of Key Opposition to Mubarak
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MICHAEL SLACKMAN

For decades, Egypt’s authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, played a clever game with his political opponents.

He tolerated a tiny and toothless opposition of liberal intellectuals whose vain electoral campaigns created the facade of a democratic process. And he demonized the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as a group of violent extremists who posed a threat that he used to justify his police state.

But this enduring and, many here say, all too comfortable relationship was upended this week by the emergence of an unpredictable third force, the leaderless tens of thousands of young Egyptians who turned out to demand an end to Mr. Mubarak’s 30-year rule.

Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up.

“It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna, shortly before rushing home to Cairo to join the revolt.

Dr. ElBaradei, a Nobel prize winner, has been the public face of an effort to reinvigorate and unite Egypt’s fractious and ineffective opposition since he plunged into his home country’s politics nearly a year ago, and he said the youth movement had accomplished that on its own. “Young people are impatient,” he said. “Frankly, I didn’t think the people were ready.”

But their readiness tens of thousands have braved tear gas, rubber bullets and security police officers notorious for torture has threatened to upstage or displace the traditional opposition groups.

Many of the tiny, legally recognized political parties more than 20 in total, with scarcely a parlor full of grass-roots supporters among them are leaping to embrace the new movement for change but lack credibility with the young people in the street.

Even the Muslim Brotherhood may have grown too protective of its own institutions and position to capitalize on the new youth movement, say some analysts and former members. The Brotherhood remains the organization in Egypt with the largest base of support outside the government, but it can no longer claim to be the only entity that can turn masses of people out into the streets.

“The Brotherhood is no longer the most effective player in the political arena,” said Emad Shahin, an Egyptian scholar now at the University of Notre Dame. “If you look at the Tunisian uprising, it’s a youth uprising. It is the youth that knows how to use the media, Internet, Facebook, so there are other players now.”

Dr. ElBaradei, for his part, has struggled for nearly a year to unite the opposition under his umbrella group, the National Association for Change. But some have mocked him as a globe-trotting dilettante who spends much of his time abroad instead of on the barricades.

He has said in interviews that he never presented himself as a political savior, and that Egyptians would have to make their own revolution. Now, he said, the youth movement “will give them the self-confidence they needed, to know that the change will happen through you and not through one person you are the driving force.”

And Dr. ElBaradei argued that by upsetting the old relationship between Mr. Mubarak and the Brotherhood, the youth movement posed a new challenge to United States policy makers as well.

“For years,” he said, “the West has bought Mr. Mubarak’s demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood lock, stock and barrel, the idea that the only alternative here are these demons called the Muslim Brotherhood who are the equivalent of Al Qaeda.”

He added: “I am pretty sure that any freely and fairly elected government in Egypt will be a moderate one, but America is really pushing Egypt and pushing the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression.”

The roots of the uprising that filled Egypt’s streets this week arguably stretch back to before the Tunisian revolt, which many protesters cited as the catalyst. Almost three years ago, on April 6, 2008, the Egyptian government crushed a strike by a group of textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, and in response a group of young activists who connected through Facebook and other social networking Web sites formed the April 6th Youth Movement in solidarity with the strikers.

Their early efforts to call a general strike were a bust. But over time their leaderless online network and others that sprang up around it like the networks that helped propel the Tunisian revolution were uniquely difficult for the Egyptian security police to pinpoint or wipe out. It was an online rallying cry for a show of opposition to tyranny, corruption and torture that brought so many to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly vaulting the online youth movement to the forefront as the most effective independent political force in Egypt.

“It would be criminal for any political party to claim credit for the mini-Intifada we had yesterday,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and activist.

Mr. Mubarak’s government, though, is so far sticking to a familiar script. Against all evidence, his interior minister immediately laid blame for Wednesday’s unrest at the foot of the government’s age-old foe, the Muslim Brotherhood.

This time, though, the Brotherhood disclaimed responsibility, saying it was only one part of Dr. ElBaradei’s umbrella group. “People took part in the protests in a spontaneous way, and there is no way to tell who belonged to what,” said Gamal Nassar, a media adviser for the Brotherhood, noting the near-total absence of any group’s signs or slogans, including the Brotherhood’s.

“Everyone is suffering from social problems, unemployment, inflation, corruption and oppression,” he said. “So what everyone is calling for is real change.”

The Brotherhood operates a large network of schools and charities that make up for the many failings of government social services. Some analysts charge that the institutional inertia may make the Brotherhood slow to rock the Egyptian ship of state.

“The Brotherhood has been very silent,” said Amr Hamzawy, research director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “It is not a movement that can benefit from what has been happening and get people out in the street.”

Nor, Dr. ElBaradei argued, does the Muslim Brotherhood merit the fear its name evokes in the West. Its membership embraces large numbers of professors, lawyers and other professionals as well as followers who benefit from its charities. It has not committed or condoned acts of violence since the uprising against the British-backed Egyptian monarchy six decades ago, and it has endorsed his call for a pluralistic civil democracy.

“They are a religiously conservative group, no question about it, but they also represent about 20 percent of the Egyptian people,” he said. “And how can you exclude 20 percent of the Egyptian people?”

Dr. ElBaradei, with his international prestige, is a difficult critic for Mr. Mubarak’s government to jail, harass or besmirch, as it has many of his predecessors. And Dr. ElBaradei eases concerns about Islamists by putting a secular, liberal and familiar face on the opposition.

But he has been increasingly outspoken in his criticism of the West. He was stunned, he said, by the reaction of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Egyptian protests. In a statement after Tuesday’s clashes, she urged restraint but described the Egyptian government as “stable” and “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

” ‘Stability’ is a very pernicious word,” he said. “Stability at the expense of 30 years of martial law, rigged elections?” He added, “If they come later and say, as they did in Tunis, ‘We respect the will of the Tunisian people,’ it will be a little late in the day.”
Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES/ January 27, 2011

Opposition in Egypt Gears Up for Major Friday Protest
By KAREEM FAHIM and LIAM STACK

CAIRO Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel laureate who has become a leading opponent of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, returned to Cairo on Thursday in an attempt to galvanize youth-led street protests that extended into a third day across the country.

Smoke rose over the city of Suez on Thursday as sometimes violent protests continued there. In the capital, a relative calm settled over the streets in anticipation of a new wave of demonstrations anticipated for Friday.

Raising the stakes, the Muslim Brotherhood, long the country’s largest organized opposition group, intends to end days of official inaction to enter fully into protests on Friday. On its Web site, the group said it would join “with all the national Egyptian forces, the Egyptian people, so that this coming Friday will be the general day of rage for the Egyptian nation.”

Mr. ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who has sought to refashion himself as pro-democracy campaigner in his homeland, is viewed by some supporters as capable of uniting the country’s fractious opposition and offering an alternative to Mr. Mubarak’s authoritarian rule. Critics view him as an opportunist who has spent too little time in the country to take control of a movement which began without his leadership.

But his return adds a new element to the unrest in several big cities that has shaken assumptions that Mr. Mubarak’s security apparatus can keep a tight lid on popular protest.

Safwat el-Sherif, the secretary general of the ruling National Democratic Party, called for restraint from both security forces and protesters, and he raised the possibility of opening a dialogue with the young people who have powered the demonstrations. At the stock exchange, meanwhile, the benchmark Egyptian index fell to its lowest level in over two years, shedding more than 10 percentage points and forcing a brief suspension of trading, news reports said.

“It’s clear today that the inability to control the situation in the streets yesterday is panicking investors,” The Associated Press quoted Ahmed Hanafi, a broker with Guthour Trading, as saying. “The drop we saw yesterday is being repeated. At this rate, it’s going to continue to fall hard.”

Despite the ban issued Wednesday on public gatherings, organizers continued to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to prepare for Friday.

Since they erupted Tuesday, the protests have largely seemed spontaneous and leaderless, propelled by young demonstrators with no affiliation to Egypt’s small and largely toothless opposition groups.

Now the older opponents are rushing to catch up. “It was the young people who took the initiative and set the date and decided to go,” Mr. ElBaradei said Wednesday with some surprise during a telephone interview from his office in Vienna on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Dr. ElBaradei insisted that he would attend the Friday demonstrations and urged Mr. Mubarak to step down. “He has served the country for 30 years and it is about time for him to retire,” he told Reuters. “Tomorrow is going to be, I think, a major demonstration all over Egypt and I will be there with them.”

The streets of downtown Cairo were largely quiet on Thursday except for a small knot of protesters outside the Egyptian lawyer’s syndicate. Uniformed police stood guard nonetheless in Tahrir Square, an epicenter of the demonstrations.

Egypt has an extensive and widely feared security apparatus, and it deployed its might in an effort to crush the protests. But it was not clear whether the security forces were succeeding in intimidating protesters or rather inciting them to further defiance.

The government said about 800 people had been arrested throughout the country since Tuesday morning, but human rights groups said there had been more than 2,000 arrests.

Abroad, there were growing expressions of concern from Egypt’s allies. The United States ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, called on the government “to allow peaceful public demonstrations,” and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated that call in blunt remarks to reporters. The German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, speaking to reporters, said, “We are very worried about how the situation in Egypt is developing.”

But Egyptian officials, at least publicly, were mostly dismissive.

In a statement, Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party reiterated the government’s assertion that the protests were engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood. Abdel Moneim Said, a member of the N.D.P. and the chairman of Al Ahram, which publishes the state-owned newspaper of the same name, explained the government’s lack of concern.

“The state is strong,” he said. “There is a history of there being a moment of exhaustion, and there is a kind of resilience on the part of the government. It happened with the terrorist groups.”

Mona El-Naggar and Dawlat Magdy contributed from Cairo, and Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet from Alexandria, Egypt.

(c) 2011 The New York Times Company

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