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The Football game recorded in Algeria and Egypt a deadly goal
November 24, 2009
 The sporting rivalry between the football team of Algeria and his Egyptian counterpart has shown the fragility of Arab relations where it was found through the implications of what has been happening that the Arabs have all the preparations for a confrontation with each other without any consideration for the National link, common history and interests of the interface which is in fact a fortress built on the sand and dropped as soon as the waves touched it.
It was natural that the competition will be intense between national teams of Algeria and Egypt in particular that in light of the results will determine who will arrive to participate in the World Championship in 2010. But it was not normal that politicians interfere and consider that the victory of any team is to defeat the other team, and that it’s a victory for the country against a brother country, and the competition becomes part of the state's strategy and its national security and national dignity, or to interfere with journalists and write fiery articles evoking the glories of ancient Egyptian civilization, and the achievements of the great Algerian warrior Abd al-Qadir the Algerian and the revolution of the one million martyrs. As it is not normal that the streets in the two countries are turned into places for insults, cognizance and accusations, to call the ambassadors of the two countries and protest notes. If the two countries were on the borders of each other there would be a mobilization of the armies and the declaration of a general alert.
If we looked for the immediate causes of the Egyptian - Algerian dispute we wouldn’t find any, but it seems that what happened is only a picture of the reality of the Arab fact and it has become easy for any Arab country to enter into a conflict with another Arab state for lack of a sense of nationalism that prevailed in the twentieth century and the absence of the Arab interest in one central case that gathered all Arabs around it, such as the Palestinian issue. Each State has its own interests, and its own network's relationships, and affiliation stems from the concept of an independent State and not involved in any other Arab country. If there’s still some mechanisms gathering the Arabs such as the League of Arab States and the ensuing councils and organizations, they are no more than formal mechanisms which are no longer reflect the reality of Arab identity and that every Arab country is waiting the other State to declare the end of these mechanisms.
We hoped seeing this political, media and Arab public crowd when the Egyptian minister of culture Farouk Hosni has encountered various types of pressure by Israel and some Western countries when he ran for the post of Director-General of UNESCO, where the competition between him and the other candidates was out of all the assets of international treatment .. As we hoped to see this crowd when Algeria called on the French government to apologize for the period of colonization without receiving any attention from the officials in Paris ..
Didn’t we see during the same period a match between Ireland and France when the famous French player Thierry Henry pushed the ball with his hand and then delivered to his colleague to score and to be qualified for the world championship without leading to a political exploitation of what happened, but the issue remains in the realm of sports federations involved in this regard?
Wasn’t better if the breakthroughs that occurred between the team of Algeria and Egypt stayed within the framework for sports without becoming the issue of state and nation and the fate of the people? Or that the Arabs are Arabs, they are strong in front of each other and weak in front of strangers. And even if they practiced the game of football, they do not hesitate to score at the net of each other a fatal goal!!
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