The Thugs and the Diva

We don't know the truth and probably will never know whether Ahmed El-Gizawi was smuggling drugs into Saudi Arabia or merely being punished for daring to criticize the Kingdom and its king on television a couple of weeks ago. No matter what the Egyptian authorities say some would argue they are trying to diffuse the situation by sacrificing El-Gizawi to get the $4 billion promised aid from the Kingdom. Whatever the Saudis would claim was found with El-Gizawi even if corroborated with a signed confession, many Egyptians would dismiss it as obtained under duress and another example of how the Saudis mistreat Egyptians. The unfortunate reality is that El-Gizawi will not get a fair trial in Saudi Arabia as his case has become about the Kingdom's dignity who is acting less like a country and more like a difficult diva after the verbal attacks by some cyber thugs and later threatening to storm the embassy like they did to the Israeli embassy before. 

Juan Cole's analysis of the current tension between Egypt and Saudi Arabia raises a couple of good points. Excerpt below from his post:

So far that potential conflict has not riven the Arab League, because there have not been clear lines dividing the two. Saudi Arabia was opposed to the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. But it supported the revolution against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, and against the Baath Party in Syria. It played a role in easing Ali Abdullah Saleh out of office in Yemen. So the assumption that Saudi Arabia is always reactionary and is solidly a status-quo power is given the lie by any thorough consideration of their actual role in the Arab Spring. Of course, they have tried to bribe their own demonstrators to go home, and have largely succeeded, in Saudi Arabia itself.

Image: Female camel by Jem Babbington