More than two months after Israel closed the borders into Gaza and blocked aid from entering the enclave, the UN World Food Programme has warned that the entire population of the Gaza Strip is at risk of famine.
Source: MADA MASR
Mada Masr is an independent Egyptian online newspaper, founded in June 2013, with content in Arabic and English.
Hours before he was killed in an Israeli airstrike, 23-year-old journalist Hossam Shabat filed an article with Drop Site News describing Israel’s scorched-earth campaign in his hometown of Beit Hanoun. His editor Sharif Abdel Kouddous shares his thoughts, and we share Shabat’s final piece.
Egypt is one of the few countries where leprosy persists. But with effective treatment methods and cases declining, some say Cairo wants to close the country’s last leprosy colony, Abu Zaabal, rehouse its patients and transform the land into medical facilities — an idea that concerns patients and their families, many of whom remain in the colony out of fear of social stigmas.
Palestinian writer Sarah Abu Ghazal reflects on the recurring dreams and visions she has had since the Israel-Hamas war began, as well as on the past and present traumas experienced by her family and the people of Gaza.
As Israel insists on launching a ground offensive on Gaza’s packed city of Rafah, many of the 1.4 million mostly temporary residents are consumed by plans for what their next move will be. If there is a next move.
Omar Sharara, a journalist for the Cairo-based media Mada Masr reports on his exchanges with a Aden, a Palestinian photojournalist in Gaza, since the war began. Amid bombings and communications blackouts, Aden relays his family’s efforts to seek shelter.
Egypt’s presidential vote ended with a certain outcome. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi secured another term that will keep him in power until 2030. It was a landslide victory for el-Sisi who has been in power since 2014. He received 89.6% of what officials said was the highest turnout in Egypt’s election history amid a state-sponsored campaign of mobilization for voters.
Egypt is holding a presidential election during which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is certain to win another term. To protest a lack of genuine democracy, some opponents have chosen to boycott the whole process, others opted to invalidate their votes. It’s a loaded calculation.
In Egypt and elsewhere in the region and the world, families and movements are mobilizing against companies that support Israel’s war on Gaza. The power of the people lies in their control as consumers — and the list of companies and brands to boycott grows longer.
The fate of the West Bank is inevitably linked to the conflict in Gaza; and indeed Israeli crackdowns and settler expansion and violence in the West Bank is a sign of an explicit strategy.
Despite opposition, authorities are proceeding with the eviction of residents of traditional houseboats docked along the Nile in Egypt’s capital, as the government aims to “renovate” the area – and increase its economic value.
Just two days after they’d signed an Arab League statement that did not condemn Russia and instead called for diplomacy, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined 138 other nations in a UN resolution demanding Russia halt its invasion of Ukraine.
In Egypt, private schools are driven solely by profit. As the economic effects of COVID-19 forces families to choose cheaper schools, many parents are forced to confront the country’s endemic education problems. And they’re discovering that expensive private schools are better in outward appearance only.
Several notable political prisoners in Egypt have renounced their citizenship to gain freedom. The choice is a difficult one to make personally, and the practice is highly questionable politically.
While executions were once rare, Egypt has become a global leaders in judicial killings amidst growing secrecy around the legal system.
Essam El-Haddad, a senior adviser to President Morsi, was jailed more than eight years ago. His son Abdullah continues to fight for his father’s liberation, which he says is a necessary path toward national union in post-Arab Spring Egypt.
Ousted Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was the face of the “stolen revolution”. The fact that he accepted, out of the blue, to return at the same position, albeit on different footing, opens the door to the final legitimization of the coup.
Letters from inmates provide a crucial link with the outside world, and yet the process of sending and receiving them in Egyptian prisons is both arduous and arbitrary as an extra means of control.
ISMAILIA – Every year during the month of July, crowds gather in the mango farms of Ismailia, in northeastern Egypt, to pick the delectable summer fruit during its relatively short harvest season. But this year, as a result of erratic weather patterns throughout March and April, the usual bountiful mango harvest was severely affected with […]
CAIRO — I’ve been thinking lately about my relationship with anonymity, and the way my understanding of it — which used to be somewhat one-sided — has been evolving, both in personal writing and in political work. In a polarized environment, we become trapped in a reactive position, especially as some of the approaches adopted […]
A new high-end food retailer, Gourmet, is helping reshape Egypt’s supermarket industry.
In the latest Palestinian uprising, the greatest accomplishment has been to demonstrate the actuality of liberation.
Women in Egypt have definitively broken the silence around sexual violence — but what comes next?
Only about 150,000 of the country’s 100 million people have been vaccinated so far against COVID-19, and in some crowded health centers, people wait hours only to be turned away.
This dearth of urban planning in the Egyptian capital dates back half a century. But it reached a new peak starting in 2019, when one of its last livable districts saw its old ways demolished.
With Joe Biden, Cairo’s relations with Washington are undergoing an uncomfortable reboot.
“I’m not against hijab in principle; I myself wear it,’ says one mother. ‘But I refuse to have my daughter wear it against her will.”
The editor of Mada Masr writes about what how to remember the revolution in Egypt.
Uber launched with an excited bang in Egypt in 2014, promising work and new income for a country struggling with unemployment. But the castle of sand has disintegrated, leaving a trail of debt and frustration.
Public denouncements have pressured some Egyptian institutions to establish anti-harassment policies. But without ‘collective responsibility,’ policies alone can only go so far.
With a humanitarian crisis looming along the Sudan border, Ethiopian refugees pine for news of those they were forced to leave behind.
Gasser Abdel Razek and his colleagues at a leading Egyptian NGO have been arrested as part of government crackdown. What it looks like to those who’ve been there before.
Also known as al-Khalil — the friend — the historic, contested city is steeped in enmity and overshadowed by Israel’s commanding military presence.
For rural communities in particular, serious water shortages were a big problem even before the COVID-19 outbreak made handwashing all the more imperative.
Movie houses, music venues and art galleries are showing signs of life after a long lockdown. They’re also having to be creative with how they reopen, as certain health restrictions still apply.
Families, neighborhoods and even the remains of loved ones are bulldozed over in order to build new highways and other works without the input of the people.
The pandemic is putting the squeeze on hospitals and clinics, and making things particularly difficult — and dangerous — for pregnant women.
An outright ban on wildlife trade may exacerbate the situation. Could carefully controlling these animal markets be the best answer?
From schedule changes and face shields to full operational shutdowns, the pandemic has directly impacted the country’s industrial sector.
Life was difficult enough for refugees even before the coronavirus outbreak. But with the lockdown depriving them of even meager earnings, the situation has beyond dire.