Egypt's Ruz-Al-Youseff newspaper this week expressed bewilderment at Israel's use of F-16 fighters against PLO targets. "How could a weapon as advanced as F-16 fighters be used against a people with nothing but old rifles and stones to defend themselves with? This is the question President Mubarak has put to the world in recent press statements." Arutz-7's Ron Meir suggests that Egyptian journalists must have been on an early summer vacation when the weapons-packed PA-bound ship was confiscated and exposed by Israeli security officials earlier in the month. "The use of hi-powered telescopic rifles, car bombs laced with mortar shells and the like seem to have evaded the journalist who referred to the Palestinians as 'a people with nothing but old rifles and stones to defend themselves,'" Meir observed.



Egypt's Al Ahram Al Messa'i this week published more threats to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "As he continues to pound the drums of war in the Middle East, Sharon is sure to pay a dear price," said the paper. "For, oppression by overwhelming military force [faces] a greater resistance by a Palestinian people determined to regain their land and their rights."