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Attacks Further Split Arab Rulers, People
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Al-Akhbar used the term "the mummy" to describe Mubarak in another column.
"Does the mummy have a heart and veins where blood circulates? Otherwise how can we explain the insistence of this pharaoh to keep Rafah closed in front of a brotherly nation facing the ugliest massacres?" wrote Elie Shalhoub in a column Thursday.
Even in Iraq, beset by its own conflicts, the Palestinian issue echoed in sermons Friday.
"It is a shameful stance that Arab countries have," Nadhim Khalil declared in a sermon in Thuluyah, a conservative Sunni town north of Baghdad.
The disconnect between policy and sentiment has become a feature of Arab politics, especially in recent years, as U.S. influence has dominated a region long contested during the Cold War. But some analysts say the divide today has threatened the very legitimacy of governments that, in public at least, offered support for Palestinian rights as a staple of policy. Egypt once deemed itself at the forefront of that conflict.
"That's the real story," said Karim Makdisi, a professor of political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut.
"This gap, which has always been there, is greater than ever. I think we're in the middle of something new," he said. "This polarization -- where you have regimes perceived as getting closer to American and Israeli interests at the expense of very clear Arab and Muslim rallying points. They're acting oddly against their own interests. They're misreading the pulse of the people, the extent of the anger among most Arabs."
