Deadly riot points to a breakdown in order in Egypt

The situation on Israel’s southern border continues to deteriorate as a riot which broke out following a soccer game in the Egyptian city of Port Said left 73 people dead and over 1,000 injured on Wednesday in yet another sign of the country’s destabilization. “This is unfortunate and deeply saddening. It is the biggest disaster in Egypt’s football history,” Deputy Health Minister Hesham Sheiha told state television. According to medical reports, several of the dead and injured suffered stab wounds, while many more had simply been bludgeoned with rocks, bottles, blunt instruments and fists. Another soccer match in Cairo was interrupted by a fire during the first half, leading to the match being cancelled.

On Israel’s northern border, The UN’s Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which issued indictments for four members of the Shi’ite terror militia Hezbollah last June in the case of the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri, finally announced on Wednesday that it would try the fugitives in absentia. Hezbollah has threatened to initiate hostilities against the Lebanese government if they attempt to arrest the four men in compliance with the UNSTL’s mandate, and government security forces have indeed made little apparent effort to seriously search for them, much less take them into custody. Nevertheless, the Netherlands-based UNSTL declared that "all reasonable steps have been taken to secure the appearance of the accused and to notify them of the charges" and the trial could proceed.

To Israel’s Northeast, in Syria, violence continued to rage between forces loyal to the regime of president Bashar Assad and protesters, claiming nearly 60 new victims on Wednesday as the Arab League demanded action by the UN Security Council to end Assad’s “killing machine” while Russia declared its intention to veto any “unacceptable” proposal.

Heavy fighting was reported in and around the capital of Damascus, a development many analysts have identified as a possible tipping point in a revolt which has lasted 11 months and claimed close to 8,000 lives, according to various estimates. Elsewhere, the UN announced last week it had stopped trying to count the dead because it is too difficult to get information.

Despite the high death toll, the rebel Free Syrian Army’s Turkey-based commander Colonel Riyadh Al Asaad told AFP that half of the country was now effectively a no-go zone for the security forces.

 “It is the beginning of an all-out armed conflict,” said Joshua Landis, head of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “We are heading toward real chaos. The Syrian public in general is beginning to [realize] that there isn’t a magic ending to this, there isn’t a regime collapse.”