The Israeli embassy in Cairo is tucked away on the top two levels of a twenty-one-floor residential tower ten minutes from Tahrir. It is flanked by graying buildings and a usually traffic-clogged bridge. Nearby are Cairo University and the National Zoo. In the past, its busy location served it well; it was inconspicuous, and under Mubarak, the security around the building was so tight that even reaching the barricades surrounding it felt like a feat. In one of the more revealing signs of change in the New Egypt, however, it has now become the focus of the public’s attention and the site of unobstructed demonstrations.
On August 18, when Israeli forces opened fire in the direction of Egypt’s border, killing five conscripts, hundreds of angered Egyptians spontaneously marched to the embassy in protest. The Israeli shooting had been triggered by an attack on two buses heading from Bersheeba to Eilat; Israeli authorities alleged that the fleeing assailants were Palestinians who had taken advantage of the security vacuum that has emerged in Egypt since the revolution to infiltrate Israeli territory from Gaza via the Sinai. The protesters were outraged; both at the “accidental” killing of the soldiers, and at the implication that it was Egypt’s fault. The army was swift to deploy additional force to protect the already high-security embassy when the news broke, and alongside the usual concrete barricades and corrugated metal shields, there were now tanks, riot police, and rows of armed soldiers. “Give us your guns and send us to Sinai,” the protesters shouted at them. “The blood of our soldiers will not be in vain. Egyptian blood is not cheap.” The soldiers simply stood by.
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