Cairo, Egypt – On a sunny Friday in Cairo, buses waving both the Palestinian and the Egyptian flags arrive at El-Nasr road in the district of Nasr City.
The Friday prayer has ended and, with it, the only moment of silence that the Egyptian capital ever regularly witnesses.
Protest chants are about to fill the air, as the bus doors swing open and a crowd of mostly young men hit the pavement, holding aloft the flags and portraits of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Critics say el-Sisi’s administration has been organising staged protests like this one to rally support for his embattled government, by piggybacking on public sympathy for Palestinians as the death toll from Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip ticks higher.
The bus itself is emblazoned with the logo of el-Sisi’s The Nation’s Future party. Event organisers, believed to be undercover police officers, start to direct the protest participants, telling them where to go and what to chant.
“We are with you! Go Sisi!” the protesters chant. They march with signs in their hands that convey messages in both Arabic and English: “We support the Palestinian cause, and we support the president’s decisions.”
The demonstration winds its way towards the Unknown Soldier Memorial, a pyramidal monument in honour of the Egyptians and Arabs who lost their lives in the 1973 October War.
There, microphones and a stage have been set up for accredited media to document the scene, with the help of several drones that fly above the attendees. – Al Jazeera
