As we watch history unroll, and with a quiet State Department today (I do not mean to imply nothing is going on. Probably too much is going on behind the scenes for them to be making public statements until after the White House press briefing), I thought I would re-post part of what I put up back in September before the rolling Quartet meetings on and in the Middle East (Where Hillary Clinton is going). According to various news sources, Hosni Mubarack left Cairo and and is thought to have fled to Sharm El-Sheikh at some point today.
This map shows where Sharm El-Sheikh is located on the Red Sea at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula.
In the original Sharm El-Sheikh post I had written this:
Located at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula between Mount Sinai and the Red Sea, Sharm el Sheikh is known as the City of Peace due to the many peace conferences it has hosted and making it a perfect spot for these talks to resume. The Sinai itself has been contested territory through the latter half of the 20th century having gone from Egyptian to Israeli hands and back a few times. As it is solidly Egyptian now, Sinai provides Egypt entrée to the list of countries that occupy more than one continent spanning the northeast corner of Africa into Asia.
Today is a new independence day, a new national day for the people of Egypt, and the whole world watches as their peaceful demonstrations have given way to rule by the people. Those of us who follow the work of our magnificent Secretary of State know how hard she has been working behind the scenes to midwife the birth of this new democracy.
When the going gets tough, Hillary Clinton works quietly and diligently without any fanfare, but I want to say here that I know how hard the work was, what a toll it took on her, and how proud I am to have her speaking for all of us on this historic day. Thank you, Madame Secretary, for a job well done!
