Egypt seeks to reassure Israel on peace treaty commitment

ANALYSIS:JORDAN RESPONDED to a mob attack on Friday night on the Israeli embassy in Cairo by boosting security around the embassy in Amman, while many Egyptians and Arabs observed with satisfaction that since the government refused to expel the ambassador, the people did the job.

Satisfaction over the departure of the ambassador was not, universal, however. Secular revolutionaries who organised the peaceful demonstration in Tahrir Square earlier in the day, the Muslim Brotherhood and ultra-orthodox Salafis castigated the action at the embassy.

They complained that the Egyptian revolution and Egypt’s reputation had been harmed by the violence which left three dead and 1,049 wounded.

Egyptian security expert Gen Abdel Moneim Kato called for the arrest of all the injured for involvement in thuggery and spreading chaos on behalf of “foreign powers”, notably Iran.

Pleading the need to focus on security, Field Marshal Muhammad Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s military ruler and former defence minister, and armed forces chief-of-staff Sami Enan, asked judges presiding over the trial of ousted president Hosni Mubarak to postpone their testimony – scheduled for yesterday – for two weeks. The request was granted.

There has been a spike in hostility toward Israel over the failure of the caretaker regime to take a tough line after Israeli troops killed five Egyptian border policemen last month following a Palestinian attack on Israelis at the southern port of Eilat. The stand taken by Cairo was contrasted unfavourably, from the point of view of angry Egyptians, with the expulsion last week by Ankara of the Israeli ambassador and senior staff after Israel’s refusal to apologise for the killing by its commandos of nine Turkish activists on a vessel seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Jordan and Egypt are the only two Arab countries with Israeli embassies, as they are the only Arab states that have peace treaties with Israel. These treaties are not popular and relations are cold.

Resentment against Israel had been simmering in Egypt since the fall of Mubarak in February after the interim government under Essam Sharaf failed to honour promises to ease travel for Palestinians trapped in Gaza by Israel’s siege and end Israel’s blockade, which deprives Gazans of goods and materials essential for a decent standard of living.

During an emergency meeting, the supreme council of the armed forces – which assumed presidential powers after Mubarak resigned – rejected Sharaf’s resignation and discussed security measures to calm the situation. Information minister Osama Heikal announced that the 1981 emergency law which had been relaxed after the uprising would be strictly applied and participants in the attack would be tried in state security courts.

He said Egypt would abide by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel and commitments to protect foreign envoys in Egypt. His remarks prompted conspiracy minded Egyptians and Arabs to claim the failure of the Egyptian security forces to halt the protest at the embassy before it became violent provided justification for maintaining the emergency law and referring those involved to security, not civilian, courts.

Two main demands of the democracy movement are an end to the emergency law and to trials of protesters in military courts.

So far, 130 have been detained following the riot. Human Rights Watch has called for a halt to summary military trials of civilians, 12,000 of whom have been sentenced since the uprising.