Camp David Accords? Pshaw. The Americans will stand anything. "Egypt Demands Israel To Vacate Port City," by David Bedein in The Bulletin, with thanks to all who sent this in:
It will be remembered that the 1967 Six-Day War broke out after Egypt closed the straits of Tiran and strangled the trade from Israel's southern port city of Eliat.Yet few are aware that Egypt has staked a claim to the city of Eilat, ever since it lost Eilat to the nascent state of Israel in the wake of the Egyptian army's defeat in the 1948 war, followed by the expulsion of the Egyptians from this southern port city on the Red Sea.
Now, in the wake of recent reports about plans to dig a canal linking the Red Sea on the Israeli side and the Dead Sea on its Jordanian side, a fiery argument broke out in Egypts parliament, with the members of parliament (MPs) speaking out against the "Israeli plot to choke the Suez Canal to death."
In the course of the debate, which has been going on in parliament for the last two days, Abed el-Aziz Sayef a-Nasser, an aide to the Egyptian foreign minister, was called as an expert witness. A-Nasser is the director of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry's legal department.
"Eilat, or by its former name Umm Rashrash, belongs to the Palestinians," he said, representing the opinion of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.His predecessor, Dr. Nabil el-Arabi, was the head of the Foreign Ministry's legal department and headed the delegation for negotiations at Taba. He also emphatically declared: "Eilat belongs to the Palestinians."
A-Nasser's response was meant to calm tempers in the rowdy debate in the Egyptian parliament, after dozens of opposition representatives demanded holding negotiations to have Eilat returned to Egyptian sovereignty. Opposition MPs recruited several legal experts, international law lecturers and experts on geography and topography who showed documents and opinions that Eilat is territory that belongs to Egypt and was captured in 1949 by Israel. They contend that the Egyptian negotiating team to Taba conceded Eilat to Israel 20 years ago "in the framework of the wish to build confidence and to display Egyptian good will in the spirit of the peace agreement."
This was not the end of the matter. An Egyptian international law expert presented an intermediate position in parliament: "Eilat belongs formally to Egypt and administratively to the Palestinians."
In the debate in parliament two days ago, an opposition MP, Mohammed el-Aadali, whipped out a document from 1906 which states, in the name of the Ottoman sultan: Umm Rashrash belongs to Egypt. In this spot - said the Egyptian experts on topography and geography - Egyptian pilgrims would stop and rest on their way to the holy cities in Saudi Arabia.Another document brings testimony relating to 350 Egyptian police who were in Umm Rashrash just before it was captured in March 1949 and who were killed in battles with IDF soldiers.
Significantly, in the debate among the Egyptian MPs, the experts and the Foreign Ministry officials, no mention is made of possible legitimate Israeli sovereignty of Eilat. The debate in Cairo is between two camps: the Egyptian Foreign Ministry which claims that Eilat belongs to the Palestinians, and the opposition MPs who claim that Eilat belongs to Egypt.
The opposition Egyptian MPs threatened on Thursday to relay their demand for an Israeli withdrawal from Eilat to the Arab League to handle. Despite Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, the Arab League's 1948 declaration of war to liquidate the state of Israel remains in force. While Egypt was the kingpin of the Arab League from 1948 until 1977, the current dominant power in the Arab League is Saudi Arabia, which remains in a consistent state of war with the Jewish State until the present day. To that end, Saudi Arabia finances all Islamic terror groups that fight Israel, and continues to forbid any Jew from stepping on the soil of the Saudi kingdom.
Irrelevant but could someone let Comical Ali know
here is a copyright infringement by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , are they both talking shi`ite ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zbmENT4D0k&mode=related&search=
The Egyptians who raise the matter of Eilat are treading on thin ice. For the Sinai, which Egypt has convinced the world is historically part of its domain, was always a corpus separatum, and regarded as such, and discussed openly as such by travellers, and diplomats, right up until World War I. And if many do not realize this,it is only because they have accepted unquestioningly the notion that the Sinai is part of Egypt.
When Francis Frith published his famous photographs they were of "Egypt, Sinai,and Palestine." When the Anglican divine Arthur Stanley wrote his book of Biblical observatons it was titled "Sinai and Palestine." No one at the Paris Peace Conference thought of the Sinai as belonging to Egypt, and it was not until the 1920s that the entire Sinai was handed over to Egypt when, in fact, a large part was connected to Jewish history (Sinai? Mount Sinai?), and to Christian history (St. Catherine's monastery, with so much of the world's intact Byzantine icons, and so much Christian history), but never to the Muslims. But Jewish history and Christian history did not matter, and Egypt was handed over the Sinai.
How many of you have ever seen the map, reproduced in the Diaries of Colonel Meinertzhagen, that show how much of the Sinai became Egyptian only in the 1920s, and to which Egypt had no historic or legal title except that provided by Great Britain, perfectly willing to diminish unilaterally the territory intended for the Mandate for Palestine by lopping off all of historic Palestine east of the river Jordan, but also perfectly willing to curry favor with Egypt, at the very moment when the British who had come under Lord Cromer to improve the civil service were leavning, by handing over the Sinai to an Egypt that had never before been thought entitled to it.
This was not an argument that was made by the Israelis at Camp David. Beaten about by Carter (who was the same Carter then as he his now, though at the time all kinds of Jewish leaders were falling all over themselves praising the antisemitic Carter as a veritable prince of peace, because they failed to know much about what that treaty was about, failed to understand what treaties mean to Muslims, failed to see how poorly the Israelis had fared, especially since the Israelis themselves, with a few intelligent exceptions, did not and still do not understand what is happening, what is the nature of the menace they face, and what are their legitimate rights, and how they should be convincingly presented).
By all means, let us re-open the question of the entire Sinai, and to whom it belongs, or should belong. And perhaps those Egyptian members of Parliament will regret their demand for Eilat -- a demand, however, that because it has been made against Israel, a country that scrupulously observed every commitment made under the disastrous Camp David Accords, while Egypt failed to observe a single one of its solemn commitments to end all hostile propaganda and to encourage instead a new attitude of friendliness -- should tell those Israelis, and supporters of Israel, who still think that "treaties" with the Arabs mean something, that they do not, and cannot, as long as the model of Al-Hudaibiyyah stands, and it will stand as long as there is Islam, and as long as Muhammad remains the Perfect Man, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.
This is a typical Egyptian politic of waste of time by raising controversies to stir the bored Egyptian steeple.
No worries, even the top government official (Abul Gheet - the Foreign Affairs Minister) said that it was wrong even to raise the point in the Egyptian Parliament or anywhere else, that it can cause unwanted problems for Egypt, that the land (Um Al RashRash - or Eilat) belongs to Israel according to the borders agreements of 1906 and 1922.
Egyptians love controversies, especially when something is against Israel, they can't wait to throw Israel in the sea, if they can, just like the rest of the Arabs. But at least we have there a so-called "moderate," "secular" government.
It seems these jihadists need reminding, So I'll do it. Check your history books, boys. You lost the war in '48. Your glorious army got its ass kicked in '67 and then you got whipped again in '73. Doesn't Arabic have a saying similar to, "To the victor belongs the spoils"? It should, because you seem to be holding on to conquered territory (Egypt comes to mind) based on that concept.
Get over it! Or do you want the IDF knocking on the gates of Cairo?
I sincerely hope the Egyptians do something stupid enough to start another war, and lose the entire Sinai again. This time, Israel should annex it, seal off the Gaza strip, expel all Muslims out of the area and re-settle it with Jews, as well as invite in Coptics from Egypt, Assyrians from Iraq and Maronites from Lebanon. Hand over Aqaba to them, and charge their own tariffs for the use of the Suez Canal, of which the entire eastern side would be Israeli territory. In parallel, build another canal across the Suez, and allow free transportation across that, so that Egypt's income from the Suez is eviscerated, and any benefits that accrue as a result of this diverted commerce goes to Israel alone.
Once this happens, the Mubarak regime would collapse, and the Ikhwan would come to power in Cairo. Once that happens, it would be easier to eliminate US aid there, since there would no longer be the illusion of a 'moderate ally' that's worth supporting. Israel should then wipe out Egypt's armed forces, and make it incapable of doing any damage to anybody - be it Israel, or Sudan. That would enable a civil war to take place in Egypt, with no party having military support. If Ikhwan looks like prevailing militarily, they should then be bombed to prevent them from capturing power.
Once this is done, and the largest Arab country is in chaos, it should be much easier to disintegrate all the remaining regimes in the area - Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, et al.