Protesters descended on the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Friday, calling for a complete halt in Egyptian cooperation with Israel.
One protester said the demonstration was a response to President Shimon Peres's call for Egyptian youth to normalize relations with Israel, AFP reported.
RELATED:Report: Egypt seeks to double gas price to IsraelPoll: Most Egyptians favor annulling peace with IsraelPositioned on a bridge across from the embassy, demonstrators chanted, "The people demand the cancellation of normalization," according to the report.
Another call of the protesters was to end Egypt's supply of natural gas to Israel. They celebrated the recent
bombing of a Sinai gas pipeline that delivers gas to both Israel and Jordan.
"If the government won't cut it off," one protester said of the gas supply, "the people will," AFP reported.
At another protest in Alexandria, one man told
Daily News Egypt,
"We don't [want] war with Israel, we only want to support the Palestinians and
demand the Egyptian government stop all forms of cooperation with
Israel."
Last month, Egyptian prosecutors extended the remand of former Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak was partially motivated by questions surrounding
the natural gas deal between Cairo and Israel,
The New York Times reported.
The announcement followed news that Egypt’s former oil minister was
arrested over the natural gas deal, which is being alleged in Egyptian
media as having provided below-market prices to the Jewish state.
The Egyptian prosecutor’s spokesman said Mubarak was being questioned
about the low prices involved in the deal that amounted to “hurting the
country’s interests,” the
Times reported.
According to the spokesman, Egypt lost more than $714 million in revenue in the deal.
Reuters contributed to this report.