Editorial in Egypt's leading paper slams Israel

On 30th anniversary of peace treaty, Al Ahram says Jerusalem should stop "scheming" against Cairo.

By BRENDA GAZZAR
begin sadat carter 248 (photo credit: AP)
begin sadat carter 248
(photo credit: AP)
A leading Egyptian newspaper criticized Israel Thursday for "sabotaging" Egyptian peace efforts and devising "vile plots" against the country on the 30th year anniversary of the signing of the Camp David Accords. "It is strange that Israel anticipates peace dividends and at the same time exerts great efforts to sabotage Egyptian efforts to build bridges of peace between Israel and the rest of the Arab world," declared a Thursday editorial in al-Ahram. The editorial was titled: "Egypt's message to Israel: Nothing calls for celebration." It appears that the Israeli elite has been blinded by "tremendous extremism in the Israeli street" and can no longer see "the Israeli hand that killed the Palestinians nor any hope or bet on peace," the article stated. "It is strange that Israelis choose only extremist voices such as (Prime Minister-designate Binyamin) Netanyahu and (Israel Beiteinu chair Avigdor) Lieberman, go back on a prisoner exchange agreement with the Palestinians and wage a bloody and barbaric war on Gaza for which the United Nations had no choice but to condemn it for committing war crimes," it continued. The article went on to deliver "a sincere message" to the Israeli people: "If you are willing and sincere in pursuing peace, you need to force the leadership of Israel to stop the vile plots against Egypt." But another al-Ahram opinion piece published on Monday extolled the virtues of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. For those who argue that the treaty had achieved nothing, "it is as if they didn't know that the Sinai Peninsula extends 61,000 square kilometers or is three times the Israeli state or 90 percent of the amount of land occupied in the June, 1967 war," wrote Abdel Monem Said Aly, the director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. No less important, he said, is that the peace treaty laid the foundations for subsequent negotiations involving Arab countries whose land is occupied by Israel and established a framework to solve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the Oslo Accords. And while not all the prosperity Egyptians have dreamed about has been achieved, "they are certainly better off than they would have been had the situation of war continued unchanged." In fact, the economic and social progress made during the last three decades well exceeded previous decades, he wrote.