Israeli digs infuriate Egyptian city

Eyewitnesses say an Israeli team, heavily guarded by scores of Egyptian policemen, brought bulldozers and machines to search for the corpses of the 

soldiers, the thing that made many of the residents of the coastal city, which lies in close proximity to the Suez Canal, protest in anger and demand an official clarification on the reason for the presence of the Israelis in this area.
   “The Israelis don’t have the right to dig in our land,” said Salah el-Sayegh, an independent legislator from Ismailia.

   “This is a blatant violation of our sovereignty,” he told the Egyptian Mail in an interview over the phone.
   Relations between the governments in both Egypt and Israel might be normal. Israeli officials come to this populous Arab country from time to time. But on Egypt’s streets, an Israeli is always a “persona non grata”, according to many Egyptians.
   Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state almost 30 years ago. But repeated Israeli attacks against the Palestinians ��" viewed here to be fellow Arabs ��" fill Egyptians with fury against Israel, some Egyptians say.
   Here in Ismailia, where memories of battles between the Egyptians and the Israelis are still alive in the minds of many of the city’s elders, all the talk is about the Israeli digs.
   The digs took place at a secondary school for boys and girls. The area where the school is located is called Abu Atwa, the centre of a famous battle between Egyptian and Israeli tanks, which saw former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon retreating and losing some of his men, some historians say.
   El-Sayegh and his colleagues in the Egyptian Parliament will present requests for clarification from the Government on the reasons why it allowed the Israelis to make the excavations.
   They demand a similar treatment from Israel as far as some of Egypt’s soldiers  ��" reported to be captivated by Israel in 1967 and killed alive ��" are concerned.
   “Why shouldn’t we do the same inside Israel itself?” el-Sayegh asked. “The records say thousands of our soldiers never went back to their families after being taken hostage by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war,” he added.
   A similar, but louder, fury erupted in the Nile Delta weeks ago when scores of Jews from Israel came to commemorate the anniversary of the death of a revered Jewish Rabbi who has his own tomb in the area.
   Angry locals got to the streets and asked the Government to prevent the Israelis from visiting their villages.
   Such a reaction to Israeli presence in Egypt might be frustrating to many who seek to encourage the public in both countries to turn over a new leaf in their relations.
   But this has done nothing to scare el-Sayegh and his colleagues in Parliament who insist on bringing the Government to account for allowing the Israeli digs.
   “Israel wants to take the corpses of the dead soldiers as pretexts for its presence in Egypt,” said Ibrahim el-Gaafary, an Egyptian MP.

   “The reality is that none of the agreements Egypt signed with Israel give the Jewish state the right to conduct any excavation here,” he added.
   This might be discouraging to new Israeli Ambassador in Cairo Yitzhak Levanon who arrived here Monday.
   Some people liked to call Egypt’s peace with Israel a “cold” one.