"Landep News"
Israel-Egypt Relations
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced on Thursday that his country had apologized a few days ago to Egypt for an incident at the common border in August, when a IDF pursuit of terrorists across the border led to the killing of eight Egyptian security troops.
Barak said that on Tuesday Israel offered the apology for that incident, a gesture considered as an olive branch to the Egyptian transitional government aimed at thawing the relations between the two former friendly states.
The gesture, which has a paramount importance in the power balance in the region, was overshadowed by another gesture Israel made this week, the agreement signed with Hamas in Cairo, Egypt, by which the Jewish state agreed to release 1,027 Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in exchange for the IDF soldier Gilad Shilat, who was captured in 2006 in the Gaza Strip.
On August 18, eight Egyptian soldiers were killed by the IDF while pursuing a few militants out of Gaza. The case stirred violent reactions in Egypt, which prompted the Egyptian transitional authorities to demand an apology from the Israeli officials.
Israeli Defense Forces offered to show the Egyptian supreme council that rules the country the evidence about the incident, and at the end of the demonstration it was quite clear that the Egyptian soldiers had neglected to engage the militants as they first passed them by, that the IDF helicopter specifically directed the shooting away from the place where the Egyptian soldiers were, and that it was possible that in the shootout the soldiers could have been killed by the militants themselves.
On the third day after the incident, Israel offered a rare statement of regret in an attempt to defuse a possible conflict. Even though the statement was well received by the Egyptian authorities, the people of the African neighboring country demanded that an apology be made.
On the day the country was being visited by the Turkish Prime Minister the Egyptian population in Cairo attacked the Israeli embassy, forcing the American president to intervene by the Egyptian authorities to assure a safe passage to the Israeli diplomats.
Even so, after this incident, the Israeli PM reassured the Egyptians that his country would remain loyal to the 1979 peace agreement with Egypt.
In the statement on Tuesday the defense minister said that the attack the militants had staged against Israel was despicable, and was meant to kill as many Israelis as possible, and destroy the peaceful relation between Egypt and Israel.
He added that based on the findings and investigations, Israel “decided to express apology to Egypt” over the death of the Egyptian policemen who were performing their duty at the time when they were killed “as a result of Israeli fire.”
The statement is very rare for Israel and is meant to mend the ties with the neighboring Egypt, following the advise of the American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who, while visiting Israel soon after the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN Security Council, told the Israeli officials to make sure that the ties with the neighbors are being thawed.
Israel lost the friendship of another former ally, Turkey, as a result of an incident in 2010, when the IDF killed nine Turks while boarding a vessel that was heading for Gaza. Israel insisted it had acted within the frame of the international law in dealing with the vessel Mavi Marmara, and refused to apologize, considering that such an act would make it possible for the families of the deceased to prosecute the Israeli soldiers who killed them.
Turkey demanded an apology, compensation for the families of the deceased, and the end of the blockade on Gaza.
After a year of waiting, the scandal escalated on the occasion of the publishing of the Palmer report, which had documented the conditions under which the incident had happened.
Turkey was raged that the report considered the action of the IDF legal, and reacted immediately by downgrading its diplomatic relations with Israel by expelling the Israeli ambassador.
During his visit to Egypt, the Turkish PM proposed the Egyptian authorities a political axis that would comprise Turkey and Egypt and would constitute a solution for the situation of the countries that recently came out of totalitarian regimes.
Thank's for link:
0 Response to "Israel-Egypt Relations"
Post a Comment