Outrage Over ‘Israeli Killing of Captured Egyptians’

CAIRO, 5 March 2007 — Egypt summoned Israel’s envoy to Cairo yesterday after Israeli media allegations that the Israeli Army may have killed 250 captured Egyptian soldiers at the end of the 1967 Middle East war. Two ruling party lawmakers demanded the ambassador’s expulsion. Another called for a special parliamentary session for a declaration of war on the Jewish state.

Egyptians were outraged by an Israeli documentary film which, according to media reports, alleged an army unit led by Benjamin Ben Eliezer, now Israel’s infrastructure minister, may have killed 250 prisoners of war in the Sinai Peninsula rather than transferring them to POW camps.

Egypt’s deputy foreign minister for legal affairs, Abdel Aziz Seif Al-Nasr, said Egypt had summoned Israeli ambassador Shalom Cohen to demand an explanation for the contents of the documentary, aired on Israel’s Channel One television last week. Egypt also asked its ambassador in Tel Aviv to obtain a copy of the film from the Israeli government, he said.

Israeli media quoted Ben-Eliezer as denying Egyptian prisoners were executed. He said Palestinian gunmen were killed during the fighting, not Egyptian soldiers.

“The Israeli ambassador must leave Egypt,” said Mahmoud Salim, a lawmaker from President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party. Another ruling party lawmaker, Alaa Hassanein, said: “I demand the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and the withdrawal of the Egyptian ambassador from Israel.” A spokeswoman for Israel’s broadcasting authority had no immediate comment.

Salaam Al-Ruqi’i, an independent Egyptian lawmaker from the Sinai Peninsula, said: “The only way this can be eased is through a declaration of a state of war. We are still finding mass graves of Egyptian soldiers, and two months ago we extracted the remains of unarmed Egyptian soldiers and civilians from Sinai.”