CAIRO, 15 March 2004 — The tiny opposition bloc in the Egyptian Parliament has signed a petition rejecting the government’s decision to send a delegation to Israel for the 25th anniversary of the peace treaty between the two countries, parliamentary sources said yesterday.
Following parliamentary debate on Saturday about 30 members of the opposition Nasserite party, Muslim Brotherhood, El-Tagmu party and independents signed the petition objecting to such a visit while Israel still occupies Palestinian land, according to the sources.
However, the majority of the 454-member People’s Assembly, which is overwhelmingly dominated by President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), endorsed the visit for March 23, they said.
The head of the Nasserite members of parliament, Mohammed Farid Hasanein, resigned from his party after breaking ranks with the opposition bloc and supporting the government decision.
The chairman of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee, Mustafa Al-Fekki, and the former Egyptian ambassador to Israel, Mohammed Bassiouni, are scheduled to travel to Jerusalem on March 23 to mark the signing of the accord on that day in 1979. The pair will address a full house of the Israeli Knesset, or Parliament. Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel, followed by Jordan in 1994.
