CAIRO, 2 January 2007 — Egypt’s foreign minister warned that his country would “retaliate” diplomatically against Israel if it hurts US-Egyptian ties with its complaints over smuggling into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Tensions between Egypt and Israel have increased over the smuggling issue, with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni last month saying Egypt’s failure to shut down smugglers’ tunnels across the border were damaging the peace process with the Palestinians.
At the same time, US Congress members have spoken of withholding some of the $1.3 billion in annual military aid given to Egypt unless it clamps down on weapons smuggling and improves its human rights record. Asked on a state-TV program about the impact of Livni’s comments on Egypt-Israeli relations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “If they (Israelis) continue to push and affect US-Egyptian relations and harm Egyptian interests, for sure Egypt will retaliate and will harm their interests.”
“We have claws capable of retaliating in all directions and through diplomacy,” he said on the Al-Beit Beitak program late Monday. He did not elaborate. Israel says that Hamas is using tunnels from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to smuggle weapons and money into the Gaza Strip, where the militant Palestinian group took control in June.
Aboul Gheit said it was difficult to find the tunnels without an increase of Egyptian troops on the border and the provision of better equipment. Israel has rejected an increase in troops, which is regulated under the countries’ 1979 peace accord. Aboul Gheit said the tunnels existed long before the Hamas seizure of Gaza and that even Israel was unable to stop them when it occupied the Sinai from 1967 until the early 1980s.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s Health Ministry said another woman has died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the fourth such death in a week, local media reported yesterday. Hanem Atwa Ibrahim, 50, from Damietta north of Cairo, died late on Monday in a hospital in the capital and was the 19th death from the disease in Egypt, the state-owned daily Al-Ahram reported. Atwa was admitted to hospital on Dec. 24 and had been in critical condition ever since.
Another woman, 36-year-old Fardos Mohammed Haddad from the Nile Delta province of Menufia, also died on Monday from the disease. On Sunday, Fatma Fathi Mohammed, 25, from the Nile Delta province of Daqahliya, died of bird flu just days after the death of Ola Yunes Ali.
Another woman, a chicken seller from Menufia, has been in hospital since December 26 and is currently recovering in intensive care, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Egypt’s location on major bird migration routes and the widespread practice of keeping domestic fowl near living quarters have led to it being the hardest-hit country outside Asia.
