CAIRO, 22 November 2004 — Thousands of students rallied across Egypt yesterday in the third straight day of protests over Israel’s accidental killing of three Egyptian policemen on the Gaza border.
An official said Egypt and Israel were still negotiating on a new date for Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s trip to Israel. The trip would set the stage for the first high-level Arab-Israeli meeting since Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s death, and had been expected Wednesday. It was postponed without explanation until sometime next month after Thursday’s border shooting.
“No date has been set yet,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Izzat said yesterday, declining to say when a decision would be made.
Approximately 10,000 students across Egypt demonstrated yesterday. Some called on their government to officially reject Israel’s apology for the shooting and to “open the door for the people (to wage) holy war against Israel.”
“Down, down with Israel! Down, down with America!” shouted protestors at Cairo University, who also called for the severing of Egypt’s diplomatic ties with Israel and the United States.
Approximately 4,000 protesters rallied at Ain Shams University near Cairo and another 3,000 met at Tanta University in Northern Egypt.
In 1979 Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but relations between the two countries have long been cool, largely because of Egyptians’ feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Egyptian Parliament’s foreign relations committee, in an emergency meeting late Saturday, rejected Israel’s apology over the border shooting, saying it was “not enough for such reckless act.” Also Saturday, more than 2,000 students demonstrated at Alexandria University.
Israel had said one of its tanks mistakenly fired at the policemen when it had been ordered to shoot at Palestinian fighters on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border.
The shooting raised tensions at a crucial time.
Gheit’s trip to Israel, his first since he took office in July, was designed for talks on Israel’s planned withdrawal from Gaza and the Palestinian Authority after Arafat’s death earlier this month.
