It's understood that all of those Arab "moderates" with whom Israel is constantly negotiating for her very existence accept as their bottom line those "1967 borders" or, in a slightly different recent forumulation, the "1949 armistice lines," right?
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Sunday rejected calls by parliament members and journalists in Cairo for the return of Umm Rashrash - or Eilat, in Hebrew - to Egypt, and said that anyone who brought the subject up for discussion was only trying to create problems.
The foreign minister's statement was meant to stem a renewed interest among opposition MPs and the Egyptian press in seeing Umm Rashrash return to Egyptian ownership.
The subject recently gained media attention with the establishment of the People's Front for the Liberation of Umm Rashrash, a group founded by Egyptian MP Tala'at Sadat.
Sadat, as in the late Anwar Sadat, his uncle.
According to the Foreign Minister for Judicial Issues, Abd el Aziz Siff Elnasr, the official Egyptian establishment line today is that
Egypt's international border with Israel was determined in the peace agreement signed between the two states on March 26, 1979, and "the permanent border between the two states is the border established during the British mandate, which never regarded Eilat as Egyptian territory."
but there's a gloss on that official position, articulated by the same official, that bears noting:
Eilat, formerly Umm Rashrash, "is Palestinian and not Egyptian territory."
And so it would appear that the official position of Israel's peace treaty partner, Egypt, is that the land on the other side of Egypt's recognized international border with Israel is not "Israeli territory" but rather "Palestinian territory." Let's bear that in mind, along with the renewed efforts of Egypt's "experts on international law" to demand the "return" of Eilat.
