The parliament's decision to participate in the Israeli Knesset's commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Egyptian-Israeli peace has infuriated opposition and independent MPs. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Muslim Brotherhood MPs raised a ruckus in parliament on Saturday to protest a visit by two high-profile MPs to Israel next week. An Egyptian parliamentary delegation will attend a special 23 March Israeli Knesset session commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel. The delegation includes Mustafa El- Fiqi, chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, and Mohamed Bassiouni, the deputy chairman of the consultative Shura Council's Foreign and Arab Affairs Committee and Egypt's former ambassador to Israel. The decision to send El-Fiqi and Bassiouni to Israel was taken less than a week after People's Assembly Speaker Fathi Surour turned down an invitation from his Israeli counterpart to address the Knesset on the same occasion. Surour told Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin that he would not visit Israel until a Palestinian state has been created and Israel has withdrawn from all the territory it captured in the 1967 War. In response, Rivlin expressed his disappointment at Surour's refusal, saying he was sorry that Cairo had again passed up an opportunity to normalise its relations with Israel. The 13 March confrontation erupted when Haidar Boghdadi, one of two Nasserist MPs, told delegates that he was shocked that parliament's general committee had approved El-Fiqi and Bassiouni's visit. According to Boghdadi, many MPs had been pleased that Surour had rejected the invitation, only to find out later that the general committee had decided -- during a sudden 11 March meeting -- to send the two MPs instead. All Egyptians condemn this visit," Boghdadi said, "especially as it comes at a time when the Israelis are slaughtering Palestinians day and night." He said it was "a moral obligation for Egyptian MPs to not visit Israel until it stops slaughtering Palestinians and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories." Although Boghdadi said he was speaking "in the name of the Arab Nasserist Party and its political bureau", Surour responded by saying that "the representative of the Nasserist Party [businessman Mohamed Farid Hassanein] approved this visit during the general committee's meeting." Surour told Boghdadi he had no right to speak for the Nasserists. Boghdadi replied by claiming that Hassanein's approval was personal rather than an official reflection of the Nasserists' position. Surour then reminded Boghdadi that general committee members do not provide personal positions, but rather speak as official representatives of their parties. Just then, the assembly's 16 Brotherhood MPs decided to jump into the fray. In unison, they demanded that Surour "respect their intelligence", and asked the speaker to give them the floor to denounce "the Israeli visit". As several other independent and opposition MPs began yelling out their support for the Brotherhood MPs' stance, Surour quickly adjourned the session. Brotherhood MP Hamdi Hassan told Al- Ahram Weekly that the MPs were angry because an Israeli press report made it seem like the decision to send an Egyptian delegation had been taken even before the 11 March general committee meeting. Parliamentary insiders told the Weekly that the committee's decision was approved by Surour, his two deputies, and the chairmen of 18 committees -- all of whom are members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) -- as well as Mounir Fakhri Abdel- Nour, the Wafd Party's parliamentary speaker, and Mohamed Farid Hassan, the Arab Nasserist Party speaker. Only Khaled Mohieddin, the leftist Tagammu Party's speaker, and Abdel-Moneim El-Tunsi, the independent MPs' speaker, voted against the visit. The Nasserist party's mouthpiece -- Al- Arabi newspaper -- subsequently said that the Nasserist Party was against the visit. According to Al-Arabi, "in addition to the party's rejection of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, it deplores the current normalisation between the Egyptian People's Assembly and the Israeli Knesset at a time Israel is launching a mass extermination campaign against the Palestinian people." That stance, combined with the clash between Surour and Boghdadi, prompted Hassanein to resign from the party on Sunday. Hassanein told the Weekly he resigned "because he does not like to work with a party with which I disagree on several basic issues." He said he would be establishing a new party called "Egypt Tomorrow" instead. "With the Nasserist Party now represented by just one member," Surour said, "I declare that it has no right to attend the general committee's meetings." Wafdist MP Mohamed Abdel-Alim, meanwhile, also disagreed with his party's speaker, Abdel-Nour. Abdel-Alim joined around 30 MPs in signing a petition rejecting the assembly's decision to send El-Fiqi, an appointed NDP MP, to Israel. For his part, Bassiouni said his participation in the Knesset's commemoration of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty helps push the peace process forward. "We have to remind everybody that a major objective of this treaty was it being a step towards achieving peace between Israel and the entire Arab world. It is a historical event that deserves to be commemorated." The Brotherhood's high-profile parliamentary ruckus marked the second time in as many weeks that the group had attempted to loudly assert their influence. Earlier this month, the banned group inspired the wrath of Interior Minister Habib El-Adli by holding a press conference in which they attacked the government and announced their own initiative for political reform.
