The controversy over the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty continues The future of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty is being vigorously debated, reports Doaa El-Bey. While many want it annulled all together, others call for amending it. And yet others prefer to keep it as it is. Prime Minister Essam Sharaf added to the controversy on Thursday when he told a prominent Turkish TV station that "the Camp David agreement is not a sacred thing and is always open to discussion with what would benefit the region and the case of fair peace... and we could make a change if needed." Sharaf's remarks jarred with earlier commitments repeatedly reiterated by Egypt's military rulers that Egypt would honour signed international agreements. As a result of the Sharaf comment, Egyptian Ambassador to Israel Yasser Reda was summoned to a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry where he was told the peace treaty would not be reopened for negotiations. Israeli officials stressed that the step cannot be taken unilaterally. Presidential candidate Amr Moussa said in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper this week that the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was untouchable, adding that the accord had become a historical record. Relations between Egypt and Israel took a turn for the worse after six Egyptian security personnel were killed in Israeli raids near the Sinai border last month. Israel said it was chasing criminals that had fled into Egyptian territory after carrying out attacks in the southern Israeli town of Eilat and had fired on the Egyptians by mistake. Early this month, Egyptian protesters broke into the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and threw Hebrew-language documents from the balcony to the crowd below. Security forces intervened and rescued six Israeli security officers who were barricaded inside. The ambassador, together with the rest of the embassy staff, left the embassy earlier and was airlifted to Tel Aviv. Israeli newspapers wrote that some of the Israeli staff would return to the embassy this week. However, no official source confirmed their return. Calls to annul or at least review the peace treaty increased as a result of the killing of the Egyptian soldiers. It is likely to further increase because of Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories. Mahmoud Shoukri, a senior diplomat, said that cancelling the treaty was not on the table now "because it means that we would enter into a phase of confrontation or war with Israel. However, amending it could be a positive thing as any agreement needs periodical review especially if the circumstances in which it was signed changed. Thus amending the Egyptian- Israeli treaty is a legal right and logical." The Camp David accords of 1979 include a clause that allows either signatory to request renewed deliberations over the articles in the peace treaty. The treaty says that security arrangements provided for in Article 4 may at the request of either party be reviewed and amended by mutual agreement. Since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak as Egypt's president, there is an increasing number of Egyptians calling for the clause to be applied to allow Egypt to send military forces to Sinai which, according to the original agreement, remains a demilitarised zone. The situation on the ground, Shoukri said, "entails that we review the armaments, size and kinds of forces deployed in Sinai, especially in area C." The Camp David accords ended the state of war between the two countries but kept a large part of the Sinai Peninsula without the needed security. According to the agreement, the peninsula is divided into sections A, B and C. It allows only a limited number of armed police to protect section C which is adjacent to Israel. By Doaa El-Bey
