Campaigners hope a mock trial of senior officials involved in selling natural gas to Israel will mobilise public support against the deal, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Opponents of the sale of Egyptian natural gas to Israel say they will stage a people's tribunal next Saturday of key figures implicated in the deal. Campaign spokesman Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat announced that "two Ministry of Petroleum officials and a business tycoon will be publicly tried on charges of facilitating the sale of Egyptian natural gas to Israel." Minister of Petroleum Sameh Fahmi, chairman of the Egyptian Gas Holding Company (EGHC) Ahmed Latif and business tycoon Hussein Salem have been invited to attend the proceedings. "The charges against them will be levelled during the trial's first hearing on Saturday," said El-Sadat, a cousin of late president Anwar El-Sadat, the first Arab leader to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Independent member of parliament, lawyer Alaa Abdel-Moneim, will list the charges during the opening of the mock trial at the Bar Association's headquarters in downtown Cairo. Campaigners hope the event will raise public awareness of the controversial deal. "The judges selected for chairing next Saturday's public trial include constitutional law professors Yehia El-Gamal and Ibrahim Darwish, historian Tarek El-Bishri and former senior judge Ibrahim Saleh," said El-Sadat, who also indicated that oil experts Amr Kamal Hammouda and Ibrahim Zahran and lawyer and international arbiter Ibrahim Youssri would be among the witnesses called on to testify. El-Sadat is clear about the aims of the public event: "We hope the trial will help force the government to halt exports of gas to Israel." Reformist judge Mahmoud El-Khodeiri believes the flow of Egyptian natural gas into Israel, which began on 1 May, marks a serious step in normalising relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv. He points out that, "while Egyptian gas is being supplied to Israel at subsidised prices, the Israelis refuse to allow fuel to reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip". According to El-Sadat, Fahmi and EGHC chairman Latif will be held responsible for granting businessman Hussein Salem a licence that allows him to monopolise exports of Egyptian natural gas to Israel. "We have no idea on what basis they approved this concession or why Salem was the one chosen," said El-Sadat. "It is unclear whether the concession was awarded on the basis of tender, or whether Salem was awarded it by virtue of his close ties with senior officials." Opposition figures accuse Salem of using his relationship with senior National Democratic Party (NDP) figures to monopolise business relations with Israel, especially in the oil and gas sectors. Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Shehab told parliament in March that Salem's joint-venture investment company East Mediterranean Gas (EMG) had signed a deal in 2000 with the General Egyptian Organisation for Petroleum (GEOP). "The deal awarded EMG a worldwide concession to export gas, not just to Israel in particular," said Shehab. "This is the way all Egyptian gas and oil export deals are conducted." Salem told Al-Alam Al-Yom last September that the 1978 Camp David Accords called for normalising relations between Egypt and Israel in order to set a precedent promoting peace in the Middle East. In reaction to the growing campaign, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif has said that the two countries will revise the accord in the wake of an Egyptian media campaign against the pact's conditions. Negotiations are ongoing and Tel Aviv is showing flexibility towards the gas treaty, Nazif told the Al-Arabia TV satellite channel. Cairo will try to reach the best possible deal, he added. Nazif said an agreement has been signed, however, the text will be revised, as was the case with Russia and the Ukraine. Ministry of Petroleum officials have emphasised that they are already revising natural gas export deals with Israel, and with Jordan and Spain. GEOP chairman Abdel-Alim Taha told the Shura Council's Financial and Economic Affairs Committee on 15 May that when gas export deals were concluded several years ago no one had predicted the skyrocketing of international commodity prices. Some Shura Council members have argued that had the Ministry of Petroleum raised the price of gas exports the government would not have been obliged to increase fuel prices earlier this month. Fahmi said the Ministry of Petroleum was currently working on modifying the price of gas exports to achieve the best revenue. Speaking to a conference of Mediterranean oil countries in Alexandria, Fahmi added that there was no fixed prices of natural gas in export treaties, saying that Egypt's crude oil production had reached 705,000 barrels a day. El-Sadat says that in addition to the trial the campaign is planning a public demonstration in front of EMG's offices in Arish, capital of North Sinai, on 5 June. "We will also ask for a meeting with President Mubarak and will continue to mobilise public opinion against the sale of Egyptian gas to Israel."
