CAIRO: Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said that the 1979 peace treaty with Israel is not “sacred” and open for discussion, Sharaf told a Turkish TV station during an interview. He added that the treaty is “changeable if it would benefit the region and enhance peace.” The announcment could please many Egyptians who have been calling for either cancelling or changing the treaty that followed the 1973 war with Israel and led to the assassination of late president Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, two years after the treaty was signed. Thousands of Egyptians have been protesting outside the Israeli embassy during the past few weeks calling for expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and cutting all diplomatic ties with the Jewish State after the Israeli Defense Forces shot dead 6 Egyptian soldiers at the border between the two countries last month. Israel refused to offer an official apology and said its forces were chasing militants suspected of killing 8 Israelis the day before and sent a few officials to conduct talks with Cairo, but none of that calmed the Egyptian public's anger. Last Friday, a dozen men climbed up the residential building where the Israeli embassy is located and broke into a lower level of the embassy during the night and threw embassy documents from the balcony. BM
