CAIRO: The Israeli government on Sunday barred its citizens from crossing into Egypt at the Taba border crossing, ostensibly banning all travel to the Sinai Peninsula over land. The Prime Minister's office said that the reason for the travel ban was due to “security reasons” and added that citizens were barred from “travel to the enclave of Taba for security reasons, given warnings about the risk of attack” in the Sinai. In recent weeks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has repeatedly warned Israelis to avoid traveling to Egypt. Israeli units deployed along the southern border with Egypt were ordered on “high alert” late on Friday for fear of a “terrorist attack”, an army spokeswoman said. Relations between Egypt – the first Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel in 1979 – and Israel have been particularly tense since August 18, when Israeli troops killed five Egyptian policemen as they chased militants along the border. That incident followed a series of Negev desert ambushes that killed eight Israelis. In Egypt, activists attacked the Israeli Embassy and tossed documents from a lower level of the embassy, which led to Israel calling the Egyptian ambassador in for questioning after Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf told Turkish media that the Camp David Treaty was not “sacred.” BM
