CAIRO - Over the years and since the signing of the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel, some things have rarely been discussed between the two sides. The talk about ‘secret items' in the peace accords, providing for channelling Nile water to Israel through the Sinai Peninsula, offers an example of how people think of the ‘closed files' in the bilateral ties with Israel. Another example concerns the circumstances of the deal to export Egypt's natural gas to Israel at a very low price, and the strong resistance on the part of the former Mubarak regime to open this file and respond to popular demands to stop the flow of this extraordinarily cheap gas. A third issue relates to the media reports some years ago about the killing of dozens of Egyptian POWs in the 1967 War by an elite Israeli military unit, citing the then Israeli documentary Ruah Shaked (The Spirit of Shaked). The Egyptian Government at the time seemed unwilling to investigate this. Another controversial issue concerns an Egyptian village known in the past as Om el-Rashrash, better known today as Eilat, an Israeli port on the Gulf of Aqaba. According to an Ottoman decree issued in 1906, Om el-Rashrash is an Egyptian area of about 1,500sqkm on the Egyptian-Palestinian borders. The name is not mentioned on any Egyptian or Israeli maps. Border specialists believe that Om el-Rashrash, that became ‘Eilat', was one of the losses of Sadat's Camp David Accords, in response to an Israeli demand for access to the Red Sea. “The reasons for and the consequences of the Zionists control of Om el-Rashrash go far beyond this. It was part of the military, political and economic Zionist strategy,” professor of political science Tareq Fahmi told the weekly Radio and TV magazine. Fahmi, who is head of the Israeli Studies Unit in the Middle East Studies Centre, said that seizing Egypt's Om el-Rashrash and turning it into the Israeli Eilat is just one example of what happened to several Egyptian and Palestinian areas and towns in 1948. Colonel Yitzhak Rabin, who later became Israel's Prime Minister, led the Zionist gangs (Haganah), that attacked Om el-Rashrash and killed 350 Egyptian policemen, who had had orders not to open fire, after a Jordanian garrison withdrew from the village. The step followed the assassination in September 1948 of Lord Bernadotte, head of an international investigation committee, who mentioned in a report some of the massacres of Arabs committed by the Haganah. The occupation of Om el-Rashrash, according to Fahmi, smashed the theory that the Red Sea was an ‘Arab lake', rupturing the land extension between the Arab countries east and west of the Sea. One more result was offering an alternative to the Suez Canal, namely an Eilat-Dead Sea canal. Having a port on the Red Sea, Israel means has a gate to East Africa, much of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. So why hasn't Egypt tried to get Om el-Rashrash back, as it did with Taba? Fahmi said that there could be political, historical and geographical reasons for this, especially the fact that the relevant Security Council resolutions on any potential Israeli withdrawal only focused on lands occupied in 1967. However, Fahmi referred to press reports that said that Egypt made an official protest to the British Foreign Office about old British documents that said that Egypt gave up Om el-Rashrash to Israel under late president Nasser. Cairo referred to the documents as a ‘slur' to distort Nasser's image, citing a statement in which he referred to Israel's occupation of Om el-Rashrash. In 1999, Egyptian press reports quoted political sources as saying that ‘adequate studies' have been made on the legal status of Om el-Rashrash, paving the way for escalating the issue. This was 17 years after Israel ignored a demand reportedly made by former president Hosni Mubarak in 1982 to discuss the issue. According to Israeli reports at the time, Tel Aviv urged Washington to intervene and examine Cairo's intentions. The result was Egypt's giving up its claims on the village. Sources at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry stressed at the time that ‘the file of borders was utterly closed', describing as ‘untrue' what was reported about efforts to restore ‘Eilat', according to the magazine. In a study published in the daily Arabic-language newspaper Al-Wafd on February 25, 2000, late historian Abdel-Azim Ramadan applauded the Ministry's denial, to avert any potential dispute with Israel. The censoring of shots in the Egyptian movie, Youth on Air (2000), about Israel's seizure of Om el-Rashrash, again highlighted an Egyptian unwillingness to address the issue. Meanwhile, about 15 years ago, an Egyptian organisation called the ‘Egyptian Popular Front to Restore Om el-Rashrash' was created, consisting of activists, researchers, international law professors, other legal experts and geographers. They all stressed Egypt's right to get the village back. However, according to the same magazine, former Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit noted that Om el-Rashrash was not Egyptian, but Palestinian. Usama el-Baz, former political adviser to Mubarak, said in statements following the restoration of Taba that Cairo would follow the same procedures to get ‘Eilat' back. “Om el-Rashrash is Egyptian,” stressed former Arab League Secretary-General Mahmoud Ryadh, explaining that “the Israeli occupation of Om el-Rashrash was no ordinary incident” and that the purpose was to isolate Egypt from the Mashreq, Arab countries to the east of the country. “Occupied Om el-Rashrash is on Egyptian soil,” said Major-General Salah Selim, a hero of the 6th October War and now the director of a strategic think tank, adding that King Farouk had a resthouse there.
