Israel Matzav

West's favorite Egyptian wants to 'rethink' Camp David accord

Ayman Nour, the West's favorite Egyptian, has called for his country to 'rethink' the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.

Ayman Nour, a former lawmaker and chairman of the Ghad (Tomorrow) party, told an Egyptian radio station that the 1978 Camp David Accords were no longer relevant, and said the country’s leadership should at least rethink the terms of the framework agreements that led to a peace deal between the erstwhile enemies the following year.

Details of the interview were revealed Sunday evening by Ehud Yaari, Middle Eastern affairs commentator for Channel 2 News.

...

“The Camp David Accords are finished,” Nour said. “Egypt has to at least conduct negotiations over conditions of the agreement.”

However, Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Sameh Shoukry said Sunday that he believed Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel would stand.

“The treaty with Israel... has been beneficial to Egypt over the last 30 years,” Sameh said in an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour. “We have derived a dividend from the treaty. We have been able to establish security and stability in the region, and I believe it is a main element in terms of our foreign policy.”

Nour, 46, was imprisoned in 2005 after running against Mubarak in presidential elections. The opposition leader came in first runner-up with 7 percent of the vote in a ballot widely criticized as rigged – independent observers believe Nour may have actually received twice as many votes. A diabetic, he was released from prison in 2009 on health grounds.

Nour took a leading role in the protests of recent weeks, and on January 28 suffered a head wound when hit by a stone in clashes between pro-Mubarak and antigovernment protesters.

Nour is not an Islamist. This is not the Muslim Brotherhood calling for the treaty to be torn up. But recall that ElBaradei also refused to reaffirm the treaty in an interview on Meet the Press with David Gregory. And Amr Moussa has called for war on Israel, and called on Arab countries not to normalize ties with Israel (which Egypt did - formally at least - as part of the Camp David treaty).

And then there's the Muslim Brotherhood....

And you wonder why Israelis were in no rush to see Mubarak go?

Labels: Amr Moussa, Ayman Nour, Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed ElBaradei, Muslim Brotherhood

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:27 PM