Israel Matzav

Egypt has a new foreign minister

Egypt has a new foreign minister, Nabil Elaraby.

Nabil Elaraby ( or El Araby) , a former judge in the International Court of Justice, accepted the post of Egypt’s foreign minister on Sunday, the state news agency said.

Judge Elaraby holds a J.S.D. (1971) and an LL.M. (1969) from New York University School of Law and a License en Droit, Faculty of Law, from Cairo University (1955).

Elaraby, who was also the permanent representative to the United Nations and has been serving as the director of the Regional Cairo Center for International Commercial Arbitration, replaces Ahmed Aboul Gheit who was minister since 2004.

He was Member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations 1994-2004, Judge at the Judicial Tribunal of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1990 and Commissioner at the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva (1999–2001).

Elaraby, a partner at Zaki Hashem & Partners in Cairo, since 2008 has also been serving as a counsel of the Sudanese government in the “Abyei Boundary” Arbitration between the Government of Sudan and the Sudanese People’s Revolutionary Movement.

This is nothing about which Israelis should get excited. Elaraby is quite hostile to us.

Before his tenure as judge, Elaraby urged Arab nations to sue Israel for atrocities committed against the Palestinians including genocide, Ynet News reports. Two months after telling an Egyptian newspaper, "I personally support an Arab Muslim claim against Israeli crimes," Elaraby was appointed as a judge at the ICJ.

Elaraby was part of a team that negotiated the Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978 and therefore can be expected to abide by Egypt's existing commitments to Israel, but he is likely to take a harder approach concerning Israel's activities in the occupied territories, the Washington Post reports.

"Public opinion in Egypt is in favor of a less soft approach to Israel and I think he shares this feeling," Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a professor of political science at Cairo University, told the Washington Post. "It will be very difficult for him to make the kind of concessions Hosni Mubarak made to Israel," like when Egypt closed its border with Gaza during the 2009 Gaza war.

The professor said that Elaraby is also likely to improve Egypt's relations with Iran, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah. This would stand in contrast to Mubarak's Egypt, which could be depended upon as a reliable ally of the United States in the region.

While Elaraby was a judge at the International Court of Justice, Israel attempted to have him removed from the panel that heard the case against Israel's 'security fence.'

In 2004, Israel sought the removal of Nabil Elaraby from an ICJ tribunal that debated the legality of Israel's West Bank security barrier, citing his earlier job as legal adviser to the Egyptian government. Israel's request was denied.

As a government legal adviser, Elaraby sat across from the Israelis at the negotiating table on several occasions, dating back to the successful Camp David agreements in 1978 that led to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

He was elected to the 15-member world court in October 2001 for a nine-year term.

Israel complained to the court, however, that he instigated anti-Israeli measures at the UN General Assembly while serving as an Egyptian ambassador to the UN.

There's nothing for Israel to worry about from the 'new,' 'democratic' Egypt, is there?

Labels: Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egyptian regime change, Nabil Elaraby

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:13 PM