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Arab/Muslim States

Egypt on offensive to deflect arms-smuggling charges


By Stan Goodenough
December 26, 2007

The regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Wednesday resorted to tried-and-tested deflection techniques in an effort to avoid being blamed for the flood of weapons it has allowed to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip.

Those weapons, already amounting to many tons, have helped turn Gaza into a Mecca for terrorism, arming thousands of Palestinian Arabs with the means to fulfil their highest aspirations, which include carrying out successful terrorist attacks on Israel's Jews.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit - in whose country the vintage antisemitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is an enduring bestseller - lashed out at the Israel lobby in America, saying it was using accusations of Egypt-assisted weapons smuggling to pressure Washington into cutting its annual $2 billion in military aid to Cairo.

"The latest months have seen the Israeli lobby's efforts to harm Egypt's interests with the Congress," Gheit said, adding that the lobby "inside the Congress was behind some positions adopted by Congress, and the Israeli media campaign in the last few months falls within this trend."

Israeli reporters noted that Gheit levelled his charges just minutes before Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak was due to met Mubarak in the Sinai's Sharm e-Sheikh, and a few hours after The Jerusalem Post reported in its top story that Barak intended to "confront" the Egyptian dictator with evidence of Egypt's complicity in the weapons smuggling.

Shortly after the Post report, an Egyptian official who spoke "on condition of anonamity" said Egyptian police had earlier Wednesday arrested a weapons smuggler and discovered more than half a ton of explosive material and hundreds of kilograms of bomb-making chemicals in his home on the Gaza-Egypt border.

Egypt has a long and sordid history of encouraging terrorists to murder Jews through the Gaza Strip, which it controlled from 1949 to 1967.

It also has a history of hypocrisy.

While incessantly demanding that Israel settle the Palestinian Arab refugee issue, Cairo itself refused to absorb or even grant work permits to the "Palestinians" during the 19 years it occupied Gaza - brutally suppressing any demonstrations against its unjust rule.

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