Arab League chief: Israel violating Egypt peace treaty

Egypt should amend its peace treaty with Israel because the latter is violating the accords with respect to the Palestinians, Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby told The Cairo Review of Global Affairs in June, in an article published this week.

Elaraby, 77, was appointed secretary-general in July 2011, after a brief stint as Egyptian foreign minister in the first post-Mubarak government.

"Israel is violating every day what they have committed themselves to do,” Elaraby said.

“What I’ve been asking is look at every step taken by Israel and see whether it really fits with its commitments. I’ll tell you: no. I’ll just give you one example: Camp David, and I was there. They committed themselves that [UN Resolution] 242 would apply to every single front, or to every single country, which accepts to live in peace with Israel. Fine. Palestinians have said for 20 years now we have recognized Israel, but they don’t want to apply 242, they don’t want to withdraw, they don’t want to stop the settlement activities. They have tens of thousands of prisoners who have been there for over 20 years. They are acting in a wrong way. They claim that they have withdrawn from Gaza, but they are surrounding Gaza and any day they will go and kill people in Gaza and go out. They are the occupiers. It’s not necessary in occupying a territory to be in every single yard of territory. They are outside but they are occupying it. So, everything is wrong. You need to rectify the relations. This is not going to work at all. You need to rectify the relations to have a healthy relationship in the future."

Elaraby said that the new situation in the Middle East would change the dynamic of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"The way that the Israelis were using brute force and not taking into consideration the rights of the people around them, particularly the Palestinians, will have to change,” he said. “But they are reading it wrongly. They are claiming to the Americans, to the Europeans, 'It is changing here. We don’t know what will happen. We will not talk unless they accept our conditions.' They have to realize that if they want to live in peace with their neighbors, they have a chance to do that. But they have to live in peace, they have to act according to the rules of international law everywhere. [The Arab peace plan] has been there 10 years there now, and it’s still there. Ten years, they’ve not reacted to it.”

Elaraby said the Egypt-Israel peace treaty should be amended on the security front, as well as the commercial area.

"People in Egypt under the former regime have added things which are not in the treaty,” he said.

“People say Camp David requires Egypt to sell gas to Israel. Gas was not there at that time. Camp David and the treaty speak about the right of Israel to bid for oil which Egypt does not need. But people think that it contains obligations on Egypt to sell oil to Israel, which is not true.

“Due to the activity of Israel, like neglecting completely the Palestinian rights, we have a bilateral obligation to tell them, apply your bargain in the treaty. And they are not doing it. The peace treaty speaks about certain security arrangements. About limitation of arms. And it says this should be reviewed. I never participated in that, the military did it. The military should come again and study the situation. But what should be needed and what should be amended definitely in my view is adding something which is not in the treaty, that is to have the MFO [Multinational Force and Observers]. The MFO is not in the treaty. The treaty says, 'United Nations peace keeping force.' So this should have been done. It has cost us a lot of money. I wrote several memos when I was in the Foreign Ministry on that. My estimate now is that since 1982 until today, Egypt has paid maybe a billion dollars for the MFO. It should have been a U.N. force; it would have cost Egypt in all this time maybe $50 million. So, there is a big difference here. This should be done without amendments. If the militaries would meet together and see that the limitations of armaments require change, they will decide that."

Asked if he believed Israel would attack Iran, Elaraby told the Cairo Review, "Nobody knows that. Not even President [Barack] Obama knows what Israel will do. Our position here in the Arab League and as Egypt also and as every single Arab country is that we want to create a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. That will apply to both Iran and Israel."

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