"On February 4, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood website Amalalommah (Ikhwan) reported here: “The Egyptian government has turned down a US-Israeli proposal to settle more than 800,000 Palestinians in the Sinai Peninsula in a bid to revoke the right of the Palestinian refugees to return home. The Egyptian rejection has aroused the fury of Washington and Tel Aviv which exercised strong pressure on Cairo to accept the proposal.
“Diplomatic sources said that the Israeli government has offered Egypt in the past period three proposals for the settlement of the Palestinian refugees. The proposals were submitted by the prominent Israeli politicians, Health Minister Ephraim Sneh, and General Moshe Maoz. Nonetheless, the Egyptian side has informed Israel of its rejection to settle the Gaza residents or the Diaspora Palestinians in Egyptian territories because such a settlement contradicts the right of return which was approved by the UN. Moreover, Egypt has expressed its full support of the right of the Palestinians to return back home.
“Sources said that Israel is threatening Egypt with the suspension of the US aid if Egypt continued its rigid policy towards its proposals on the settlement of the Palestinians on its territories. This has prompted Cairo to notify Tel Aviv that it would enforce a series of penalties against Israel if it continued its endeavours to market the settlement plans.
“It followed that Egypt threatened to freeze the agreement on the crossings concluded with each of Israel and the PNA under European supervision, to revoke the agreement on the exchange of security information, and to suspend the bilateral meeting of the Egyptian-Israeli committee in reply to the proposed Israeli settlement plans.
“Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Baraq hastened to contain the crisis in a telephone conversation with President Mubarak by saying that Israel would not raise the idea of the settlement of the Palestinians whether as citizens or refugees in Egypt, according to the sources. Meanwhile, Egypt has notified the US circles of its complete reservations over the US demand to restore Egyptian supervision of the Gaza Strip in return for the restoration of the European option to the West Bank despite the fact that Washington pledged to support Egypt in this scenario. Cairo has in fact, voiced its total rejection of any discussion of the scenarios of the settlement of Palestinian refugees or the restoration of its supervision of Gaza in talks with US delegations which visited Egypt in the past period.
“Meanwhile, informed sources have said that Egypt has made a decision to seal off the border crossing of Rafah for good as of Friday noon, 8 February 2008, and to allow the crossing of Palestinians together with an Egyptian commitment to facilitate the entry of commodities and aid coming from Egyptian or Arab parties.
“The sources said that Cairo has notified Hamas with its decision as part of intensifying the pressure on Hamas to enter into a serious dialogue to hand over the crossings to the PNA, an option on which Hamas has strong reservations.” - Amlalommah// Egypt
“The sources said that Cairo has notified Hamas with its decision as part of intensifying the pressure on Hamas to enter into a serious dialogue to hand over the crossings to the PNA, an option on which Hamas has strong reservations.” - Amlalommah// Egypt
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