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    Egypt to withdraw ambassador to Israel over ambush

    CAIRO (AP) — Egypt recalled its ambassador from Israel Saturday to protest the deaths of at least three Egyptian troops killed in a shootout between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants who had launched a deadly attack on Israel from Egyptian soil.

    The decision sharply escalated tensions between the neighboring countries, whose 1979 peace treaty is being tested by the fall of Egypt's longtime autocratic leader, Hosni Mubarak.

    Egypt's interim government accused Israel of violating that treaty and said the envoy would be withdrawn until Israel concludes its investigation into the Egyptian security forces' deaths. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the Israeli government was holding consultations on the Egyptian move. He had no further comment.

    The Cabinet, which was appointed by the ruling military council that took over power after Mubarak's ouster, revised an earlier statement saying the envoy, Yasser Reda, would be summoned for consultation — something that would have signaled a lower-level spat. Israel was likely to see that as a worrisome sign that Egypt's new leaders would be more responsive to public opinion about the Jewish state, which remains overwhelmingly unpopular because of its conflict with the Palestinians.

    The cross-border attack has also reinforced Israeli fears that the leaders of post-Mubarak Egypt would not assert control over the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula, whose porous borders with both Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip make it an attractive staging ground for Palestinian militant attacks on Israel. Israel says Gaza militants armed with guns, explosives, mortars and an anti-tank missile, killed eight Israelis in a roadside ambush on Thursday after infiltrating Israel through Sinai.

    The ambush also has threatened to stoke the Mideast conflict as retaliatory violence between Israel and Gaza militants spiked. Israeli airstrikes killed at least 12 Palestinians, most of them militants, Friday in Gaza, and nine Israelis were wounded by Palestinian rockets fired into southern Israel.

    On Saturday, one of those rockets struck three Palestinians who were illegally residing in Israel, injuring two of them seriously, police said.

    The Egyptian troops were killed as Israeli soldiers went after suspected Palestinian militants involved in Thursday's deadly attack.

    Israel has offered conflicting accounts about how the Egyptians were killed and the Israeli military has promised an investigation. But the Egyptian Cabinet, in a strongly worded statement, held Israel "politically and legally responsible for this incident," saying lax security on its side allowed the ambush to take place.

    "The Egyptian ambassador to Israel will be withdrawn until we are notified about the results of an investigation by the Israeli authorities," the Cabinet statement said, demanding an immediate probe.

    It said Egypt would take all measures and send reinforcements to protect its borders and "to respond to any Israeli military activity at the Egyptian borders."

    It was the first time in nearly 11 years that Egypt decided to withdraw its ambassador from Israel. The last time was in November 2000 when the Egyptians protested what they called excessive use of violence during the second Palestinian uprising.

    The decision to withdraw Reda was announced as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, demanding the expulsion of the Israeli envoy. A Palestinian flag was unfurled at the site, and some of the demonstrators threw firecrackers at the building.

    Mohammed Adel, a leader of the protests that toppled Mubarak, welcomed the Cabinet decision, saying, "It proves to all that the Egyptian revolution is capable of imposing its rules on the Israeli enemy."

    The clamor against Israel also spilled into the political arena.

    "Israel and any other (country) must understand that the day our sons get killed without a strong and an appropriate response, is gone and will not come back," declared Amr Moussa, a former Arab League chief and now an Egyptian presidential hopeful. He tweeted his statement along with, "the blood of our martyrs which was spilled while carrying out their duties, will not be shed in vain."

    An Israeli military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, initially said a suicide bomber, not Israeli soldiers, killed the Egyptian security forces. He said the attacker had fled back across the border into Egypt and detonated his explosives among the Egyptian troops.

    Israeli media also reported that some of the sniper fire directed at the Israeli motorists Thursday came from near Egyptian army posts and speculated that the Egyptian troops were killed in the cross fire.

    It was not possible to reconcile the different versions.

    Although Egypt's new leaders have asserted their commitment to the landmark peace treaty with the Jewish state, Israel has worried that a regime more hostile to it would emerge in post-Mubarak Egypt.

    While relations between the two countries have been chilly since Egypt became the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel in 1979, Israel valued Mubarak as a source of stability with shared interests in containing Iran and its radical Islamic proxies in the region — including the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza.

    Israel fears that Egypt's political upheaval and the resulting power vacuum in Sinai will open dangerous new opportunities for Gaza militants to open a new front against it along the Sinai frontier. While keeping up sporadic rocket attacks against Israel, Gaza militants have refrained from large-scale attacks since Israel conducted a punishing three-week war against them 2 1/2 years ago.

    Hamas praised the attacks Thursday but denied any involvement. Israel accused a Hamas-allied group, the Popular Resistance Committees, of carrying out the ambush, but holds Hamas responsible for all violence coming from the Palestinian territory.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited some of the wounded in the hospital Friday. "We killed the head of the group that sent the terrorists, but this is just an initial response," he said. "We have a policy to extract a very heavy price from those that attack us and that policy is being implemented in the field."

    The attack was the deadliest for Israel since a Palestinian gunman killed eight people in a Jerusalem religious seminary in 2008.

    ___

    Teibel reported from Jerusalem.

     

    864 comments

    • Mark  •  9 mths ago
      Does the fact that hamaa has a charter calling for the destruction of israel and the death of all jews mean anything ??
    • TheLadyRides  •  9 mths ago
      "the blood of our martyrs which was spilled while carrying out their duties, will not be shed in vain."
      So their "duties" include infiltrating Israel and ambushing Israelis? The US gives Egypt billions of dollars a year to maintain the peace with Israel. This is how they do it? An example of why we often choose to support tyrants instead of anarchists...
    • Native  •  9 mths ago
      Ralph does your religion make you as stupid as you are or is it just in breeding.
    • Native  •  9 mths ago
      Israel is a state in Palestine.
    • Ralph  •  9 mths ago
      If Israel lays down arms mozlems will kill every man, woman, and child.
      If mozlems lay down arms, there will be peace.
      This is the reality.
    • Dave  •  9 mths ago
      Short minded, ignorant, people are the problem with this world. All of you fit in the same boat. All of you have this twisted idea that your god gave you this land. Heaven forbid we call one another brother.
    • KING  •  9 mths ago
      Bomb Israel : It's the Root of All Evil
      Watch This : Occupation 101 on you tube
      See what you will never see on tv
    • Ruai Apai  •  9 mths ago
      Not a single condemn from the world's "Human rights" organization about the Palestines being massacred. Double standard..
    • Haimasoph  •  9 mths ago
      OMG! How boring and old. Is this ever going to end. How long we have to support middle eastern states and dictators? We need money here. Our troops must protect our borders. We must solve gang problem in our cities.
      • BlueEagle 9 mths ago
        You must be a pinko liberal.
    • Denne herre betaler!  •  9 mths ago
      Jordan is Palestine. Formerly called "Eastern Palestine" it is 77% of the original Palestine Mandate while Israel is 23%. The population of Jordan is predominantly Palestinian and includes many relatives of those living in "Western Palestine' or Israel. During the 1948-1967 period when Jordan occupied Judea Samaria and Jerusalem, palestinians came and went between the two places sometimes living in one and soemtimes the other.

      There has always ( since 1922) been a two state solution in existence. Jordan is Arab Palestine.
      • BlueEagle 9 mths ago
        Gen 15:18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:
        God doesn't give land to Arabs.
      • Dave 9 mths ago
        @BlueEagle.....Short minded, ignorant, people like you are the problem with this world. You fit in the same boat with the Islamic extremist. All of you have this twisted idea that your god gave you this land. Heaven forbid we call one another brother.
    • Fletch  •  9 mths ago
      Who else can feel all the Freedom and Democracy of the Arab Spring?
    • The Real Joe  •  9 mths ago
      To the Christians who loooove the Israelis, careful, they will spit on you.... From a recent article written by a jew, so you know it is not biased. A very embarrassing and persistent problem has arisen in some of the sacred sites in Jerusalem where Christians and Jews cross each other’s paths. Teenagers from a small sector of the city’s many Ultra-Orthodox (“Haredi”) Ashkenazi Jewish communities have taken to spitting at clerics wearing prominent crosses and dressed in traditional garb. Assaults have been recorded at the Jaffa and Damascus Gates of the walled Old City, an area with many historic churches and monasteries, including the Polish Church of St. Elizabeth. To address the problem a remarkable interfaith forum, appropriately titled “Why do do some Jews spit at Christians in the Old City,” was held under the auspices of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel and the Jerusalem Center for Christian-Jewish Relations. These spitting assaults have been going on for at least a decade, and like many expressions of tension in Jerusalem, the attacks represent scores that many observers thought were settled long ago. For spitting at crosses and clerics was not unknown in those parts of Christian Europe where Jews and Judaism were often persecuted and where this represented the only recourse for a powerless people to express contempt. In the thinking of many less-acculturated European Jews—particularly in Eastern Europe—spitting or cursing was a way to express disdain for a religion which sprang from Judaism and then persecuted it. The official Israeli Rabbinate (to whom the members of the Ultra-Orthodox communities don’t profess any loyalty) has condemned the assaults. Last year the state-appointed Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, Yonah Metzger, called the spitting attacks “an evil affliction,” though the Haredi rabbis refused to issue a similar condemnation. Leaders from several Christian groups (among them were Catholic, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox clerics and seminarians) have been complaining to the Israeli police about the assaults for years. But the police, who are very skittish about entering interreligious disputes, have done little to stop the assaults. Last September, after two Armenian seminarians were spit upon by two Haredim, they fought back—with their fists—and were subsequently arrested for assault. It was only after the highest Christian authorites in the city intervened that the Israeli government rescinded its order that the Armenian seminarians be deported from the country. While Jewish-Christian relations in the city surely are in need of some repair, these problems seem small in the face of deteriorating Jewish-Muslim relations. But while Jewish-Muslim tensions dominate the headlines, most Israeli liberals feel that there is little that they can do to improve that situation; a situation (hamatzav, or the situation in Hebrew) enmeshed in political and military consideration. The excacerbation of Jewish-Christian tensions, on the other hand, seems like a problem that ordinary citizens can address—and some Christians and Jews are doing just that.
      blah blah blah
      • Denne herre betaler! 9 mths ago
        Israel is the ONLY country in the Middle east to have seen an increase in the number of Christians living in it. Every Arab state- including the Hamas/Fatah mafias have driven out their Christian populations and stolen Chrisitan land - by fake deeds that are "recognized' by Islamic courts. So stop the lies.
      • BlueEagle 9 mths ago
        You should also know that thousands of Jews have converted to Christianity since the early 20th century and continue to do so today. The Bible tells us that they will be our evangelists during the end times which will be real soon.
      • TAB 9 mths ago
        Idiot.
    • Frankie  •  9 mths ago
      All this talk about Israeli revenge seeking. When did they all become evangelicals?
    • Frankie  •  9 mths ago
      Why can't they just share the country? Holocaust hype and jew-bashing doesn't solve anything.
      • Denne herre betaler! 9 mths ago
        Arab Palestine is across the River in Jordan. Why should Jews "share' their Homeland- small as it is - with a population who has been actively trying to destroy them before the State of Israel even existed? And for your information Jordan is 77% of Palestine and israel is 23% and Jordan is the most populous Palestinian nation already. Illegal Mexicans cannot call Southern Texas Mexico as Mexico already exists. Same for palestinians.
      • BlueEagle 9 mths ago
        When the Arabs inhabited Israel it was a desert country if you look at Palestine today you will see that nothing has changed. The Jews took back their land and made it profitable with green land, trees, farms, up to date hospitals and homes for their people. The Arabs live in the same squalor they always have just look at the other countries in which they live with few exceptions like Dubai and you will see what I mean. They inhabit a country occupied or not and they bring nothing to that country not one single contribution but they do get on the welfare rolls real quick.
    • Peter D  •  9 mths ago
      Nor is it understood that as the world economy breaks down over the next two or three years revolution will spread across the world. First to the hardline dicatatorial regimes, and then even into Western democracies where austerity measures have had to be instituted. The corruption in Western government, especially the US, although more subtle and better concealed by the media, is now coming out in the open and we can see what our leaders in government, big business, and banking have been up to. The media will 'turn coat' in a new and uncharacteristic manner, fanning the flames, but also exposing the sordid truth so that even the most studpid can understand it.

      Provided that at least some of these leaders, even 'untouchables', such as those at the very top, are routled out and brought to trial and punished under the law; and provided that their positions are filled democratically by men and women of calibre and integrity, with the aid of a more honest media and a more informed and enlightened public, all is not lost, and conceivably, just conceivably a new dawn awaits.

      But there will be many turbulent years ahead, and the political landscape of the world will have changed for ever. We must hope that political leaders do not use this as an excuse, as they did with Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, to assume totalitarian control, and aided with the new technology, a la 1984, we become enslaved.
      • The Real Joe 9 mths ago
        I think you are right. Stealing is a big thing. Let's assume that SS is gotten at 65 and we live on avg to 75. So we pay in all our lives for 10 years. if they raise the retirement age to 70, they have stolen 1/2 of out money.
        One other point- patriot act. They have the capacity to become a dictatorship.
    • Native  •  9 mths ago
      The IDF needs better training.
    • Peter D  •  9 mths ago
      I have said it repeatedly that nothing good is going to come out of the toppling of these iron dictators of the Middle East. It has created a huge vacuum which will be filled with Islamic fundamentalism and religious fanatacism, all hostile to the West. This was at least one thing the Republicans seemed to understand, and they probably would have refrained from actually encouraging these revolutionary movements.
    • Zionists are modern Nazis  •  9 mths ago
      Israel is a cancer
    • Scarlet  •  9 mths ago
      even if israel gave all of their country to the palestinians and arabs, they still would not be happy! Visit Israel and you'll see what the Jews have done with their beautiful country and what the palestinians have done... nothing!! Why don't the Egyptians give them a homeland?
    • Bruce Wilson  •  9 mths ago
      WOW!
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