CAIRO: Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit questioned the timing of an Israeli documentary which revealed that Egyptian prisoners of war were executed by the Jewish State’s military during the 1967 war.
The ‘massacre’ of some 250 Egyptian soldiers made headline news in the country after Israel’s Channel One broadcast the documentary “Shakid Soul in late February.
Although he admitted that the incident was criminal, he urged restraint and called on Egyptian civil society and the government to prepare charges, which would be filed either in an Egyptian or international court.
We have to ask ourselves why Israel chose to release this film now and why it took them some 40 years to bring it to light, Aboul Gheit said during an interview with Nile News.
The foreign minister warned that the timing could be used to provoke Egyptian and Arab emotions to deflect international pressures for the Israeli government to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict.
He also charged that the film may be used as a tool to impact Egypt-US relations.
Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, told The Daily Star Egypt that he is not surprised by the foreign minister’s position.
However, Eid does not believe that the government will take any action: They will not be cooperative in this matter.
In a previous interview with The Daily Star Egypt, Eid indicated that this is the fourth time that a request to investigate the issue of the victims of the 1967 war has been filed. “The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights was behind previous requests, he said.
Arial Sharon himself was involved in many violations against Egyptians prisoners in 1967, Eid alleged.
The murder of these POWs, according to Eid, is in violation of the Geneva Convention, the international law that set rules to protect prisoners’ human rights.
The Geneva Convention consists of four treaties: one for the wounded and sick soldiers in the field; one for wounded soldiers at sea; one for the treatment of war prisoners; and a last one for the treatment of civilians during times of war.
