CAIRO: Demonstrators protesting the Israeli attack on a civilian aid flotilla called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador on Monday.
Some 40 protestors gathered opposite the Egyptian foreign ministry and held a three-minute silence for the activists killed when Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara ship in international waters.
Muslim Brotherhood MPs, members of Kefaya and Socialist activists attended the protest.
Independent MP Hamdeen Sabahy condemned what he described as Egyptian involvement in the Israeli siege imposed on Gaza for over three years.
“The Egyptian regime is a partner in the siege imposed on Gaza. Egypt must open the Rafah Crossing immediately instead of people coming from all over the world to be killed at sea,” Sabahy said.
“If we had opened the Rafah Crossing, innocent lives would not have been lost today,” Sabahy continued.
Muslim Brotherhood MP Hamdy Hussein described the attack on the flotilla as “a terrorist crime committed against civilians.”
“The international community’s silence about the siege, and about the crime committed today is unacceptable,” Hussein added.
In addition to the opening of the Rafah Crossing, the MP called for an end to “all normalization with Israel including expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and an end to gas exports to it” and a “re-assessment of the Camp David peace agreement”.
Leader of the Kefaya protest group Abdel-Halim Qandil held Arab regimes and “above all Egypt responsible for the crime that happened today.”
“Palestine is an Egyptian national issue but despite this Egyptian leaders are in league with Israel. In Turkey meanwhile — where there are public freedoms — tens of thousands of protestors surrounded the Israeli embassy and consulate.
Qandil added that if “Arab regimes didn’t support Israel, it would never have been able to commit this crime.”
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Protest at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry. (Daily News Egypt Photo/Sarah Carr)
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An activist holds an Egyptian flag and a picture of late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser while chanting anti-Israeli slogans demanding the closure of the Israeli embassy and the expulsion of the ambassador during a protest in front of the foreign ministry in Cairo. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
