Alwaght- Amid preparations by some Arab countries to normalize relations with the Israeli regime, in recent days an old Israeli crime was unearthed that can leave a considerable negative impact on the Israeli ties to the Arab countries.
After more than 50 years, an Israeli media outlet revealed that during the 1967 war with the Arab countries, the Israeli military buried the bodies of some Egyptian soldiers in a mass grave and then built a parking lot on it. The Israeli regime occupied the Egyptian area during the war and displaced the residents of its three famous villages of ”Amwas, Yalo, and Al-Majdal" and created forests in their place.
In the 1980s, Tel Aviv built a small resort in this area that contains replicas and miniature buildings 0f similar cities in the world. A former Israeli soldier, who was probably present at the time of the crime, said that those who were brought were soldiers who were burned and buried, because the area was full of grasses with a height of one and a half meters and the place caught fire quickly as it was dry. Reportedly, about 20 Egyptian captives were massacred and Tel Aviv covered up the crime to date.
The war of 1967 was the third in the series of battles between the Arabs and the Israeli regime, which began with a sudden Israeli air attack on the Egyptian air bases on June 5 and during it, the Israelis managed to take the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from the control of Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from the control of Jordan, and the Golan Heights from the control of Syria within six days, and these areas are still occupied.
The massacring of Egyptian soldiers is not the only Israeli crime and Israeli history is inundated with crimes against Muslim nations in recent decades. The historians estimate the Israeli massacres are between 10 to 70, mainly targeting the civilians and even medical personnel. Palestinian historians suggest that 68 villages went victim to the Israeli massacres. Israeli archives confirm these crimes in the Palestinian villages, the most heinous of which is Deir Yassin massacre of 1948 during which the Israeli occupiers killed 250 Palestinians.
Egyptian reactions
The revelation of Israeli massacre revived grief of Arabs, especially Egyptians and ignited anti-Israeli reactions. Reacting to the crime, the Egyptian government asked the Israeli officials to provide documented explanations. Also, the spokesman of the Egyptian presidency announced that the Israeli caretaker PM Yair Lapid in a phone call with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt emphasized that the Israeli side will deal with this issue with full transparency and coordination with the Egyptian authorities to get to truth. In a statement, Gaza-based Hamas movement announced that the burning of dozens of Egyptian soldiers alive shows the extent of the terrorist and sadistic spirit that dominated the behavior of the Israeli army in all wars against Arab nations.
Israeli promise of investigation is yet another one in a long list of promises the Israelis made after their crimes in four wars with Arab states and also in peace situations were disclosed but have so far gone nowhere. The latest example is shooting of Palestinian correspondent of Aljazeera Shereen Abu Aqleh in May in the front of camera lenses and hundreds of Palestinians. The US State Department on July 4 said that Aljazeera reporter "was likely to have been killed by gunfire from Israeli position but it was probably unintentional."
If investigation of the killing of a reporter in May this year comes out with no condemnation of the Israelis, the result of an investigation of Egyptian soldiers who were killed 55 years ago does not take much mind and energy to predict. To ease the sensitivity and anger of the Egyptian public, the Israelis will likely tie the crime to undisciplined soldiers of their army and make blood payments to Cairo to close the case.
Though Cairo officials have close relations with Tel Aviv, they had to show a resolute reaction to this crime under the pressure of Egyptian public. The reaction of the Egyptian government showed that the Arab anger with Israel is still raging in the hearts and can boil over when Israeli crimes are uncovered.
The inefficient Camp David
When the Egyptians sat on the negotiating table with the Israelis and signed the disgraceful Camp David accords, they imagined they could end the Arab-Israeli tensions forever but over time the Arab leaders learned that contrary to them, the public opinion disapprove of legitimization of the Israeli occupation and still see Israel the Muslims' archenemy. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who signed peace deal with Tel Aviv, was assassinated by an Egyptian nationalist, showing that aversion to Israel flows in the Muslim blood and even if political leaders yield to the disgrace of normalization, the public do not.
On the other hand, the revelation of the Israeli crime showed that the Egyptian army is still sensitive to existential israeli threat and sees Tel Aviv's weapons of mass destruction a threat to Egypt's security and territorial integrity. Although the Israeli leaders seek to pose as friends and allies of the Egyptians, they have a stealth long-standing enmity to the Egyptian army and seek to weaken the Egyptian forces in best interests of their own security.
Undermining Muslim nations and armed forces is an old Israeli project and would not be abandoned after normalization. Nile to Euphrates project, which is meant to occupy Arab territories and rule over the region, has been a top priority for the Israeli regime since its foundation. Whenever Egyptians react seriously to the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, Tel Aviv activates terrorist sleeper cells in Sinai to deal blows to the Egyptian army. Past years witnessed many plots of this kind hatched by the Israelis. The latest are May 9 terrorist attacks on an Egyptian checkpoint in Sinai desert that killed 11 army personnel and injured 5.
On the heels of the attack, Rai Al-Youm newspaper reported that regional observers unanimously agree that Israel was behind this attack and others targeting the Egyptian army and other positions as it is the only Arab army that remains coherent and strong and poses serious threat to Israeli occupation as Iraqi and Syrian armies suffered in terrorist wars of attrition designed by the Israelis and their Western allies. It can surely be said that despite their diplomatic relationship, enmity between Cairo and Tel Aviv remains at its full tilt as the Israelis disapprove of any power in the vicinity of the occupied Palestinian territories and work with full force to weaken and remove them.
Revelation of such crimes, plenty more of which are found in Israeli record, is a warning to compromising Arab regimes, telling them that the Israelis are committed to no humanitarian rules in dealing with the Arabs and the crimes are not limited to Palestine and Egypt and other Arab states can fall victim and history can repeat itself for them.
