Egyptian officials said Israel will not be represented at the annual bookfair opening in Cairo Thursday for lack of space, according to reports from Cairo today. It will be the second consecutive year that Israel is absent from the event.
According to the reports, the Egyptians say Israel was invited but was late in responding and by then no more stalls were available. But diplomatic sources hinted a political motive. Only last Thursday, the Islamic Conference, meeting in Morocco, agreed to invite Egypt to resume its membership. Egypt had been suspended when it signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Israel was banned from last year’s Cairo bookfair to protest its invasion of Lebannon in June, 1982. The normalization process between Cairo and Jerusalem has been frozen since then.Egypt has not returned its Ambassador to Tel Aviv. President Hosni Mubarak was quoted by King Hassan of Morocco over the weekend as saying that “For Egypt, Camp David is dead” because Egypt has gained what it wanted — recovery of Sinai and its oil.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
