Cairo court rejects lawsuit trying to ban Israeli activities in Egypt
Court for Urgent Matters says it has no jurisdiction in lawsuit over Israeli
operations in Egypt, despite ruling in March that the Gaza rulers Hamas be
outlawed
Ahram Online, Friday 18 Apr 2014
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/99171/Egypt/Politics-/Cairo-court-rejects-lawsuit-trying-to-ban-Israeli-.aspx

Cairo's Court for Urgent Matters announced on Wednesday that it does not
have jurisdiction to rule in a recent lawsuit demanding that all Israeli
activities be banned in Egypt, Al-Ahram's Arabic news website reported.

A lawyer – Hamed Sediq – had sent a lawsuit to Egypt's interim President
Adly Mansour and the current interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab earlier
this year calling for all Israeli activities be banned inside Egyptian
territories.

The lawsuit also demanded the closure of the Israeli embassy in Cairo and
all other offices related to it, on the grounds that Israel has been using
violence against Palestinians.

Wednesday's announcement contrasts with a March ruling by the same Cairo
court, when it banned all activities in Egypt by the Gaza-based Hamas group,
pending a court verdict in an espionage case involving ousted president
Mohamed Morsi and 36 members of his Muslim Brotherhood group as well as
members of the Islamist Palestinian movement.

The prosecution accuses the Brotherhood members of collaborating with Hamas,
the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah and other organisations "inside and
outside" of Egypt to smuggle arms, organise military training for group
members in the Gaza Strip and fund a scheme to stir chaos and threaten
national security in Egypt.

Sediq's lawsuit is not the first effort to target Israeli operations in
Egypt.

Last August, Tamarod – the campaign that spearheaded the 30 June protests
which led to Morsi's ouster – launched a petition on its website called
Reviving National Sovereignty that demanded the cancellation of both US aid
and the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

In 2011, several protests were held by Egyptian pro-Palestinian groups
outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo to pressure Egypt's then-ruling Supreme
Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to expel the Israeli ambassador.

Israel's embassy in Egypt, the first of its kind in any Arab country, was
established in 1980, soon after the Camp David peace treaty was signed in
1979.