Protesters broke into the Israeli Embassy in Cairo Friday and dumped documents out of the windows as hundreds more demonstrated outside, prompting the ambassador and his family to leave the country. The unrest was a further worsening of already deteriorating ties between Israel and post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt.
Egyptian police made no attempt to intervene during the day as crowds of hundreds tore down an embassy security wall with sledgehammers and their bare hands or after nightfall when about 30 protesters stormed into the Nile-side high-rise building where the embassy is located.In Washington, President Barack Obama expressed “great concern” about the situation in Cairo and called on Egyptian authorities to protect the Israeli mission.Since the fall of former leader Hosni Mubarak in February, calls have grown in Egypt for ending the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
Anger escalated last month after Israeli forces responding to a cross-border militant attack mistakenly killed five Egyptian police officers near the border.First Erdogan said he’ll suspend defense ties with Israel until Netanyahu apologizes for the raid; now, in a bit of Nasserite pandering to the Israel-hating Arab Street, he’s vowing to send Turkish warships to escort the next flotilla to Gaza. Give him credit for being opportunistic: With Egypt in limbo, Syria being torn apart, and Iran suddenly nervous about losing its regional client regimes and possibly having to deal with another uprising, there’s a big fat power vacuum in the Middle East and Turkey’s going to try to fill it. Not so long ago that would have been good news — Turkey’s a NATO member, after all, and historically has been more secular than other Muslim states — but with Erdogan and the Islamists now in charge, who knows what those warships will do?
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