From Reuters:
Egypt said on Monday it would re-establish formal diplomatic ties with Costa Rica and El Salvador following decisions by both countries to move their embassies in Israel to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem.
Costa Rica and El Salvador had been the only countries in the world with embassies in Jerusalem before they announced their separate decisions last month to pull their diplomatic missions from the city.
“In light of this step, the necessary procedures are currently being taken to restore diplomatic relations with the two countries,” Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit told journalists.
Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, cut ties with Costa Rica and El Salvador in the 1980s after they opened embassies in Jerusalem, according to Egyptian state news agency MENA.
Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias announced the embassy move last month, followed shortly by El Salvador.
“It’s time to rectify an historic error that hurts us internationally and deprives us of almost any form of friendship with the Arab world, and more broadly with Islamic civilisation, to which a sixth of humanity belongs,” Arias said at the time.
Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Israel considers the entire city its undivided and eternal capital. Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of a future state.
Typical Egypt! While it has one of the most servile relationships with Israel – perhaps with the House of Saud and Jordan outdoing it only marginally – in the world, it still insists on going through all the motions… Infuriating, esp while Egyptian gov’t did literally nothing but stir more and more trouble and anger through the war on Lebanon. Even having grown accustomed to it, this diplomatic/political duplicity continues to make me and a whole lot of other people very, very ill.
Congratulations on a beautifully laid out blog ya gameel :) It’ll be fun posting stuff on here. But pls fix the right-to-left text on comments page… Lots of love
Thanks ya shabab for your kind words and support…