Egypt was on a state of alert yesterday after protesters stormed the Israeli embassy, prompting the ambassador to flee, in the first attack of its kind since the two nations made peace 32 years ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the mob attack a “serious incident” and an unnamed official warned it was a “painful blow to peace” between Egypt and the Jewish state.
US President Barack Obama asked Egypt to protect the embassy housed in a high-rise building overlooking the Nile in Cairo’s Giza district, as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe expressed concern over Egyptian-Israeli ties.
The Israeli official said Ambassador Yitzhak Levanon, other staff and dependants had all left Egypt but that a senior diplomat remained behind. “We left the deputy ambassador to keep up contact with the Egyptian government,” the official told AFP in Jerusalem.
He said six embassy staff were plucked to safety by Egyptian commandos.
“It was a painful blow to the peace between us and a grave violation of diplomatic norms,” the official said.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli government said Levanon would return to Egypt only after security could be guaranteed.
After a meeting with the ruling military council, Information Minister Osama Heikal had harsh words for the violence and said authorities will take all necessary steps to preserve order, including the protection of embassies.
Calling the unrest an “attack on Egypt’s image”, he said “it is clear that the behaviour of certain people menaces the Egyptian state in its entirety”, and that “exceptional circumstances demand decisive judicial measures.”
Consequently, the “security forces will have recourse to all necessary measures, including the right to legitimate self-defence, to preserve the security of the homeland”.
He also said Cairo would apply “all articles” of an emergency law in force for 30 years that provides greater powers to the judiciary and police.
He also affirmed Egypt’s “total commitment to respecting international conventions, including the protection of all (diplomatic) missions.”
The embassy attack was the worst since Israel established its mission in Egypt after becoming the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979.