Israel has “not officially informed the Foreign Ministry that the Israeli ambassador’s home in Cairo was chosen as the new headquarters for the Israeli Embassy,,” diplomatic sources said on Thursday.
The sources added that according to diplomatic custom, any country in the world is entitled to use its ambassador’s residence in the manner it deems most suitable.
The sources said they believed the Israeli decision to be a temporary one.
In response to a question on whether or not the necessary security requirements were available to convert the Israeli ambassador’s place of residence into an embassy, the sources confirmed that Egyptian security services would consider the situation if Israel officially informs it that it has been chosen as the new embassy headquarters.
In a report on Wednesday, Israeli state television’s Channel 10 said the Israeli Foreign Ministry allocated the ground floor of the Israeli ambassador’s villa in Maadi for embassy activities after the failure of efforts to obtain a new embassy to replace the one that was vandalized by Egyptian protesters in September 2011.
Angry Egyptian protesters raided the embassy in September following an Israeli border raid that had killed six Egyptian security officers days earlier. The killings provoked calls to revoke the peace treaty signed by both countries in 1979.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
