Israel Egypt

My husband and I just returned from Israel and Egypt, and I want to shout from the rooftops that we had been misled about the risk of visiting these countries. We never felt afraid. The visible security in both countries is quite reassuring. I encourage people to relax and not be afraid to travel. Mona Shafer Edwards Los Angeles

President Bush plans to nominate two career diplomats as ambassadors to Israel and Egypt, the White House said. Bush plans to name Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's senior advisor on Iraq, Richard Jones, ambassador to Israel, and Francis Ricciardone, who in 2004 helped coordinate the establishment of a U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, for the post in Egypt. The nominations will go to the Senate for approval.

Israel is poised to sign a free-trade agreement with Egypt and the United States this month, a pact that is expected to spur export growth and boost its ties within the region, the country's trade and industry minister said Sunday. Speaking at a business conference, Ehud Olmert said the agreement would be signed Dec. 14 in Cairo and would enable free trade among Egypt, Israel and the United States. "It is an historic breakthrough since we signed the [1979] peace treaty" with Egypt, he said.

Re "That Sinking Feeling," Opinion, March 28: Twenty-five years ago, critics of the American-brokered Israel-Egypt peace treaty were scorned as opponents of peace. Intervening events, however, have proved them right. Without the Arab world's largest army to deter it, Israel has had a free hand to oppress Palestinians, ignore "land for peace" and begin a slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. As fury against Israel and America mounts worldwide, the public must ask whether the billions to Israel, along with the treaty-provided billions in bribes to Egypt, purchase anything other than an ongoing framework for terrorism.

In 1997 I attended an international conference at Tel Aviv University. The meeting was barely an hour old when an Egyptian scholar, who had just delivered a particularly harsh anti-Israeli comment, collapsed with a thud on the floor. An alert Israeli quickly administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and the rest of us were ushered out. As we milled about in the hall awaiting an ambulance, the conversation turned to the political complications likely to arise if the Egyptian died.

President Bush will meet next month with the leaders of Israel, Egypt and Jordan, the White House announced, in a new round of Middle East diplomacy. Bush will play host to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his ranch on April 12. He will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14 and with Jordan's King Abdullah II on April 21.

CAIRO -- The loneliest diplomatic job in Egypt these days belongs to Gideon Benami, the Israeli ambassador, who has been isolated by the deterioration of relations between two countries that signed a peace treaty 23 years ago. With President Hosni Mubarak having recalled his ambassador to Jerusalem and frozen contacts with Israel, Benami finds himself cut off at his heavily guarded downtown embassy and his residence in suburban Maadi.

A precedent exists for returning antiquities uncovered in the Golan Heights if Israel and Syria achieve peace. But the path taken by Israel and Egypt was long, unpleasant and largely unsatisfying. Pieces of the past excavated during Israel's 15-year occupation of the Sinai peninsula eventually were returned to Egypt with great fanfare after sometimes contentious negotiations.

A state security court Sunday convicted an Israeli Arab of espionage and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor in what appeared to be the most serious example yet of the deepening rift in relations between Israel and Egypt. Azam Azam, a technician at a garment factory that was one of the few Israeli-Egyptian joint ventures in Egypt, had been accused in a plot to recruit an Egyptian textile worker as an economic spy for Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak patched up half a year of festering animosity Friday, putting back on track the longest-running Arab-Israeli relationship and enlisting Mubarak for renewed support of Israel's peace talks with Syria and other Arabs.