Dear delegates we are here to discuss one of the most important issues over the

last 52 years which is the question of Palestine. And for my country this has been a
very important case on our agenda and Egypt has always been looking forward to
solve it since the former presidents Abdulnasser and Saddat till the current
president Hosni Mubarak.

As Egypt we believe in the “Two-state” solution so both Palestinians and Israelis can
live peacefully, a lot of efforts is being done to try and approximate the point of
views and because of the leading role of Egypt in the Middle East my country
always embrace discussions between the two sides of the conflict.

The main evidence for what I am saying is the many conferences that is held in
Egypt to try and solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or even the Palestinian-
Palestinian conflict. For example the efforts of Omar Suleiman the”Director of
the General Intelligence Directorate of Egypt” to make the different Palestinian
factions sign the Egyptian paper of reconciliation which is going to narrow a
schism between specially Fatah and Hamas; which will then hopefully help in
approximating the Palestinian views as there is going to be one representative that
can talk in the name of Palestinian people.

Another example is the Sharm El Sheikh summit held on the 14th of September few
days after the resumption of direct peace negotiations between Palestinians and
Israelis that have stopped since about 2 years. Egypt is playing a main role in these
negotiations as the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is meeting with each of the
different parties to help creating the right climate for negotiations so hopefully it
will lead up to something good, also the Egyptian president mentioned that dividing
Jerusalem into two parts could be one of the solutions on the scene.

Another important issue my country wants to discuss is the closure of the Rafah
crossing; our main aim is to regulate the entrance of the aids as this crossing is
originally for people to pass and it is hard to pass the aids through it so my country
is trying to maximize the amount of aids that can be passed by this “regulations”.
And this crossing is subject to the convention in 2005 between Egypt, Palestine,
Israel , US and The European Union which states that the Rafah crossing border
must be under the surveillance of all the parties mentioned above so my country
cannot just open the border all the time and contravene the convention.
The last thing is the steel wall my country is buikding to try and stop smuggling
weapons and drugs through the tunnels between the borders between Egypt and
Palestine, and in 2009 the Egyptian authorities arrested a cell related to Hezb Alaah
trying to do some bombings in Egypt by the help of weapons smuggled through
these tunnels.