An Egyptian court has banned the export of natural gas to Israel. On May 8th Economy Arabia wrote:
On November 19, 2008 an Egyptian court ruled in favour of Ibrahim Yousri, a lawyer who said that Egypt is losing $9m for each day because of that agreement. Egyptian Chronicles wrote:
Ok this is a blow to the government , to Hussein Salem and to Israel. The judicial administrative court bans natural gas exports to Israel today. Now the Egyptian Government is obligated to listen to the court order or will they neglect it as usual?? More to come. I am very happy by the way.
And in a follow up post, she wrote:
Economically the Egyptian government made a huge mistake when it signed the agreement to export natural gas to Israel through Hussein Salem’s EMG Co. It is unacceptable to waste your natural gas for price less than the average price now especially prices are escalating and we are entering an energy crisis era. It is unacceptable to export your natural gas to Israel without the approval of the people represented in the Parliament. It is unacceptable to export natural gas to Israel when the people in Gaza got no fuel.
Then she quoted the basis of the court's decision as per the judicial administrative:
The oil ministry has broken the constitution and law with its agreement in 2005 to export natural gas to Israel for 20 years. According to article no. 123 in the Egyptian constitution “ The natural resources are considered a very valuable resources to be owned by the coming generations not only for the current generations and thus the administrative authorities before the exploit of these natural resources should go to the parliament to be grant the permission”
At the end of her post she concluded that:
… the regime could not dare and go to the parliament to get an approval because it knows very well the people would refuse it totally.
As for Israel's reaction, she wrote:
The Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure expressed Israel's confidence that the political agreement between the countries' governments will remain in force in keeping with the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed in 2005!! I also will quote their closing line in the same article in Haatrez : The court's ruling is subject to appeal in a higher administrative court and the Egyptian government sometimes ignores court rulings it does not like.
