Egyptian memorial in Israel in a state of disrepair - The Jerusalem Post

Egyptian memorial to soldiers who died during Israel’s War of Independence in southern Israel. (photo credit: ANNA AHRONHEIM)

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An Egyptian memorial to soldiers who died during Israel’s War of Independence in southern Israel is falling apart.

A left turn off of Route 35 in southern Israel will take you to the Givati museum, but take a right turn and you will find a gas station, a spa and an obelisk.

Random? Not really. 

The obelisk is the memorial to Egyptian soldiers who died during the War of Independence in 1948, and is a short 25-minute drive from the Ad Halom interchange outside the community of Sde Yoav.

Made of red Egyptian granite with an inscription in four languages - English, Hebrew, Arabic and Hieroglyphics - it was erected in 1989, ten years after the peace treaty signed between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

“This monument was erected in memory of four Egyptian soldiers who fell in the Battle for Al-Falouja in June 1948,” reads one heavily cracked sign, with the names of Col. Ahmad Abdel al-aziz, Col. Ahmad Fahim Bayoumi, Col. Ibrahim Qutub al-Sayyad, Pvt. Abu al-Hasan Hasan Isawi.

But 30 years after it went up, the monument is in need of heavy restoration work, as several granite slabs are cracked or have fallen off. The inscriptions on the monument itself are barely visible, likely due to years of exposure to the strong Mediterranean sun.

The site is also relatively abandoned, with no visitors in sight when this reporter visited, and gas station workers unaware of the history of the monument standing only meters away from them. 

The Jerusalem Post tried several times to contact the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv, but there has yet been no response.

During the 1948 war, 2,500 Egyptian soldiers and their 500 armored vehicles had planned to reach Tel Aviv but only made it as far at Ad Halom (Ashdod) after encountering fierce resistance from Israeli outposts. 

The Ad Halom bridge had served as the only pass along the coast for thousands of years. But Israel, anticipating an attack from their southern enemy, blew it up days before the joint attack by Arab armies.

The Egyptians never made it to Tel Aviv and lost an estimated 2,000 soldiers.

After the war, the bridge was rebuilt and a commemorative park was established nearby, with a wall commemorating the soldiers who fell in battle in the area.

Forty years after a “cold peace” was signed between Jerusalem and Cairo, the two sides are reported to be working closely together in the restive Sinai Peninsula against Islamic State militants and rocket smuggling into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Egyptian forces also prevented the desecration of an IDF monument near el-Arish in 2012 by a group of local Bedouin who planned to paint the tri-colors of the Egyptian flag and a map of pre-1948 Palestine over it.

According to reports, Egyptian forces have stopped several attempts to deface the monument, a memorial to 10 Israeli soldiers killed in a helicopter crash near the site in 1971 when the Sinai was still under Israeli control.

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https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Egyptian-memorial-in-Israel-in-a-state-of-disrepair-592133

2019-06-11 12:22:30Z
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