Egyptians absorb impact of Israel embassy attack

CAIRO (Ma'an, Reuters) -- Two days after protesters stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo, sparking clashes that killed three people, Egyptians were still taking in the impact of the event.

On Saturday, Egypt's army rulers, who took over from deposed president Hosni Mubarak, vowed to try those behind the violence that pushed Israel to evacuate its ambassador from Cairo, as they struggled to contain public fury against Israel, while fending off U.S. criticism.

Washington, which has poured billions of dollars in military aid into Egypt since it made peace with Israel in 1979, urged Cairo to protect the mission after protesters hurled embassy documents from the windows of the building and removed and burned the Israeli flag.

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Three people died in the clashes that began on Friday and raged on into the early hours of Saturday around the Cairo tower block housing the embassy, the Health Ministry said. Police and soldiers fired shots in the air and tear gas to disperse the crowd, which replied with stones.

The protest developed after a Friday demonstration in Tahrir square in support of the goals of the Egyptian revolution. A group of demonstrators then marched on the Israeli embassy and broke down a wall the army had constructed around it, storming the building.

It was the second big eruption of violence at the embassy since five Egyptian border guards were killed last month when Israel repelled cross-border raiders it said were Palestinians.

On Sunday one of the protesters voiced sympathy with the outpouring of anti-Israeli sentiment that had been bottled up during the Mubarak years, when any such demonstration would have been prohibited.

"We began to move towards the embassy, with the normal demands - the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, the destruction of the wall [around the embassy], that kind of things. And just like the Israelis killed our brothers… well, we weren't given dignity before, so we wanted to have dignity, that's all. And we wanted to inform the world, the Arab world and all the other countries, that we will have dignity inside Egypt and outside of our borders," the protester who said his brother had been arrested by the army, told Reuters.

Another resident denounced the level of violence.

"These are not our values at all, nothing that happened, those aggressive acts, reflect our values. It is well known that the foreigner in our land is respected. What happened never happens here. There is a specific group that has done this, but not the Egyptian youths," the man, named Ahmed, said.

Israel has stopped short of apologizing for the killing of the Egyptian border guards, saying it is still investigating the Egyptian deaths, which occurred during an operation against gunmen who had killed eight Israelis.

Israeli ambassador Yitzhak Levanon, staff and family members arrived home on Saturday, but one diplomat stayed in Egypt to maintain the embassy, an Israeli official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would preserve its 1979 peace with Egypt despite the incident, and that he hoped the ambassador would return soon.

Emad Gad, a foreign policy expert who specializes in Arab-Israeli relations, said that the Egyptian military and transitional government had demonstrated that they have no intention of letting the current crisis spin out of control.

"Now that there is a sort of feeling of being free from the restrictions that were put in place by the the Mubarak regime, Egyptians express their fury about this issue, but I can say that, in light of the way the Military Council and the government have handled this crisis, and the killing of Egyptian soldiers on the borders -- that the Egyptian side understands that handling Egyptian relations with Israel will be by all means except for war, all means except breaking off relations, all means except escalating the state of belligerency," he said.

Gad noted that the uprising that toppled Mubarak was focused almost entirely on the internal Egyptian affairs was not aimed against Israel.

"Egyptian and Arab public opinion has been fed with hatred towards Israel, and this has been doubled as a result of the Israeli policies against the Palestinians, and the Lebanese, to which no solution or a political settlement has been reached. But I will remind you that throughout the 18 days of the Egyptian revolution there was not a single slogan against Israel," he said.

Israel is finding itself increasingly at odds with formerly sympathetic states in the region. It is embroiled in a feud with Turkey, once the closest of its few Muslim allies, over an Israeli raid last year that killed nine Turks on a flotilla bound for Gaza.

Egypt's ties with Israel, though never warm, were a pillar of Mubarak's foreign policy and buttressed his claim to be a regional mediator.

Under Mubarak, displays of hostility to Israel were crushed by force