Israeli sources expect Mubarak's visit to Tel Aviv shortly

Israeli sources expected that the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will shortly visit Israel before the end of the current year.

The Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom notified a parliamentary commission that Mubarak will visit the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in his farm in the south of Israel within three months.

The spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry Mark Rejev stressed talks held between Tel Aviv and Cairo on the expected visit by the Egyptian president but no date was fixed for that.

Worthy mentioning that since he assumed the post of the President in Egypt in 1981, President Mubarak did not visit Israel except for one time in 1996, to take part in the funeral of the former Israeli prime minister Yitzhaq Rabin.

During almost quarter a century, Mubarak was confined to receive Israeli officials in Egypt considering that his visit to Israel will provide nothing new to peace.

Coolness overwhelmed the Israeli- Egyptian relations during the years of the Palestinian Intifada, but these relations started to improve by the end of 2004 with Egypt's release of the Israeli spy Azzam Azzam, and the signing of a trade agreement between the two countries.

Egypt also mediated in the truce between the Palestinian and Israeli side in February and agreed to return back its ambassador to Tel Aviv after that. In one of his statement recently, Mubarak called in the Palestinians to make use of an opportunity and reach a peace agreement with Sharon.

Cairo took part in the arrangements of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in an agreement with the Israeli side to deploy 750 soldiers of the Egyptian borders guards along Egypt's borders with Gaza.