Cairo: Having failed to pressurise President Hosni Mubarak's government to expel the Israeli ambassador from Cairo, the Egyptian opposition has shifted its attention to a new front. Opposition MPs demand the Government take strict measures to stop Egyptians from marrying Israelis.
"This phenomenon is alarming," said MP Hamdeen Sabahi, who heads the Al Karama (Dignity) opposition party.
"Many young Egyptians, desperate for a job, just cross the border to Israel to work there. They eventually get married to Israeli girls and have children," he told Gulf News.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Jordan followed suit in 1994.
Sabahi added that children born as a result of Egyptian-Israeli marriages later became Egyptian citizens.
"A situation in which children are raised inside the Zionist state fed on hatred of the Arabs, is full of peril to national security," he argued.
Sabahi warns that "Egypt's culture and identity" are at stake.
Karama MPs have already presented requests to the Government to act against these marriages. The Egyptian Parliament is now in summer recess.
Around 15,000 Egyptians are married to Israelis, according to opposition estimates. There are no independent sources to confirm the figure.
Sabahi believes that the best solution to the problem is "to bar children of Israeli mothers and Egyptian fathers from getting Egyptian nationality."
"Young Egyptians must also be stopped from going to Israel," says Sabahi.
His demand draws objections from human rights groups, however.
"The Government has no right to make any exceptions in granting citizenship. This action would be racial and discriminatory," said Hafez Abu Seida, Chairman of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights.
He explained that if the Egyptian Government decided not to give children born of an Egyptian-Israeli marriage Egyptian nationality, it would be violating the constitution and international law.
"However, Egyptian law gives the Minister of the Interior the right to prevent children of Egyptian fathers and foreign mothers from getting Egyptian citizenship if they do not drop the nationality of their mothers," he said.
"But, I have to say that granting nationality should not be made on grounds of religion, colour or sex," he told this paper.
Anti-Israel protests have mounted in Egypt over recent weeks in response to the Jewish state's attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinians.