Senior Palestinian official denied entry to Egypt

A senior Palestinian official has been denied entry to Egypt, prompting a Palestinian delegation to withdraw in protest from a counterterrorism conference he was to attend, officials said Tuesday.

Jibril Rajoub, a senior member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, said he was “surprised by the Egyptian security decision to ban me from entering Egypt.”

Rajoub, who also heads the Palestinian Football Association, said the Egyptian minister of youth and sports had been waiting at the airport to meet him.

An Egyptian airport official said Rajoub was rejected “on the instruction of one of the Egyptian security services,” without giving further details.

Munir al-Jaghoub, who heads Fatah’s Information Department in the Office of Mobilization and Organization, said in a post on his personal Facebook page that Rajoub had been invited by the Arab League to attend the conference.

Palestinian Authority Justice Minister Ali Abu Diak, who was scheduled to participate in the conference at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, announced that he was withdrawing in protest, a Palestinian official said.

Egypt, one of only two Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, plays a major role in the Arab League, which is based in Cairo.

Earlier in February, Rajoub, a former head of the Palestinian Preventative Security service in the West Bank, was appointed secretary-general of Fatah by the party’s 18-member Central Committee.

He is considered a possible successor to the 82-year-old Abbas.

Cairo generally has good relations with Fatah, while accusing its Islamist counterpart Hamas, the terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, as a troublesome enabler of the Islamic State in the Sinai.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry made his first visit to Ramallah in June, with a message from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of support to Abbas and the Palestinian people.