Veteran MK says Egyptians ‘miss Mubarak’

Veteran MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor Party) said Wednesday that ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak would always be remembered as a good leader. Egyptians “miss Mubarak,” he declared.

Mubarak was “one of the best leaders in the Middle East,” Ben-Eliezer, a former minister and longtime friend of the jailed former president, told the i24 news television station, a few hours after an Egyptian court decided the former president would be released from prison but placed under house arrest.

Noting that Israel had a very good working relationship with Egyptian security bodies, including military intelligence, Ben-Eliezer said the peace treaty between the countries was mutually beneficial and both sides were interested in preserving it.

Earlier, in an Army Radio interview, Ben-Eliezer addressed the recent developments in Syria, calling the civil war “a holocaust.” On Wednesday, there were widespread reports that chemical weapons were used in the suburbs of Damascus against civilians. According to the opposition, some 1,300 people were killed. Ben-Eliezer alluded to previous remarks by US President Barack Obama, who had called the use of chemical weapons the crossing of a “red line,” and asked why the world wasn’t intervening.

The former minister noted that while Israel wouldn’t act in Syria on its own, Israeli doctors and hospitals were treating dozens of innocent people injured in the conflict.