In addition, the broader regional peace that was to have been built on the keystone of Camp David appears more elusive than ever.

"Egypt no longer has an ambassador in Tel Aviv, political ties are bad, economic exchanges are frozen and the Egyptian people are increasingly hostile toward Israel," Egyptian researcher Emad Gad said.

Gad, who specializes in Israeli-Egyptian relations for the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said Cairo newspapers have recently stepped up their attacks on Israel.

The government newspaper Al-Ahram on Sunday called for the Israeli ambassadors in Egypt and Jordan to be expelled if Israel follows through on threats to exile Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Gad said that though the Camp David Accords allowed Egypt to recover the Sinai desert from Israel, they have failed to end chronic Egyptian hostility toward Israel.

"Most of today's students were born after the return of Egyptian territory (in 1982), and that has not stopped them from listing Israel as the number one enemy," he said.

The Camp David Accords, signed on September 17, 1978 at the White House, comprise two parts.

The first was a bilateral arrangement which paved the way six months later for the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country; the second was a framework agreement for self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

The second part was never implemented, though the Palestinians and Israelis struck a secret deal at Oslo more than 14 years later that paved the way for a measure of Palestinian autonomy similar to that outlined at Camp David.

Relations improved in the years after Oslo under Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, but took a turn for the worse after Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and right-winger Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process became deadlocked during the Netanyahu years.

The election of leftist Ehud Barak as premier in 1999 held out the promise of warming relations until the Palestinian uprising erupted on September 28, 2000, with Egypt accusing Israel of using excessive force to crush it.

Since hardliner Ariel Sharon became premier in March 2001, ties have hit rock bottom.

Few members of the Israeli government visit Egypt, while Egypt has only been sending envoys to Israel in its capacity as a mediator with the Palestinian side.

Hosni Mubarak, who became Egyptian president in 1981 after Islamic militants assassinated his predecessor Anwar Sadat over Camp David, only set foot in Israel in 1995 for Rabin's funeral.

Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Gideon Ben-Ami, said the peace treaty that emerged from Camp David is durable, even though it has failed to produce the desired benefits.

"The treaty managed to survive the ups and downs of the volatile Middle East peace process, and to prove its irreversibility," Ben-Ami told AFP in a written response to a query by e-mail.

But he added that "Egyptian-Israeli current relations are by far unsatisfactory, primarily due to the consequences and shockwaves of the second 'intifada' and Egypt's obvious solidarity with the Palestinian side."

"Naturally, one feels disappointed and frustrated with the linkage made by the Egyptians between the tiresome progress on the Palestinian track, and normalization, as we Israelis conceive it," Ben-Ami said.

Ben-Ami said Israel's exports to Egypt have dropped from 47 million dollars in 2001 to 22 million dollars in 2002. Egyptian exports to Israel, especially oil, in line with the Camp David accords, are stable at around 20.3 million dollars annually.

"Tens of thousands of (Israeli) tourists keep on pouring into the country to spend their holidays in Sinai's attractive resorts and elsewhere," the ambassador said.

"Regrettably, this is one way tourism, that is quite symptomatic to the ongoing ban on normalization with Israel imposed by the Egyptian unions," whether writers, artists, journalists and others, he said.

Emad Gad said Israeli-Egyptian relations are still worsening as the peace process bogs down. "The tricky issues like spies or executed prisoners of (past) wars resurface in periods of crisis," he added.

Sharon said last month that Egypt could not be involved in the Middle East peace process if it did not release Israeli national Azzam Azzam, jailed in Egypt for spying -- a way to deny Egypt the key mediating role it cherishes.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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