I didn’t recognize Perez: Egypt’s Muslim cleric

Leading Sunni Muslim cleric Muhammad Tantawi has branded the editors of an Israeli newspaper "liars" for reporting what he insists was an inadvertent handshake with Israeli President Shimon Peres, media outlets reported Sunday.

Tantawi, who heads Cairo's al-Azhar University, said last week that he did not recognize the octogenarian Peres when he "passingly" shook his hand at a U.N.-sponsored religious dialogue last month.

Tantawi also said he had no idea that Gaza was under a seige.

"I do not know whether there is a siege of Gaza," he said. "What siege? What rubbish? The siege has been there for months."

The Israeli newspaper Maariv ran details of the encounter, reporting that Tantawi had approached the Israeli Nobel Peace laureate and conversed with him.

Tantawi responded furiously to the report, telling an Egyptian television anchor that the Maariv editors were "liars and sons of 60...", an abbreviation of an Arabic insult that often ends by calling a parent a dog or a prostitute, according to a transcript obtained by Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Yom.

A senior journalist at Maariv told AFP that the report, by veteran correspondent Jackie Hugi, was carefully sourced.

"The newspaper stands by the report, and I stand by what Jackie published because of his history," he said, requesting anonymity.

Another Israeli daily, Haaretz, had also published a report last week saying Tantawi was the one who approached Peres, and that he clasped Peres's hand for several minutes while talking to him.

I do not know whether there is a siege of Gaza. What siege? What rubbish? The siege has been there for months,

Al-Azhar University Chief Muhammad Tantawi

So what...?!

The handshake with Peres caused a furor in the Egyptian opposition press and prompted demands from an opposition member of parliament that Tantawi, who is government-appointed, be sacked. Other parliamentarians called for a protest campaign to urge Tantawi to resign from his post at Sunni Islam's leading religious authority.

In the television interview, Tantawi rhetorically asked whether the handshake "had destroyed Palestine."

"He was in a place, and I was in the same place walking like this, and he met me, stretched out his hand, so I greeted him," said Tantawi, again insisting that he had not recognized Peres.

"And suppose I knew him?" he said. "So what... Isn't he from a country that we recognize? Didn’t he visit Egypt two months ago and was received by the president (Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak)? What’s the big deal when a man shakes hand with another?"

In an interview with AlArabiya.net following the incident, Tantawi asked if a handshake with Perez would solve the Palestinian issue or further complicate it. “Even if I knew him before, have I lost my faith by shaking hand with him?”

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, in 1979.

Responding to a question on the propriety of shaking Peres's hand while Israel maintains a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, Tantawi said the matter should be taken up with Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.