Israeli spouses threaten Egypt's security: lawyer

Egyptians married to Israelis may face having their citizenship revoked as their marriage poses a threat to Egypt's "national security," Cairo's Administrative Court argued to the Egyptian government on Tuesday.

The court argued children born to Egyptian and Israeli parents threaten the country's security as children with dual citizenship may be targeted by Israel as recruits for its spy agency, Mosad, or the Israeli army.

"It is incumbent on all authorities in the state to hinder this phenomenon to avoid inevitable corruption and threat to national security in the highest sense," the court said.

The court called on the interior ministry to present the case to the cabinet after a number of lawyers filed law suits against both the ministers of interior and foreign affairs and argued that such marriages contradicted article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Thousands of married Egyptians

Nabih al-Wahsh, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit, said it was necessary to put a stop to such marriages and said the number of Egyptians married to Israelis had risen over the years as the number of Egyptian men who travel to Israel for work has increased.

"There are polls that found up to 14,000 Egyptian men are married to Israelis. This must be looked into," Wahsh told Al Arabiya.

Several Egyptians who went to Israel to look for work had married either Israeli Jews or Palestinian women with Israeli citizenship.

Thousands of Egyptians went to Israel for work in the 1990s after employment opportunities declined in Arab countries especially in Iraq where two million Egyptians worked before the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

(Translated from the Arabic by Marwa Awad)

There are polls that found up to 14,000 Egyptian men are married to Israelis. This must be looked into

Nabih al Wahsh, lawyer