Confusion over ‘fake’ Egyptian letter to Israel?
AP, Jul 31 2012

A letter to Israel from Egyptian Pres Morsi hoping for regional peace kicked up a stir on Tuesday when the MB denied that he had sent it. Israel insisted the letter was genuine. The letter, released by Israeli Pres Peres’s office, was on the stationery of the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv. In it, Morsi appeared to write in English:

I am looking forward to exerting our best efforts to get the Middle East Peace Process back to its right track in order to achieve security and stability for all peoples of the region, including that Israeli people.

The Israeli president’s name was spelled “Perez”. Then a spokesman for Morsi, Yasser Ali, said in Cairo that Morsi had not written a letter to the Israeli president at all. Ali said:

This is totally untrue. The letter is a fabrication.

He blamed two Israeli newspapers for manufacturing the letter. An official in Peres’s office said the president’s aides received the official communique on Tuesday from the Egyptian ambassador to Israel, both by registered mail and by fax from the embassy in Tel Aviv. Peres’s office asked the Egyptian ambassador if it could publicise the letter or if it should be kept secret, the official said. The Egyptian envoy phoned Morsi’s office to inquire, the official said, and then told Peres’s aides that Morsi’s staff had given the green light for the letter to be made public. Peres’s office sent reporters a copy of what was said to be the faxed letter. The top of the letter featured a time stamp with Tuesday’s date, the phone number from which the fax was sent, and the label “EGY EMB TEL AVIV”. The fax number, which appeared to be printed automatically from the machine that sent the message, was a number listed on Israel’s foreign ministry website as belonging to the Egyptian Embassy in Israel.