THE Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mr Amr Moussa, said yesterday the Middle East peace process was in a "major crisis" and urged all concerned parties to rescue it.
Meanwhile, Israel said it would complain to the UN Committee on Human Rights over the Palestinian Authority's racist" decision to impose the death penalty on people who sell land to Jews.
Mr Moussa was speaking to reporters after President Hosni Mubarak and the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, discussed ways to revive talks between Palestinians and Israel.
The talks have been on hold since Israel on March 18th started building a 6,500 home Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967 and later annexed.
Mr Arafat said in an interview published yesterday he backed the recent decision to enforce an old Jordanian law in the West Bank imposing the death penalty for land sales to Jews.
A statement issued by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, said: "The cabinet secretary, who is also the chairman of the government forum following anti Semitism worldwide, is about to present the UN committee on human rights with a complaint about the Palestinian Authority decision.
The decision is in essence racist and reeks of anti Semitism," it added.
Meanwhile, a member of the Israel Lands Administration council and the deputy chairman of the quasi governmental Jewish National Fund told Israel Radio that, despite a ban, there were Israelis who were selling land "back to the Arabs".
A Jordanian soldier who shot dead seven Israeli schoolgirls will go on trial in a military court next week charged with premeditated murder, his defence lawyer said yesterday.
Mr Ahmed alDaqamsa faces death by hanging if found guilty by the five member panel of military judges, his lawyer, Mr Ahmed Nijdawi, said. Mr Daqamsa has not denied shooting the girls as they visited the lush Jordan Valley farmland of Baqoura, leased to Israel in a 1994 treaty and known to Israelis as the Island of Peace".