Egypt: Israel gave Muslim children for adoption by European Christians

A Israeli bomb explodes on the Egyptian military positions on the western side of the Suez Canal, on February 13, 1970, during the so-called “War of Attrition” between Israel and Egypt. [AFP via Getty Images]

Several Muslim Egyptian children were apparently smuggled by the Israeli occupation authorities during the 1970s from Egypt to Europe for adoption by Christian families, Arabi Post reported yesterday. This was revealed during investigations conducted by the state comptroller, which confirmed that sending the children for adoption was illegal.

In the early 1970s, three abandoned children were found in the city of El-Arish in North Sinai and they were handed over to the Israeli authorities occupying the peninsula at the time. The commander of the Military Government and the Israeli Welfare Minister decided to send them for adoption in Europe.

During the investigation into that case, details of which have recently been revealed, the state comptroller came across another example where a child born to a Muslim family outside of marriage was also sent for adoption by a Christian family in Europe. The mother in this case gave her written permission.

READ: Egypt’s air strikes on Sinai good timing for $1.3bn US military aid package

According to newly-released official documents, at the time that these cases were revealed two children had been handed over to the new families and two were due to be handed over. Employees in the office of the state comptroller were not happy about about the opinion of the legal advisor of the Welfare Ministry, so they sought the opinion of their own legal department.

The Deputy of the State Comptroller, Shmuel Hollander, replied that dealing with children was illegal and “morally unacceptable”. He pointed out that handing over children of Muslim families to Christian families in Europe was a violation of the local law in Sinai, as well as international law. He cited articles from the Geneva conventions and other treaties.

The legal expert added that the correct thing to do was to contact the local community leaderships, the welfare organisations in the occupied West Bank or the International Committee for the Red Cross.

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.