Israeli Ynetnews reported on Friday night that a former Egyptian prisoner of war said that he witnesses Labor member of Knesset and the National Infrastructure Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, killing two captive Egyptian soldiers during the 1967 war, for drinking water without his permission.The Gulf News Website reported on Friday that the former Egyptian soldier, Ameen Abdul-Rahman, stated that he was captured by the Israeli soldiers during the 1967 Mideast war. He stated that after the war started on June 5 1967 in central Sinai desert, he was taken prisoner in Al Husna in Sinai.
Abdul-Rahman served in the reconnaissance corps of the Egyptian army. He said that “it was very hot at that time, and the captured soldiers were very thirsty, adding that Israeli soldiers ordered the captured Egyptian officers to gather near a water tank to drink from it, but when they did, soldiers executed them using machine guns.
Israeli online daily Ynetnews, which republished the Gulf News article, said that Abdul-Rahman, who was imprisoned by Israel, accused Ben-Eliezer of killing two Egyptian prisoners of war.
Abdul-Rahman stated that Egyptian soldiers, including himself, were detained in a makeshift camp surrounded with a barbed wire fence.
He stated that after the captured soldiers could no longer handle the thirst, he collected that shoe laces from his colleagues and made a long rope which he tied to a military boot.
“I used this technique to bring water from a nearby ditch, but the soldiers noticed and took us to their commander who was Ben-Eliezer”, Abdul-Rahman said, “he spoke Arabic in an Iraqi dialect”.
“He shot an Egyptian military commander and a soldier for arguing with him over the water”, Abdul-Rahman added, “I survived, miraculously”.
The case of the slain captured soldiers was raised after Israeli TV aired a documentary that stated that a battalion under the command of Ben-Eliezer killed 250 Egyptian soldiers after they surrendered to the Israeli forces.
Following the report, several Egyptian members of parliament called on their government to cut its ties with Israel.
Ben-Eliezer was planning to visit Egypt but had to cancel his trip over fears of being arrested for war crimes after the documentary was published.
