Planned Israeli dance festivals in Egypt's Sinai spark outrage

Israeli-organized twin dance festivals in the Sinai have sparked outrage in Egypt as they come just days before the anniversary of the end of the Zionist occupation of the peninsula.
 

The Nabia and Grounded festivals, which coincide with the Jewish Passover holiday, also come as Muslims observe a daytime fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
 

The festivals follow events in which dozens of Palestinian worshippers were injured by Israeli forces, who attacked the Al-Aqsa mosque and compound in al-Quds (Jerusalem) over the weekend.

The Egyptian branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which opposes Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, has called for a boycott of the festival's venues.
 

"As we do every year, we were preparing to celebrate... the stories of the heroic resistance but we discovered that the Zionist occupation was returning to the Sinai," the branch said in a statement on Wednesday.

April 25 is the anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from most of the Sinai in 1982 under a landmark 1979 peace agreement, ending an occupation that began during the Six-Day War of 1967.