Weather Climate In Egypt Sources of weather climate in egypt resources from the Web

Egypt is a key partner in the search for peace in the Middle East and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then President of Egypt Anwar Sadat's groundbreaking trip to Israel in 1977, the 1978 Camp David Accords, and the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty represented a fundamental shift in the politics of the region; from a strategy of confrontation to one of peace as a strategic choice. Egypt was subsequently ostracized by other Arab states and ejected from the Arab League from 1979 to 1989.

The Shura Council is the 264-member upper house of Parliament created in 1980. The Shura Council roughly translates to the ‘Consultative Council’ in English. In the Shura Council 174 members are directly elected and 88 members are appointed by the President of the Republic for 6-year terms. One half of the Shura Council is renewed every three years.

Under comprehensive economic reforms initiated in 1991, Egypt has relaxed many price controls, reduced subsidies, and partially liberalized trade and investment. Manufacturing is still dominated by the public sector, which controls virtually all heavy industry. A process of public sector reform and privatization has begun, however, which could enhance opportunities for the private sector. Agriculture, mainly in private hands, has been largely deregulated, with the exception of cotton and sugar production. Construction, non-financial services, and domestic marketing are largely private. This has promoted a steady increase of GNP and the annual growth rate. Among Arab countries, Egypt's GDP is second only to Saudi Arabia's. However, the Egyptian economy relies heavily on tourist revenues. The tourism sector suffered tremendously following a terrorist attack on tourists in Luxor in October 1997, and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, affecting the economy as a whole.

Egypt is famous for its ancient civilisation and some of the world's most stunning ancient monuments, including the Giza Pyramids, the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. The southern city of Luxor contains what accounts to two-thirds of the ancient artifacts present in the entire world. Today, Egypt is widely regarded as the main political and cultural centre of the Arab and Middle Eastern regions.

Egypt played an important role in the negotiations leading to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, which, under United States and Russian sponsorship, brought together all parties in the region to discuss Middle East peace. This support has continued to the present, with President Hosni Mubarak often intervening personally to promote peace negotiations. In 1996, he hosted the Sharm El-Sheikh "Summit of the Peacemakers" attended by President Bill Clinton and other world leaders. In 2000, he hosted two summits at Sharm El-Sheikh and one at Taba in an effort to resume the Camp David negotiations suspended in July of 2000, and in June 2003, Mubarak hosted President George W. Bush for another summit on Middle East peace process.

Belly dance, or Raqs Sharqi in Arabic, may have originated in Egypt, and today the country is considered the international center of the art.

The Nile valley forms a natural geographic and economic unit, being bounded to the east and west by deserts, to the north by the sea and to the south by the Cataracts of the Nile. The need to have a single authority to manage the waters of the Nile led to the creation of the world's first state in Egypt in about 3000 BC.

The Muslim Brotherhood's reemergence as a political force coincided with the proliferation of Islamic groups. Some of these groups espoused the violent overthrow of the government while others espoused living a devout life of rigorous observance of religious practices. It is impossible to list all the Islamic groups that emerged in the late 1970s because many of them had diffuse structures and some of the more militant groups were underground. Egypt's defeat and loss of territory in the June 1967 Six-Day War was the main cause for the growth of religiously inspired political activism. Muslims tended to view the humiliating experience as the culmination of 150 years of foreign intrusion and an affront to their vision of a true Islamic community. Islamic tradition rejected the idea of non-Muslims dominating Muslim society. Such a state of affairs discredited Muslim rulers who permitted it to persist. It was, therefore, incumbent on believers to end the domination and restore the true supremacy of Islam. As part of their Sunni creed, the most radical activists adopted jihad and committed themselves to battling unbelievers and impious Muslims. During the 1970s and 1980s, Islamists perpetrated a number of violent acts, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat in October 1981.