Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit will visit Israel today for a series of meetings with the leadership here.

The Egyptian minister is expected to discuss with officials here the mediating efforts his country has undertaken vis-a-vis Hamas for the release of the abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, even though no noticeable progress is expected in the near future.

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Aboul Gheit is also expected to prepare with officials here the timetable and subjects that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will discuss in an upcoming meeting, whose date is yet to be announced.

The Egyptian foreign minister will meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Meretz leader Yossi Beilin, among others.

Political sources in Jerusalem said yesterday that the calls of Syrian President Bashir Assad for renewed peace negotiations with Israel will also be discussed during Aboul Gheit's meetings with Israeli officials.

The Israeli ministers will update Aboul Gheit on recent decisions taken by the government to alleviate the daily existence of the Palestinians.

MK Beilin is also expected to present the Egyptian visitor with his plan for furthering the road map by skipping over the first stage that demands the dismantling of the militant groups.

However, the arrival of the Egyptian foreign minister has led some, including MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) to call on the government to declare him persona non grata and prevent Aboul Gheit's visit from taking place. Steinitz maintains that unless Aboul Gheit publicly declares that Egypt recognizes Israel's sovereignty over Eilat, he should not be allowed to visit Israel.

Several weeks ago, the Egyptian foreign minister claimed that Eilat is Palestinian territory.

"We must not accept this," Steinitz said. "Had the Egyptian foreign minister said that Gaza or Nablus belonged to the Palestinians, I could understand it, but 25 years after the signing of a peace agreement with Egypt, raising questions regarding Israel's sovereignty in Eilat is something that we must not allow to pass," the former head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee added.

Steinitz maintains that Aboul Gheit's statement was not a slip of the tongue but a sustained Egyptian effort to undermine Israel's sovereignty in the south. The Likud MK said President Mubarak ordered the creation of a panel of experts in 1995 to examine the legitimacy of Egyptian claims. The panel, Steinitz says, concluded that Egypt can claim the southern triangle of territory covered by Uvda, Yotvata and Eilat.

The Clinton administration pressured Egypt to shelve the panel's report, and Mubarak agreed to the request.