Cairo's Court for Urgent Matters announced on Wednesday that it does not have jurisdiction to rule in a recent lawsuit demanding that all Israeli activities be banned in Egypt, Al-Ahram's Arabic news website reported.

A lawyer – Hamed Sediq – had sent a lawsuit to Egypt's interim President Adly Mansour and the current interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab earlier this year calling for all Israeli activities be banned inside Egyptian territories.

The lawsuit also demanded the closure of the Israeli embassy in Cairo and all other offices related to it, on the grounds that Israel has been using violence against Palestinians.

Wednesday's announcement contrasts with a March ruling by the same Cairo court, when it banned all activities in Egypt by the Gaza-based Hamas group, pending a court verdict in an espionage case involving ousted president Mohamed Morsi and 36 members of his Muslim Brotherhood group as well as members of the Islamist Palestinian movement.

The prosecution accuses the Brotherhood members of collaborating with Hamas, the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah and other organisations "inside and outside" of Egypt to smuggle arms, organise military training for group members in the Gaza Strip and fund a scheme to stir chaos and threaten national security in Egypt.

Sediq's lawsuit is not the first effort to target Israeli operations in Egypt.

Last August, Tamarod – the campaign that spearheaded the 30 June protests which led to Morsi's ouster – launched a petition on its website called Reviving National Sovereignty that demanded the cancellation of both US aid and the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

In 2011, several protests were held by Egyptian pro-Palestinian groups outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo to pressure Egypt's then-ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to expel the Israeli ambassador.

Israel's embassy in Egypt, the first of its kind in any Arab country, was established in 1980, soon after the Camp David peace treaty was signed in 1979.  

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