Egypt Watch

Israel’s top security man in Egypt to remedy strain over the Israeli policies in West Bank

On Monday, Shin Bet head Ronen Bar visited Egypt to remedy the strain in diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.

Senior Israeli officials said Bar met Egyptian General Intelligence head Abbas Kamel, during his visit.

On Thursday, Haaretz said that the Egyptian role in reaching ceasefire agreements between the Israelis and the Palestinians has become commonplace in recent years but that the recent mediation did not go well between the Egyptians and the Israelis. On August 7, an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire was announced between Israel and Gaza after Israel carried out air strikes on Islamic Jihad sites, to which the latter responded by firing rockets. As a result, 43 Palestinians were killed, including 15 children, while 34 Israelis were injured.

According to Haaretz, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi asked Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid to stop the operations of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank to reduce the tension that began after the arrest of a prominent member of the Islamic Jihad movement, Bassam al-Saadi. The Israeli newspaper pointed out that while Sisi was talking to Lapid, the Israeli army carried out an operation in which a leader in the Fatah movement, Ibrahim Nabulsi, was killed, which angered the Egyptian side. It is expected that the tension between the two countries would eventually dissipate due to their common strategic interests.