Rolling out the red carpet in Sharm El-Sheikh for 49-year-old Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett,, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi extended the hospitality started when former President Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1979. Part of the historic peace agreement that led to the deaths of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was returning the Sinai Peninusla back to Egypt, including the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. Israel annexed Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, Jordan’s East Jerusalem and West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights after the 1967 “Six Day War.” When Israel returned Sharm El-Shekh in 1979, Israel had built up the area as one of the most preferred resort destinations in the Middle East. After years of neglect and purging the area of terror groups, Sharm El-Sheikh is once again a preferred resort area.
Meeting with Bennett sent a strong message to other Mideast countries that Israel had become a reliable peace partner for Egypt and other countries. When President Donald Trump was president, he worked hard toward normalizing Israel’s relations with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates [UAE], not to mention improving relations with Saudi Arabia’s de facto Leader Mohammed bin Salman. While Palestinians didn’t like the peace gestures with Israel think Israel must make peace first with them before other countries, the Trump strategy worked better than expected. When Bennett and his entourage arrived at the presidential compound in Sharm El-Sheikh, they saw Israeli and Egyptian flags flying together. El-Sisi remains a controversial figure in Egypt because he was chief of the Egyptian military at the time that Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Morsi became Egypt’s first elected president June 30, 2013.
El-Sisi, with strong popular support, including mass demonstration in Cariro, toppled Morsi’s regime July 3, 2013, vowing to rid the country of the Muslim Brotherhood, something he considered a terror group. El-Sisi became an enemy of Hamas-controlled Gaza where Hamas leadership considered itself part of the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sisi, who maintains the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, doesn’t allow Hamas to use the crossing as a conduit for terrorist activities. Hosting the meeting with Bennett, el-Sisis sends a strong message to Gaza that he won’t support terror activities in the Sinai Peninsula or the Gaza Strip. Palestinian leadership has been divided between Gaza and the West Bank since 2007, when Hamas seized Gaza in a bloodless coup. Since then, the Yasser Arafat –founded Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] retains its leadership in Ramallh in the West Bank.
El-Sisi wants Israeli’s help in rooting out Muslim Brotherhood terrorists that would topple his Cairo-based government at the earliest possible time. El-Sisi is a strong secularist that has the backing of a vast majority on the Egyptian people. Egypt’s brief experiment with democracy blew up when the Muslim Brotherhood pushed Morsi in Egypt’s first election since the fall of President Hosni Mubabarak Feb. 11, 2001 during the height of the Arab Spring. Egyptians wanted democracy but they didn’t know the consequences to a rigged election by Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. So, when it comes to Israel, El-Sisi relies on Israel as a stable trading partner, but, more importantly, to keep the Muslim Brotherhood from toppling his military government. State Department officials didn’t know how to deal with E-Sisi, since he led the coup that toppled Egypts’s first democratically elected president.
Once Morsi backed toppling Egypt’s supreme court to install the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law in Egypt, the protests spread like wildfire, with millions taking to the streets to protest the Muslim Brotherhood takeover. El-Sisi used his position had head of the military to save the country. Once the dust settled, el-Sisi became the de facto leader of Egypt, saving Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood. Meeting with Bennett is bound to spark protests, at least among the radical fringe that sees Palestinians as the rightful occupants of the Holy Land. El-Sisi told Bennett in a three-hour meeting that he wants the international community to support Egypt’s efforts to rebuild the Gaza Strip. Bennett expressed interest in monitoring dual-use material that could be used by Hamas to rebuild the tunnel system used to attack Israel. Bennett and el-Sisi share their need to keep terrorists in control.
Bennett and el-Sisi discussed the Iran Nuke Deal, Turkish involvement in Libya, fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorist in the Sinai Peninsula and the controversy over Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam. Clearly, el-Sisi sees Israel as a strategic partner to Egypt’s security where the Muslim Brotherhood still plots to topple el-Sisi’s government. El-Sisi has a stronger bond with Israel than other Muslim Mideast countries because he knows Israel works day-and-night to control terrorists in the region. “We created infrastructure for a deeper relationship along the way. Israel is reopening to the countries in the region, and the basis for this is a peace agreement with Egypt,” Bennett said at the end of the summit. El-Sisi has used all his influence to stop Hamas rocket attacks into Israel knowing the lawlessness helps no one in the region, especially Egyptian and Israeli national security.
