CAIRO: Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday during a rare visit to Egypt for addresses on the blockaded Gaza Strip and Iran’s nuclear programme, the two sides said.
Egypt was the first Arab country to subscribe to a peace convention with the Jewish state in 1979, after decades of hostility and conflict.
“ I thank President Sisi, whose donation to the region and the relations between us is of major proportions,” Lapid twittered. “ I presented the chairman my‘ frugality for security’ program for Gaza and the way taken by the Israeli government with respect to the Palestinian issue,” he added.
Egypt’s administration also said the Palestinian issue was crucial precedence.
In his meeting with Sisi, Lapid noted “ Iran’s attempts to come a country with a military nuclear capability as well as its continued use of terrorism, and the trouble this poses to the Middle East”.
His visit comes a month to the day after both countries struck a security deal to boost Egyptian troop figures around the border city of Rafah in the restive Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt’s Rafah crossing is the only passage to Gaza not controlled by Israel.
Zealots in the Sinai have multiplied their attacks since the army’s 2013 ouster of also Egyptian chairman Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Operations have been conducted against Islamist zealots across Egypt since February 2018. They’ve substantially concentrated on North Sinai and the country’s the Western Desert. Around suspected zealots and dozens of security, help has been killed in the operations, according to sanctioned numbers.
In a 2019 interview on US TV network CBS, Sisi conceded Egypt’s army was working nearly with Israel in combating “ terrorists” in North Sinai.
Security collaboration has been at an- time high between the indigenous heavyweights, with Cairo playing a crucial part in negotiating a ceasefire in May between Israel and Gaza’s Islamist autocrats Hamas to end 11 days of fighting.
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